A truly radical approach to civil service reform

January 29, 2009 by
Filed under: Politics 

I spent an hour or so yesterday at the think tank Reform discussing a draft paper on civil service reform. The paper is a perfectly decent canter over the usual terrain. The argument is that the civil service is not fit for purpose, something that has been exposed by various policy and commissioning disasters but also by the dissatisfaction of ministers I and the many flaws exposed by the Cabinet Office capability reviews.

The argument is that incremental change has not worked. From this, reports tend to move to a set of options which focus on the interface between ministers and senior civil servants.

This is fine as far as it goes, and I certainly agree that the biggest challenges for the service lie in the relationship between the politicians and the officials.  My problem with the approach is that it takes as given the demands made on departments by ministers.

If we were looking at the performance of any other large organisation it would be appropriate to ask whether it is sensible to expect the organisation to be able to do well all the things asked of it. This is why the outcome of many reviews of private and third sector organisations is that they should hive off functions or try to do less better. But this isn’t simply a matter of the civil service devolving more to localities or setting up more arm’s length agencies.

For departments to function effectively there needs to be a better way of managing and regulating the demands made on them. The question should not simply be ‘has the department delivered what it was supposed to’ but also ‘was it ever reasonable to expect the department to deliver what was asked of it?’

As well as questioning the process by which departmental workloads are determined, and redefined, by politicians – often without notice or any assessment of capacity or effect on existing work programmes -  we also need to recognise that the ‘civil’ duties of the civil service are not merely about responding to the demands poured into them from their ministerial masters. The question needs to be how departments manage inputs, not just top down, but also from the wider policy community and society itself. 

The idea that Whitehall can often be out of touch with ‘the front line’ of policy delivery is hardly new. It is most often addressed through the collection of detailed data. But departmental decision makers need to have the scope to gain deeper insights into the experiences of the people delivering its policies and on their receiving end. And senior officials also have a vital ‘civil’ role in managing the policy community, not simply responding to lobbying from vested interests or receiving the ideas of academics and think tanks but working with the community so that it engages constructively and creatively with the Government’s objectives.

A truly radical approach to civil service reform would recognise that the civil and democratic responsibilities of senior public officials lie not simply in the service of their political masters but in being accountable and connected to policy communities and wider society. From this starting point, any fundamental inquiry into how the civil service can possibly work better for us all must include questioning the fitness for purpose of the cultures, methods and demands of the political system of Government.

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8 Comments on A truly radical approach to civil service reform

  1. Paul Evans on Thu, 29th Jan 2009 11:48 am

    2. I remain quite at a loss to understand why the idea of in-and-outers – a replacement of the permanent civil service with a system of competing policy teams that are replaced when a government goes under – is never discussed in any detail in the UK.

    All we seem to do – with our proliferation of think-tanks and management consultancies – is to try and approximate this in a slightly clandestine way. At the moment, there seems to be little common interest between the bureaucracy and politicians. THis post highlights politicians shortcomings very well, but there seems to be an assurance among the permanent bureaucracy that politicians will always carry the can for administrative failings.

    Is it the case that this is a sensible solution that dares not speak it’s name?

  2. matthewtaylor on Fri, 30th Jan 2009 8:00 am

    3. Hi Paul

    I think your suggestionwill be one of the options consdered in the Reform report

    Thanks for commenting

    Matthew

  3. Niall Smith on Fri, 30th Jan 2009 1:45 pm

    4. Hello

    I agree completely about the culture and methods comment at the bottom of your post.

    If i have understood correctly then i suppose what you are aiming for is senior civil servants who transcend the simple functions of their roles and inevitably become figures in ‘civil’ society of their own right. To be perhaps a bit glib i mean the sort of person you wouldn’t mind (for example) opening your new local public library.

    Surely the only source of legitimacy for our public servants to manage their civil roles in this way is political. The issue then is, if this is what eventual success looks like, then how do you get there without the kind of competing policy team idea that Paul is suggesting?

    This is an idea i really struggle to find acceptable personally and to be avoided implies a shift in culture not just in our political system but also wider society.

    I’m thinking about Keynes and his views on the long term now.

  4. papanomicron on Sun, 1st Feb 2009 12:29 pm

    5. The key part of you post for me is

    “For departments to function effectively there needs to be a better way of managing and regulating the demands made on them. The question should not simply be ‘has the department delivered what it was supposed to’ but also ‘was it ever reasonable to expect the department to deliver what was asked of it?’”

    Managing the workload for complex organisations is very hard and having leaders who are very reactive, therefore change the required inputs frequently, makes answering your questions practically impossible. Perhaps the question should really be ‘how do we ensure that the civil service is set specific, measurable, agreed, realistic, time-bound (SMART) targets, which are not subject to constant change and focussed on delivering outcomes not just outputs?’

    Making the civil service more political does not seem to be the answer to these issues in my opinion.

  5. FutureGov » Useful links » links for 2009-02-02 on Mon, 2nd Feb 2009 1:01 pm

    6. [...] A truly radical approach to civil service reform | Matthew Taylor's blog "A truly radical approach to civil service reform would recognise that the civil and democratic responsibilities of senior public officials lie not simply in the service of their political masters but in being accountable and connected to policy communities and wider society. From this starting point, any fundamental inquiry into how the civil service can possibly work better for us all must include questioning the fitness for purpose of the cultures, methods and demands of the political system of Government." Nice! (tags: organisations politics civilservice changemanagement culture rsa) [...]

  6. Tim Hood on Mon, 2nd Feb 2009 7:28 pm

    7. Until last year, I worked as a Director of an overseas British Council office.

    One of the competencies we were evaluated on was ‘entrepreneurship’. The obvious implication is that managers are expected to react quickly to both opportunities and threats. This involves risk.

    At the same time, those managers are evaluated on risk management, for which in reality, it is best to read ‘risk avoidance’.

    The tensions are obvious- the civil service knows it should be more fleet of foot and more responsive to the external environment but in the end, what really matters in career terms is avoiding mistakes. And for obvious reasons: if you initiate something that goes wrong, then it’s a fairly straightforward job for someone to lay the blame at your door. If you participate in collective inertia- for example, ignoring the inevitable consequences of a house price bubble and unregulated financial markets- then your job is fairly safe.

    The trick is to make sure that the entrepreneurs get properly rewarded for success and are able to bounce back from one or two failures (not more). At the same time, the risk managers (who will be different people- expecting someone to have across-the-board competencies is a bizarre concept) need to be rewarded for successful risk identification. This means not trying to block innovations that ultimately work, as much it means making sure nothing goes wrong.

    At the moment what may prevail at the senior level of government is that the ministers are the real entrepreneurs- anticipating and reacting to opportunities and threats in the short term- and the senior civil servants are the risk managers.

    Perhaps creating new functions, such as R and D and innovation teams, which are closely connected to the public, is one way forward? These would be checked and balanced by risk management teams who would be properly evaluated not just on lack of failure but on lack of success.

    (By the way, I left to set up a digital media company and still have enormous respect for the British Council and the civil service generally).

  7. matthewtaylor on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 9:39 am

    8. Thanks Tim. I agree we need to get the weighting of risk and caution right, especially given the understandable fear of failure in the public sector. By coincidence I was interviewed by the consultant advising the RSA on its risk assessment the other day. I tried to persuade him that out number one risk was loss of momentum and senior management commitment if our Trustees try to lose the pace of change here at the Society. There is a danger that risk assessment reinforces a human characteristic; underestimating the risks of the status quo.

  8. matthewtaylor on Tue, 3rd Feb 2009 9:42 am

    9. Thanks – I agree entirely. How can we reconcile the reality of politics with the requirements for organisational effectiveness. This must be a two way street, requiring changes to the political culture as well as to the way the civil service works

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