The team from Civil Service World will be updating this page with key points and quotes from today's sessions.

Final session

Lots of questions about procuring more from SMEs and increasing morale.

In his final statement, Sir Gus announces a 'physical activity challenge' to encourage civil servants to make the most of the Olympics and join in with their own sports events. Those who can demonstrate having made the biggest difference to the community will win an award at next year's Civil Service Awards.

Accelerating the pace of change with ICT

Chair John Higgins, director-general of the IT industry group Intellect started the discussion by asking the panel to reflect on whether ICT is an enabler for change, or a barrier.

The panel generally sat on the fence saying that it can be both, and emphasising that where IT is the enabler it is simply part of the change process. Glyn Evans, corporate director of business change at Birmingham City Council put it well. IT is the enabler for change, he said, but if you don’t actually look at the way process work in your organisation there’s a risk you’ll actually end up doing the same thing as you currently do, but it costs you more because you spent a lot of money on the IT systems.

However when the discussion was opened to the floor it became painfully clear that many people see IT as a serious barrier not only to change but to doing their jobs effectively. There was a litany of complaints from people in a variety of departments about the unwieldly and inefficient systems they work with.

One audience member noted that if he compares the pace of change in consumer technology, and the improvements technology makes to his personal life, he can’t understand why things are so different in his work life.

Managing those expectations and consumerist understandings of technology could be a very big challenge for IT teams, but the panel’s main message seemed to be that speeding up change and making change effective isn’t really about the technology you use but the project management and development skills you have.

Two effective project management methods were mentioned – agile development techniques and CHAMPS2 – developed by Birmingham Council. For both of them the key seemed to be to start with a clear idea of outcomes, and to work with end-users closely and regularly through the programme to make sure it achieves those outcomes.

16.55, Transparency debate, auditorium

It was a cracking panel for the 3pm session in the auditorium. With transparency the topic, CSW editor Matt Ross chaired a discussion with PASC chair Bernard Jenkin MP, NAO chief Amyas Morse and the Cabinet Office’s new director of transparency, Tim Kelsey – a former journalist and consultant brought in recently by the PM as an Efficiency and Reform Group executive director.

Speaking on the day the PM presented a series of data sets that public service providers will be required to publish, Kelsey argued that when service users have high-quality, comparable data on the performance of service providers, both productivity and service quality will increase. Such data will also enhance accountability and choice, he said, as well as enhancing the public’s ability to ‘self serve’ and fostering economic growth – but for him, the key aim is to shine a spotlight on organisations’ work, encouraging them to identify and tackle their weaknesses.

Next came Morse, who argued that the mass publication of raw government data – the main response so far among public organisations to the transparency agenda – can be “confusing and alarming”, as it’s not clear how it was gathered or should be interpreted. Data must be high-quality, comparable, standardised, timely, and well-aligned with organisations’ objectives, he said. However, he added, as more data comes into the public domain there’s the potential to challenge projects and programmes that are going wrong, or policy ideas that are not supported by the available information. If only that had occurred in the case of the government’s fire control scheme, he said, referring to the NAO’s latest damning report on the failed £500m project.

Bernard Jenkin reinforced the message about ensuring that data is comparable and useable: it’s no use “people thinking they’ve done their job by dumping data” on the population unless it means something to them, he said. Kelsey didn’t argue: the quality of data published by many public bodies so far has been “lamentably poor”, he said.

To get this right, said Morse, the government needs to think about how to fund all this data’s sorting, cleaning-up and publication; and he warned – using the fire control project as an example – against rushing into publication without thinking carefully about delivering the policy. But Jenkin and Kelsey had no such qualms: if you push to publish fast, said Kelsey, your data might start out bad – but within a couple of years, organisations will have had to improve it dramatically in order to avoid reputational damage. Publish – in other words – or be damned.

Lessons from overseas operations

Three civil servants, Paul Lincoln, Command Secretary at Permanent Joint Headquarters UK. Lindy Cameron, UK Stabilisation Unit (DfID) and Mark Scully, Support to Operations, (MoD) discussed their experiences of serving overseas.

They said that they are glad of their experiences and have found their service rewarding. However, they did highlight the importance not only of formalised support structures but also of informal support from within departments. This is particularly true when civil servants return and are recovering from experiences totally different to their usual routines. If you have a colleague currently serving, this may be an observation to take to heart.

The DfT change programme

Claire Moriaty, a director-general at the Department for Transport has been discussing the department's change programme.

She says it is particularly important to transform a department with pace, and so the DfT has already pushed through huge organisational change - which has resulted in job losses.

However, it was noted at the event that the PCS Union wrote to the department praising its management of redundancies. Moriaty said it is important to tie in voluntary redundancy to appraisal and staff selection processes to ensure that the best talent can be retained within at department.

Driving real change on equality
Jonathan Rees, head of the Government Equality Office, began by reassuring us that the current government is extremely committed to equality,  but takes a very different approach to the previous government.

He went on to explain that approach, and it was one which is reflected in other parts of the government’s agenda – a move away from process and regulation to outcomes and behaviour.

“Legislation gets you so far, but actually we’re about cultural change, we’re about behavioural change. This administration has a very strong thrust away from process and much more towards transparency,” he said.

As public bodies work out how they can comply with the Equality Duty – a draft of which is currently before Parliament, and which will come into force next year – he emphasised that the focus is no longer on ticking boxes and form filling but on publishing data which demonstrates that the organisation is meeting requirements of the duty.

After two case studies from different departments about taking equality impacts into account when building policy, we heard from a panel of equality champions including Simon Fanshawe, one of the founders of Stonewall. While welcoming the “permissiveness” of the new approach to equality in allowing organisations to focus on very localised and specific equality needs, Fanshawe raised the point that this flexibility “will do nothing for the laggards” because “it doesn’t tie those people into a particular process”.

Opening session with Steve Radcliffe and Robert Devereux

In the opening plenary session, leadership thinker Steve Radcliffe joined DWP permanent secretary Robert Devereux to discuss what makes a good leader and how managers can “make a bigger difference” in the civil service.

The session opened with 200 of the audience members electronically voting to rank four people on their leadership qualities. In the first vote, Sir Alex Ferguson took 48 per cent of the vote, beating Barack Obama into a poor second place with 29 per cent; the Queen and Lady Gaga barely made double figures. Then Winston Churchill romped home with 67 per cent of all votes, leaving Margaret Thatcher struggling on 15 per cent, the Dalai Lama on 10 and Bob Geldoff with nine.

What made these people good leaders, Radcliffe asked the audience. A load of concepts came back: courage; innovation; results; calmness; tenacity; success; ruthlessness; rhetoric; charisma; and inspiration. Asked his own thoughts, Devereux plumped for Churchill and the quality of inspiring hope. Fair enough, said Radcliffe – but his own favourite is Bob Geldoff, who has no executive authority yet managed to catalyse a social movement and put some substance into international agreements on development aid.

People can be great leaders without an innate talent, Radcliffe argued: the only common factor shared by effective leaders is their focus on a clear goal or ambition. It’s that sense of being “up to something” that makes all the difference, he said; becoming a good leader is partly about getting in touch with your own passions and talents, and inspiring yourself to move in a particular direction.

Given those assets, leadership isn’t complicated, he argued. Just think about where you want to get to, putting aside worries about history or how to move on from current circumstances; engage with people fully, forging strong connections rather than simply handing out information or instructions; and think carefully about delivery, maintaining your focus on end results.

In order to allow managers to realise their leadership potential, he continued, senior leaders should keep their staff “unbridled, but corralled”: give them the freedom to innovate and explore new ideas, but within a set of constraints that cut out the risk of dramatic service failure or large-scale waste. Devereux liked the idea – but don’t rule out moving those corral boundaries, he said: “I want a corral, but I’m prepared to have a conversation” about allowing people to go beyond preset limits.

We’d also love to hear from others at the event – please use the comments below to add your own thoughts, or feel free to use the blogging section of the Network to write your own summary of the day. You can see a selection of highlights from the first day of Civil Service Live here.

Last updated 323 days ago by Civil Service World