News

Douglas: finance central to reform plans

Civil Service World

Profile

Colleagues

21st February 2012 at 9:37:59 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

Finance skills should be central to the civil service reforms now being developed by head of the civil service Sir Bob Kerslake, the head of the government finance profession has said. Speaking in a CSW interview, Department of Health finance chief Richard Douglas said: “I’m hoping and expecting that Bob Kerslake will take [finance skills] forward as a key plank of civil service reform.” Douglas is leading the ‘Finance Transformation Programme’: an initiative to improve finance skills across government. The scheme will make permanent secretaries responsible for ensuring that their senior civil servants have a general level of financial competency. At present, senior civil servants lack sufficient skills to assess spending and cut waste, he said: “We haven’t fundamentally [Read more...]

Tory ideas man speaks out against immigration cap

Civil Service World

16th February 2012 at 9:16:24 by Civil Service World Comments (1)

Leading Tory thinker Nick Boles has challenged the government’s immigration cap, arguing that the policy threatens the ability of Britain’s universities to contribute to economic growth. Speaking in an interview with CSW, Boles argued that foreign students should be exempted from the cap, and instead asked to pay a deposit which would be returned when they leave the country at the end of their course. Public opinion on immigration is “quite sophisticated: people don’t object to [immigrants] who come here to work hard and pay tax,” said Boles, arguing that the British only resent those who abuse the visa system in search of low-skilled jobs. “So let’s have a cap on what people actually care about, and then let the university sector – which is probably one of our best [Read more...]

Kerslake: ‘Focus on restoring pride’

Civil Service World

16th February 2012 at 9:10:08 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

Civil service leaders must praise good work, support employee development and remain “visible and understanding” to address the problem that civil servants are becoming less proud of their organisation, according to civil service head Sir Bob Kerslake. Although staff engagement levels across the civil service have remained static since 2010, the proportion of staff proud to name their employer has fallen from 55 to 52 per cent. Speaking to CSW about the Civil Service People Survey results, Sir Bob said leaders can address the issue by praising good work and defending civil servants when appropriate. “When we get unjustified criticism in the press, sometimes we should counter that: I’m very comfortable doing that personally as head of the civil service,” he said. He added that [Read more...]

Analysis & opinion

Decision time at the data floodgates

Civil Service World

13th February 2012 at 10:20:55 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

freedom of information, information management, freedom of information and the media

The government has just published the submissions to its open data consultation. Mark Rowe learns about the many and varied pressures on the Cabinet Office’s transparency team, charged with finding a way forwards. As it probably had to be, the government’s consultation on open data has proved for the most part to be, well, open. In all, 247 government departments, councils, companies, campaigners and other interested groups collectively submitted nearly 500 responses last autumn, providing plenty of material to inform the government’s development of its open data strategy. Tim Kelsey, whose job as the government’s transparency director was recently made permanent, told CSW last year that his team would “use the responses to develop proposals for a white paper” (CSW 5 October [Read more...]

The City: saviours of the public sector?

Civil Service World

10th February 2012 at 9:13:10 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

public services & the third sector, venture capital

While some financiers caused our current economic difficulties, others might just provide investments that our public services desperately require. Joshua Chambers examines some unusual ways of generating funding. While budgets fall dramatically across the public sector, City investors still have lots of cash. Some of it is ours, of course, after the bank bail-outs and quantitative easing – but we won’t be getting that money back for a while. There is, however, another way in which the public sector might be able to benefit from the oceans of cash still swilling around the UK’s financial sector: via direct, speculative investments. This idea hasn’t emerged overnight. The Labour government looked into the concept: in 2000, then-PM Gordon Brown commissioned financier Sir Ronald [Read more...]

The arguments for arguing

Civil Service World

2nd February 2012 at 9:30:00 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

Officials must fulfil their duty to challenge poor policies This newspaper has for some time argued that after the May 2010 election, the civil service went so far out of its way in its efforts to please the new coalition ministers that in many cases it got completely lost, leaving those self-same ministers struggling through swamps of hostile media coverage as their pet policies were stabbed to death by stakeholders wielding the sharpest and most murderous of stakes. The last cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, implicitly recognised the problem when he told Civil Service Live last year that "it’s very much in [ministers’] interest that we say ‘no’ sometimes." And to be fair, by last July we were seeing much stronger policy: the biggest U-turns – on forestry and the NHS [Read more...]

Interviews

Taking care of the pennies

Civil Service World

20th February 2012 at 9:16:27 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

Richard Douglas, the head of the Government Finance Profession, believes that finance skills will soon be essential for career progression across the senior civil service. He explains why to Joshua Chambers. On Saturday 2nd March 1946 Oliver Franks, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Supply, told a meeting in the Treasury that the civil service needed to change. No longer was the organisation a purely regulatory body, he said. The establishment of the welfare state had given it managerial functions that required business and operational skills.In the decades since Franks first made his observation, there have been many attempts to boost the business skills of the civil service, often focusing on financial acumen and project management. Some of these initiatives achieved their specific [Read more...]

Boles without spin

Civil Service World

15th February 2012 at 10:02:01 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

Nick Boles is a key Tory thinker: a man who devised many flagship policies and prepared his party for government. But Matt Ross finds him refreshingly straight-talking as he discusses politics, policymaking and the civil service. In early 2010 Nick Boles was the head of the Conservatives’ implementation team, charged with drawing up the party’s detailed plans for government. He wanted to arrange pre-election meetings between David Cameron’s frontbenchers and the permanent secretaries of the departments they were shadowing – but both his own leader and the Labour prime minister were reluctant. “David Cameron was absolutely paranoid about being seen to be, as he put it, measuring the curtains,” Boles recalls. “He was very reluctant to be getting into anything that could be [Read more...]

Interview: Stephen Laws

Civil Service World

14th February 2012 at 11:19:13 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

computers, nationalisation and privatisation, planning policy guidance

After 37 years on Whitehall Stephen Laws, the government’s top drafter of legislation, is retiring. Suzannah Brecknell grabs him on his way out of the door to discuss a life spent writing laws for seven prime ministersStephen Laws, until last month the first parliamentary counsel, has dedicated his career to writing laws. There’s an obvious question to ask here: has he been a victim of ‘nominative determinism’ – the way in which some people’s life choices appear to be shaped by their names? No, he replies; his choice of career was more influenced by his father’s own interest in the law, and his desire for Stephen to go to university and get a professional qualification. He concedes, though, that “hereditary nominative determinism” may have been at work. To be fair, [Read more...]

Features

Frontline: hospital doctor

Civil Service World

20th February 2012 at 9:21:13 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

working time directive, medical equipment

A doctor says the NHS’s priorities are all wrong: pettifogging rules are rigorously enforced, but the Working Time Directive is pretty much ignored “I work at a district general hospital in the South-East of England: when I began my career as a hospital doctor last year, I made the decision to move out of London. My patients suffer from acute medical problems such as cancer – we see a wide range of illnesses and injuries, as we provide care for a majority of the health problems that GPs can’t tackle. Personally, I think the biggest problems facing patient care at the moment are exhausted doctors and the over-zealous implementation of the ‘bare below the elbows’ policy by management. The former could be addressed if managers followed through with the European Working Time [Read more...]

Whisky Review: Highland Park 18 Years

Civil Service World

20th February 2012 at 9:11:44 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

Subtlety is a rare but valuable characteristic. A little nuance never does any harm, while a gung-ho machismo can get you in all sorts of trouble. Certainly, though, subtlety is not what you’d expect from a malt whisky made on the Orkney Islands: an archipelago exposed to such violent vicissitudes of weather that you’d expect any resident to be hardy and just a little bit rough. However, this whisky delivers subtlety in abundance – if that isn’t a contradiction in terms. The nose is delightful; a kaleidoscope of sensations. There’s sweet honey and fudge, followed by coffee and caramel, before an alcoholic pang of sherry and a slight smokiness. Smell it again and the sweetness is gone, instead replaced by the weather and the wind of the Orkneys barraging your nostrils. Sip it, [Read more...]

What do they think of David Cameron now?

Civil Service World

15th February 2012 at 15:09:50 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

Nearly two years ago the prime minister met civil servants to set out his plans for reform. What impact are those reforms having on staff morale? Suzannah Brecknell reports on the third annual Civil Service People Survey Teams with above-average staff engagement levels are twice as successful as those with below-average levels – at least according to a 2009 report compiled by researchers at Gallup, who examined studies of the effects of staff engagement on staff productivity and organisational effectiveness from around the world. It’s no wonder, therefore, that civil service leaders under pressure to deliver results with shrinking resources are keen to monitor and improve civil servants’ “emotional response to the organisation they work for” – as [Read more...]

Round tables

Round table: Tomorrow's world

Civil Service World

1st February 2012 at 12:49:52 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

public service reform, software, information and communication technology, internet, computers

Which technologies will change the way we work, and which are just a flash in the pan? Suzannah Brecknell reports on a discussion of how new technologies are set to transform government’s interactions with the public. The BBC’s long-running show Tomorrow’s World was produced from 1965 to 2003, charting four decades of inventions which changed the way we live and work – such as ATM cash machines, mobile phones and barcode readers – as well as several which didn’t, including a fold-up car that fitted inside a suitcase. The number of technological dead-ends and unwanted inventions featured on the programme over the years provide a clear warning for civil servants trying to judge how government should use technology: how to sort the mobile phones from the fold-up cars? Changing [Read more...]

Round table: Meeting the 25 per cent carbon reduction targets

Civil Service World

9th January 2012 at 17:52:52 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

business energy prices, carbon emissions

Whitehall departments have made good progress in cutting their carbon emissions: civil servants exceeded David Cameron’s goal of a 10 per cent reduction in twelve months, cutting emissions by 14 per cent on average across central government in the year to May 2011.Energy minister Greg Clarke has allowed departments no time to rest on their laurels, however. Last year he set a new target calling for a reduction of 25 per cent over three years. Civil Service World, together with green energy experts Active Energy, brought together experts from across Whitehall to discuss ideas for how departments can continue to cut carbon while at the same time cutting costs.Better building managementOne of the most obvious avenues for cutting energy usage and emissions is making changes to the way [Read more...]

Safe journey

Civil Service World

25th October 2011 at 9:05:18 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

data security, information technology

Technological convergence is transforming communication tools. As the civil service tentatively explores the potential of mobile IT devices, a CSW round table discussed the security implications. Colin Marrs reports. Two years ago, who would have predicted the rise of Apple’s iPad technology? Computer ‘tablets’ are just the latest devices to emerge in a personal computing revolution which has had a profound impact on working practices both within private companies and in people’s private lives. The ability to work remotely using mobile technology presents significant opportunities for the civil service too; but it also poses profound challenges.At a recent Civil Service World round table discussion, held in partnership with computer security consultancy Sophos, civil servants met [Read more...]

Special reports

Special report: How efficient is your department?

Civil Service World

3rd November 2011 at 10:19:45 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

public service reform, information management, government procurement

Last week, departments published figures showing their spending on a range of back office functions. Suzannah Brecknell analyses what they reveal about departments’ efficiency – and about the weakness of government data. Last Thursday was a bumper day for data-hungry Whitehall-watchers. Departments published information on bonuses paid over the last year; workforce data over the last six months; their spending on government procurement cards; and the second of their Quarterly Data Summaries (QDS) – updates to departmental business plans, providing the latest management information and reports on progress against key business plan indicators. The ministerial statement which heralded these publications focused on the first three data sets – perhaps understandably, since [Read more...]

Special report: SCS recruitment

Civil Service World

13th October 2011 at 8:00:26 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

public service reform, public sector finances, civil service appointments, hr and personnel

In a Special Report analysing six years of recruitment data, Joshua Chambers reports on how senior civil service recruitment has changed – and considers how the next generation of SCS are likely to emerge. Who exactly are you? To try to find out, Civil Service World has set about researching the backgrounds of all those appointed to senior civil service (SCS) positions over the past six years, using requests made under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act. Three years ago, a previous CSW Special Report divided all those appointed to SCS posts over the years 2005-’07 into three groups: recruits from within that department; those brought in from other parts of the civil service; and those entering central government from the wider [Read more...]

The crowning glories

Civil Service World

13th July 2011 at 7:11:31 by Civil Service World Comments (0)

procurement

“I think this is a change; quite a big change,” says Home Office commercial director – and newly-appointed crown commercial representative – Bill Crothers. The appointment of ‘crown reps’, the government hopes, will lead to a more efficient relationship between the government and its main suppliers. But is this one small step towards lowering costs, or a giant leap to further centralisation?Overseeing all the relationships between government agencies and the companies within their briefs, the crown reps will act as ‘pointmen’ with a set of key suppliers, attempting to ensure that the government acts as a single buyer rather than a series of individual departments. Alongside these client-facing crown reps – who are mostly departmental commercial directors – [Read more...]

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