Stronger leadership at the centre of government may be necessary to bring the UK civil service up to the delivery standards of other countries, a report from a prominent think-tank has suggested.

The Institute for Government (IfG), founded by former minister Lord Sainsbury and led by former permanent secretary Sir Michael Bichard, published its first ‘State of the Service’ study this week, analysing the “unprecedented” amount of information on Whitehall’s corporate performance published recently.

Speaking to Civil Service World, the report’s co-author Simon Parker said the relative weakness of power at the centre may be one reason why the UK is consistently ranked beneath countries like Canada, Australia and the Scandinavian nations in international league tables on the effectiveness of government.

“There’s obviously a question about the centre, which looks weak in international terms,” Parker said. “When we are talking about a period of expenditure reduction and overcoming ‘departmentalism’, there are questions about what role the centre can play.”

The report also draws attention to the ongoing need to ‘join up’ across departmental lines in order to deliver on cross-cutting policy goals such as climate change and obesity. Parker said the report is an interim one designed to establish an evidence base for future IfG recommendations, but also suggested that the Institute will be examining the possibility of giving the centre greater powers to punish departments for failing to meet delivery targets.

“The centre of government has the power to set targets, but if a senior official doesn’t meet them, there isn’t a huge amount of comeback,” he said. “Many of the countries that seem to outperform us in international rankings do make more regular use of penalties.”

Parker described Sir Gus O’Donnell’s recent suggestion that money could be taken from departmental budgets and committed to interdepartmental policy areas as a “really interesting” idea, and pointed to the example of the Netherlands: “The Dutch have ten cross-cutting areas, with a pooled budget and a programme manager, and the departments have to agree how they’ll spend the money. Perhaps even more interestingly, two of the programmes have their own ministers,” he said.

There were reports this week that the Conservatives are considering implementing the IfG’s proposals by giving more power to the cabinet secretary to penalise officials who fail to deliver on targets, as well as encouraging more coordination between the Cabinet Office, Treasury and Downing Street.