The Civil Service Commissioners’ annual report, due to be published tomorrow, will contain research findings revealing that many departments have failed to review their procedures in the light of the changes made to the civil service code back in 2006.

Janet Paraskeva, the first civil service commissioner, explained while chairing a Civil Service Question Time session at Civil Service Live that her office has been examining how departments manage and encourage observance of the code, and looking into their procedures for handling complaints about breaches. “Results have been patchy,” she told the audience. “Some departments are excellent, but others haven’t even looked at how the code is dealt with since the code was revised a few years ago.”

Speaking to Civil Service World after the session, Paraskeva said the research has covered “how the code is promoted, and whether there are proper procedures for people who want to raise concerns.” The problem, she said, is that “some departments haven’t revised their own codes since the main code was re-written.”

While the research will not name individual departments, it will reveal that 30 per cent of all the civil service organisations questioned have not reviewed their procedures to ensure that they comply with the revised code. A fifth of the smaller organisations examined did not even have an established policy for handling the civil service code in any form. A spokesperson for the commissioners’ office has told Civil Service World that on this issue “board leadership is not as strong as [the commissioners] hoped for across the piece.”

The findings on the civil service code emerged during a lively session at Civil Service Live, during which Paraskeva fielded questions and put them to a panel comprising former MI5 head Baroness Manningham-Buller, Ministry of Justice permanent secretary Suma Chakrabarti, and Guardian journalist David Hencke.

Following a discussion about the morality of leaking, Chakrabarti raised concerns about the blurring of the line that separates full civil servants and special advisers.

“We should be considering whether a cooling-off period is required before special advisers can move into a policy job,” he said. “I’ve had friends who, after the Damian McBride story [in which a civil servant working as a special adviser quit after planning a political smear campaign], asked me: ‘how can this person be a civil servant?’ So I do think that needs looking at.”

Chakrabarti was supported by Manningham-Buller, who said: “I agree that there is a need for more clarity about the difference between full civil servants and special advisers.”