The Civil Service Reform Plan announced yesterday mostly rehashes old solutions, some sensible, others of dubious worth – but mostly renames stuff and proclaims it as if it was ‘new’. The cry of ‘cultural change’, for example, towards greater managerial responsibility and accountability has been repeated in Whitehall at least since Rayner and FMI, if not Fulton. If it still hasn’t happened after 5 decades (depending on where you count from) it raises rather fundamental issues, surely? Continue reading “The Civil Service Reform Plan – Mostly Old Wine in Very Old, but relabelled, Bottles.”
Category: Public Management
Surpluses, Budgets, Parliament, and Accountability Down Under (Australia): some random thoughts
I am in Australia as “Accenture-Crawford School Distinguished Visiting Professor” at Australian National University in Canberra. Many thanks to both Accenture and the excellent Crawford School of Public Policy.
I’ve been doing a fascinating series of meetings, seminars and lectures with academics and senior public servants from across the Australian federal (commonwealth) government. I have had generous access to the ‘corridors of power’ including with a wide range of Prime Ministers and Cabinet (PM&C) officials, Department of Finance and Deregulation (DOFR) officials, and the Clerk to the Senate. And many academic colleagues have been helping me get my head around Australian Federal Government procedures.
Here’s a few, fairly random, thoughts about it: Continue reading “Surpluses, Budgets, Parliament, and Accountability Down Under (Australia): some random thoughts”
Jeremy Hunt (DCMS) debacle raises again the issue of Civil Service Reform
This week saw an extraordinary outburst from the most recently retired Head of the Civil Service, Lord Gus O’Donnell. He said, on the BBC, “”When governments go through difficult patches you are looking for who you can blame. The issue comes up of ‘well, let’s try and blame the Civil Service’. It does not usually work and I don’t think it will work this time either.”
Now I am not one of those who would blame the Government’s current ills on the Civil Service, or at any rate not entirely. Most of what has happened to them has been because of crass and rushed policy-making on the hoof, without proper thought and analysis. Certainly sometimes Civil Servants have failed to say “no, Minister” when they should have, but Ministers have only themselves to blame when things go wrong. Ministers who allow official or unofficial advisers to run amok, as in Defence or now DCMS, can hardly blame the Civil Service for not stopping them (even if the CS should have).
But that does not exonerate the Civil Service. I have been saying for years that our supposedly “Rolls Royce” Civil Service has deep flaws in its institutional make-up. Continue reading “Jeremy Hunt (DCMS) debacle raises again the issue of Civil Service Reform”
BT Infinity – Infinitely Unavailable?
Yesterday I got an email from BT, once again extolling the virtues of BT Infinity* and inviting me to sign up. As I am a BT customer – which is why they had my email – it wouldn’t have been too difficult to check that BT Infinity is not available where I live.
(*For those of you outside the UK, this is (privatised) British Telecom’s optical-fibre based network).
Saint GP. Why have GPs been elevated to special status in the health debate?
The whole NHS reform is based on an assertion – that GPs are somehow better placed to decide what NHS services need to be provided because they are in some sense ”closer to patients”.
The news story today that GPs seem to be failing to provide adequate services to elderly people in care homes raises doubts about this assumption. I tweeted about it and have had an interesting exchange with ”TheNiceLadyDoc” (a GP). Continue reading “Saint GP. Why have GPs been elevated to special status in the health debate?”
Is the Civil Service Accountable to Parliament? Hodge vs O’Donnell spat opens a can of worms.
Is the Civil Service accountable to parliament?
Margaret Hodge MP, the formidable chair of the powerful Public Accounts Committee of Parliament says “yes”. Sir (now Lord) Gus O’Donnell and other ex-Mandarins say firmly “no”. (For details see the Guardian website here). Ironically, emerging in the week that Norman St John-Stevas (Baron St John of Fawsley) died, this dispute dates back to the introduction of the modern Select Committee system he initiated back in the early 1980s. Continue reading “Is the Civil Service Accountable to Parliament? Hodge vs O’Donnell spat opens a can of worms.”
Implement That
Watch out for the word “implementation” in 2012. It’s the new in-word in Whitehall. Continue reading “Implement That”
My Top Ten (most read) WhitehallWatch posts of 2011 (so far)
Academy Schools Funding System Fails – quelle surprise
I have been predicting for some time that some of the big structural changes to public services are likely to destabilise the financial systems in health, education and local government. So it comes as no surprise that tens of millions of pounds have been ‘accidentally’ awarded to new Academy Schools. Continue reading “Academy Schools Funding System Fails – quelle surprise”
Theresa May: déjà vu all over again
[I appeared briefly on Newsnight commenting on this – the item is about 20 mins in].
A British Home Secretary faces a media firestorm over a major blunder in one of the Home Office’s Executive Agencies. A senior agency official is blamed to shift attention away from Ministers. He resigns and hits back, hard and sues the Home Office and wins.
Theresa May (Home Secretary) and Brodie Clarke (UK Borders Agency)? Well yes, but it could also be Michael Howard (Home Secretary) and Derek Lewis (Director General of the Prison Service) back in 1995. Continue reading “Theresa May: déjà vu all over again”
Colin Talbot - my blog 