Five ideas for civil service reform

The papers are full of talk of a major change in Whitehall. The Prime Minister’s special adviser, Dominic Cummings, is known as a radical thinker, and has briefed some bold ideas, such as changing hiring and firing rules (more “weirdos and misfits”, fewer Oxbridge English graduates), abolishing some departments and merging others, and relocating parts of government. Here are 5 ideas for civil service reform, based on my experience of working with government, both inside and outside.

1.      Worry less about the vertical lines between departments and more about how to help them work together

Machinery of Government changes come with organisational pain: deciding who goes where, thinking of a name, moving offices, sorting out IT and distracting everyone involved from running the country. Crucially, there will still be silos between government departments, albeit in a different place. As I say to clients all the time – including across the public sector – structural change is only one lever you can pull to get people to work differently. There are some good examples of collaboration between departments, for example the Office for Artificial Intelligence, a unit jointly owned and funded by BEIS and DCMS. This concept could be replicated further and broadened. First, we should have more of them, but more importantly, there should be broader participation. AI affects all departments – why not mandate every department is represented? In this way, cross cutting issues affecting all of government would permeate all government thinking quicker.

2.      Develop an operating model for flexibility

One of government’s biggest challenges is responding quickly and flexibly to the demands it faces. MHCLG does not suddenly get hundreds of additional staff because towns is the PM’s policy priority, nor did it in the aftermath of the Grenfell tragedy. Like most bureaucracies, the civil service rarely stops things, and is rarely told to stop things. The result of this primarily static operating model is that the focus of the civil service – in terms of numbers of people thinking and doing – is often out of step with its priorities. Instead, government could review the alignment of civil service resources to priorities across the whole of government regularly and explicitly (a “zero based review”), aligned to the calendar of fiscal events.

Similarly, government often reverts to structural solutions when new challenges arise. For example, faced preparing to leave the EU, government instinctively set up a new department. Instead, it could have responded by assessing the skills and capabilities required to do so, drawing on the expertise in functions, professions and existing departments, and mobilising a cross government, multi disciplinary team. Over time, the team’s size and make up would respond dynamically to its developing understanding of the challenges.

3.      Radically transform the employment model

Despite huge improvements, the civil service people model is still out of date. Its inflexible pay structure, pension schemes, career paths, learning offer and benefits package were built to encourage people to join young, progress in a linear way up the chain, and stay a long time doing roughly the same thing. It does not support the needs of the civil service, which has to respond to changes in demand, needs access to a wide range of skills from all parts of the economy, wants to encourage some specialisation, and wants access to talent from non-traditional backgrounds. Nor is it the most attractive offer to a younger generation, who want multiple careers, sideways progression, flexible work patterns, and to have up to date skills.

4.      Worry less about who you employ and more about who you have access to

Many people whose advice and skills the civil service wants do not want (or need) to be employed as a civil servant. Further, their credibility and ability to affect change depends on being an outsider. Once employed, it is all too easy for “outsiders” to change in order to fit in or get things done, thus reducing their potency. So in addition to recruiting from a different pool, why not reinstate the coalition government’s “contestable policy fund” to obtain policy advice from a wide range of sources? Why not engage more widely with deliberative policy making processes to bring the outside in? And why not be much more demanding of those academics, NGOs, businesses, the public, unions, councillors and local authorities who have something to bring to the table?

5.      Worry less about where civil servants are and more about what they experience

Already 80% of civil servants are based outside London. But the decision makers are heavily London centric, partly because that’s where ministers are. Dominic Cummings has a well known frustration with the extent to which the metropolitan liberal elite (whose members include many mandarins) does not understand people outside London. But moving people out of London will just recreate pockets of the same liberal elite, just elsewhere. A family friend in teaching used to say “no one should be allowed to make education policy until they have spent a wet Wednesday morning with 10G and photosynthesis”. So why not mandate a certain number of days for civil servants to shadow people primarily affected by their policy or delivery? Not just quick visits to the high performing services to shake hands and be impressed by the smell of fresh paint, but shadowing sessions to understand the practical challenges professionals face in translating policy into delivery.