Pat McFadden's Speech on Public Service Reform
Hot on the heels of the PM’s speech on his plan for change last week, Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (CDL) made a speech this morning about public service reform. I was lucky enough to be invited to the campus at UCL East. Here’s what I took away.
1.????? The civil service is full of good people trying to operate a broken system
The PM got into hot water last week when he talked about some in Whitehall being comfortable in the “tepid bath of managed decline”. But CDL was much more positive: he praised civil servants and said good people are being hampered by bad systems and processes. Indeed, so much so that Mike Clancy – the boss of the Prospect Union, many of whose members are public and civil servants – welcomed the speech. In Q&A afterwards, he refused to be drawn on the comments made by his boss.
2.????? Government has lots to learn from tech start-ups
CDL talked about disruptive companies that have fundamentally changed the way that we live and work in the last twenty years: Spotify, Airbnb and Whatsapp. He argued that, whilst there are some stand out examples (e.g. the process for getting a new passport), the same cannot be said of government services. He wants to pull together mixed teams including policy wonks, tech specialists and front-line workers to solve problems using a human-centric approach, just like the tech world would. He is also keen on the test and learn approach which, again, is mainstream in the tech world. Build, deploy, test, iterate, learn, tweak, improve and start again. He announced how Cabinet Office will spend the ￡100m innovation fund to pilot this approach in family services and temporary accommodation in four areas. He also argued that all of us – ministers, civil servants, the public, the media – need to change our risk appetite if we are to reap the benefits of this way of working. Probably easier said than done, but absolutely crucial, if we are to innovate in this space.
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3.????? Technology will change the nature of the civil service but maybe not its size
As you’d expect, CDL talked about the transformational power of technology: as I wrote about last week, automation and AI can free up public servants to focus on higher value or human centric activities. However, although he argued that we shouldn’t judge government policy by the amount of money we put in, or the size of the workforce, he refused to be drawn on whether the size of the civil service should stay the same or shrink, at least back to pre-pandemic levels. My own view is that if government pushes hard and fast on technology (and AI in particular), it could release significant capacity across the big delivery departments and services, way in excess of the savings targets set by HMT.
4.????? Talent is critical to success
CDL is clearly frustrated by how difficult it is to get brilliant people into the civil service, citing how cumbersome the recruitment process is and his determination to improve it. He also announced another cohort of no10 innovation fellows – a fantastic scheme to get tech specialists to do a “tour of duty” – to build technology in government. He appealed to techie’s sense of duty and told them “your country needs you!” Of course, I am 100% behind the push for a transformation in the way we recruit, train, deploy and support public servants to deliver government services differently.
5.????? Invitation to join the debate
Right at the start of the speech he said something that ministers rarely do: that he didn’t have all the answers. He said the debate about the “wiring of the state”, public sector reform and civil service reform hasn’t been talked about enough recently. And in a room full of think tanks, academics, local government, business, unions and the third sector, he really encouraged the eco-system to get stuck into this debate. I’m looking forward to being part of it.
Programme director and facilitator at Roffey Park Institute
2 个月I’m really interested in that headline ‘plan for change’. In our VUCA world does top-down, planned change make sense? Or should we think of change as something that emerges from the bottom-up, as creative and committed people solve problems and then scale these solutions up. Good read!
Hic Sunt Leones!
2 个月In order for any country to work (largely speaking), you need skilled workforce, infrastructure, legal system, funding/investement, and a political class that is pretty much focused on outcomes and improvement of society/life standards. The only thing that currently works better than others is the legal system (with its own issues). UK has a limited skilled workforce and UK public services salaries cannot compete with private companies. Most of UK infrastructure is based in the 70-00s. Most of Uk decision making is in the hands of people who learned their stuff in the 70-00s. World has moved a lot since 00s. Funding is a nightmare because the last 14 years have been about saving money, cutting costs. Politically speaking, civil service has been labelled and seen as the enemy of people. So really, this speech does not provide any meaningful hope for change. It does though provide some indication that politically, civil service, will not be used as a blaming card for political ineptitude but that is always granted with labour party.
Government Policy and Strategy | Former Civil Servant | Consultant | Elected Councillor
2 个月As a former civil servant I would say if you want something to grow (risk appetite) then you have to feed it. Let’s not forget the CS has had years and years of turmoil with no room for risk (Brexit, COVID, reshuffles aplenty, etc), vilified in press, treated as one big blob ‘the public sector’. It’s not a blob, each department has its own remit and culture and risk taking/ innovating needs space and importantly, permission.
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2 个月The application of test and learn is an idea that has been developed and used many times in the public sector in the past 2 decades, and it has delivered great learning. Unfortunately that learning gets overcome by the wider system conditions that surround it, leading to its ultimate demise. Yes, he is right to say that the public sector can learn from the private mentality, Thatcher tried that and created a monster because we simply copied inappropriate concepts. The examples of Airbnb, and renewed passports demonstrate that with highly transactional standardised services, this is successful. As soon as we look at the majority of public services, we find that they have high variety of demand, and they are often complex. The start-up methods then are quite inappropriate. And then the point of tech freeing up capacity has been proven to provide very little benefit. I agree with McFadden conceptually, for the public sector, but he might be better off looking at test and learn with regard to relational working and the liberated method.
Strategy Consultant
2 个月Great blog Josie. How do we change the risk appetite of the public sector when we have fiscal limitations so less willing to "try new things", and given the audit nature of the public sector?