In summer 2008, CSW began producing special reports: in-depth investigations based on unique primary research. Here we sketch out five that produced some of our most interesting and newsworthy findings.
Postgraduate qualifications among top officials
9 September 2008
As the publishers of the Dods People database, CSW publisher Dods has detailed biographies on the upper echelons of the civil service. Examining the careers of the top 600 officials, we found that more than a third of them had a postgraduate qualification – with by far the most popular an MSc in economics from the LSE.
All told, about a quarter had an MSc, and a quarter a PhD. The most popular subjects were economics, science and business, each comprising about 15 per cent of the total. Like the LSE, Oxford University and UCL were popular for their economics courses, as were Imperial College and Henley Business School for their Masters of Business Administrations. Nearly 11 per cent of the group had taken their postgrad course at Oxford, followed by the LSE with nine per cent and Cambridge on five per cent.
Departmental recruitment
2 December 2008 and 5 October 2011
Using Freedom of Information requests to all the departments of state, in 2008 CSW gathered figures on the backgrounds of all those appointed to senior civil service posts over the previous three years, breaking them down into those sourced from within the department; from another department; and from outside the civil service. We repeated the exercise in 2011, assembling data for 2005-2011.
Our research found that external applicants filled 24 per cent of senior posts during 2005-07, falling slightly to 21 percent in 2008-11. The big story, though, was a dramatic fall in SCS appointments, from a peak of 302 in 2007 to just 135 in 2010. In this period there was also much more movement between departments, with half of all jobs going to candidates from another department.
Training survey
8 April 2010
In an online survey of more than 1700 civil servants, CSW gathered people’s opinions of various forms of training, and asked how the quality and availability of training had changed. Overall, nearly half thought training had improved to some extent in recent years, with about a quarter saying it was unchanged and a quarter seeing a deterioration.
A third of civil servants said they found it difficult to access training, and more than half asked for more training in specialist, professional and management skills. But the strongest findings concerned the type of training available: as the government prepared to move from classroom and residential courses towards more e-learning – a shift that has now come to fruition – classroom learning was said to be the most valuable type of learning. Coaching and experiential learning were also seen as valuable, but e-learning was named as the least valuable form of training by some 30 per cent of respondents, putting it above only lunchtime learning sessions.
Special advisers
7 April 2009 and 6 April 2011
Our 2009 special report was the first ever comprehensive set of special adviser biographies, pushing into the limelight an influential group of individuals who much prefer operating behind the scenes. It came at a time when the rise of the ‘spads’ under Labour was attracting fire from the Conservatives – but in government, the Tories have found spads just as useful as did their predecessors.
Interestingly, the backgrounds of Labour’s spads were quite different from those of the coalition’s. Under Labour, most had already had a career in service delivery, charity work, council jobs or union activism, with 37 per cent moving directly from Labour HQ or an MP’s office to a spad’s role. Under the coalition, though, some 89 per cent had last worked in a party HQ or MP’s office, revealing a dramatic shift from policy expertise to media management experience.
Nowadays, of course, our PM, DPM, chancellor, business secretary, Opposition leader and shadow chancellor are all former spads, suggesting that the current crop of advisers probably contain many of the leaders of the future. Oh the horror…
Civil service reform
16 May 2012
Gathering the opinions of civil servants on the government’s reforms to policymaking, CSW found most supportive of transparency, localism and the adoption of behavioural economics techniques, but nearly two thirds sceptical about opening up public services to the private and voluntary sectors.
Asked to name the three biggest weaknesses in their department’s capabilities, 59 per cent included “the recruitment and retention of appropriate staff, and better management of poorly-performing staff”, with half naming “consultation with, and engagement of the workforce in pursuing reforms” and 41 per cent pointing to their IT systems.
On the topic of barriers to intelligent risk-taking, many named media criticism and ministerial caution as key obstacles to progress; and on engaging stakeholders in policymaking, some 57 per cent named ministers’ “fixed ideas about the policies they want to see implemented” as a major challenge.
Asked to say which of the civil service’s strengths are currently vulnerable, 58 per cent named “pay, terms and conditions, and HR policies that ensure that civil servants feel valued”, making it the most popular response by some 20 percentage points.