Results tagged “CivilService”

We've been keeping an eye on Andrew Lansley because of his combination of arrogance, ignorance and power (see the Department of You Couldn't Make It Up and Lansley's winning combination).

This diary of a senior civil servant seems to suggest that Lansley isn't a one-off; he's perfectly similar to the rest of his Ministerial colleagues:

I have noted since the election that Conservative ministers seem very relaxed. I, like many others, interpreted this as confidence and competence. After last week, it started to look like naivety and arrogance. The gaffes were piling up and forming an edifice of stupidity. Ministers called to the Commons to apologise; Hillsborough survivors insulted; Jamie Oliver criticised; the Speaker called a stupid sanctimonious dwarf; school building programmes announced and then scrapped. It was a litany of carelessness and sloppiness, a series of avoidable own goals that illustrated a lack of preparation, a lack of seriousness and the failure to appreciate what it is to govern a country.

I noted recently the excellent machinery of government publication by the Institute for Government. The report notes the problems that senior civil servants face when changes to government departments are made, including a lack of funding to support the changes and the doubling in workload it often means for such civil servants.

It was pleasing to note that one of the proposed solutions to support machinery of government changes was for "new and radically changed departments [to] receive more support from the centre":

The Cabinet Office and Treasury need to improve their procedures and capabilities to provide more positive support for new or heavily reorganised departments. The Cabinet Office should create a capacity to provide a ‘scratch team’ to run a new department’s core responsiveness operations for a transition period. The Cabinet Office should recognise that the reorganisation of departments is a vital task that is likely to recur reasonably frequently, and should henceforth be properly documented and continuously improved over time - instead of the current situation where experience resets to zero in each new case.

Whilst being appropriately modest, we made a similar suggestion here a few months ago for a quango merger quango, or NDPBMNDPB for short, which could be:

Some form of team or body within central government that can advise or lead the process of mergers within the public sector.

There's no reason why such a team can't also help with government departments, so it could become the Non-Departmental Public Body for the Merger or Reorganisation of Non-Departmental Public Bodies and Government Departments (or NDPBMRNDPBGD for short).

In September 1974, a briefing paper was prepared for the Cabinet Secretary to go over with the Prime Minister on the first day.

It sounds like the start of an episode of the A-Team. In a way, I suppose it is, since it is the list of things the Head of the Home Civil Service goes through with a new Prime Minister. I particularly liked the juxtaposition of these two items:

• Obtain assurance about the return of documents by outgoing ministers or that they are taken over by the incoming Minister
• Brief PM on nuclear release procedures and 'last resort', and appoint two nuclear deputies

For those of us who take a particular interest in this sort of thing, Public Strategist's post on is fascinating. (The image above is taken from that post, which details all permissions etc.)

Their conclusion is excellent:

So now we know where we have been and where we are going. Nothing can possibly go wrong.

For those who also take an interest in the machinery behind the machinery, the Institute for Government's excellent publication on government changes notes the disruption such reorganisations cost.

If you're into this sort of thing - and I, for one, cannot see how you possibly couldn't be - it's well worth a read.

Public Strategist rightly noted in their comment on yesterday's post about the Civil Service in a hung parliament that:

If the author of that article thought "the blue folder was the only game in town" and that "across Whitehall the yellow folders are being taken out of the bin and carefully read for the first time" he or she should probably not be taken seriously as a guide to what was - and is - going on.

They also rightly note the slightly dodgy idea of coloured folders doing the rounds in Whitehall. The key approach, therefore, being scepticism.

With which, I'd like you to read the Sunday Telegraph's take on things in Whitehall:

Whitehall insecurities about its new Conservative masters are laid bare in eye-opening secret papers leaked to The Sunday Telegraph. The documents, instructing senior officials at the Department of Communities and Local Government how to woo their new bosses, give a checklist of what are called "hot button", Tory-friendly words, to be dropped into conversation whenever possible. These include "families," "radical," "neighbourhoods" and "progressive." [C]ivil servants are told to "talk of efficiencies / value for money without prompting" and advised to deploy blatant flattery, with suggested phrases including: "Congratulations! I had so much confidence in you, I might get complacent!" The documents order mandarins to "smile!... Lean forward!... Be interesting!" They are told to engage in "supportive listening," and "take cues from the Secretary of State." Officials are advised that "eye contact [is] the real currency."

Scepticism, folks: a true Whitehall quality.

This is a nice article from last weekend's Observer, on how the civil service has been reacting to the hung parliament:

One thing is certain. Across Whitehall the yellow folders are being taken out of the bin and carefully read for the first time.

I feel like I'm at political Alton Towers. Everywhere I look there is fun. This is going to be fucking great!

While this is the latest quote from Malcolm Tucker (@jessearmstrong1) it could well summon up the feelings of the person pulling the constitutional strings of government as we speak, Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell. notes that he has potentially played a key part in moving us towards a written (or at least better codified) constitution by writing a "Cabinet Office Manual" and publishing this snippet on the formation of government.

I'm slightly relieved that we're at least being guided by slightly more transparent rules, but the fact that G.O.D. was born and still resides in South London gives me the hope for the breakup of London into South and North.