Jon Thompson
Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence
What were your biggest policy and delivery challenges in 2013, and how did you handle them?
For us, delivering the continued transformation of defence has been the biggest challenge. Overall, we have 16 major change programmes, and 2013 saw us add rebasing from Germany and a new approach to Reserves. These programmes are over and above the 53 recommendations of Lord Levene’s Group on Defence Reform. The Institute for Government described our programme as the “biggest change programme in Europe” recently, and we have to continue to deliver demanding changes, with less money, at speed whilst building military capability in line with the Strategic Defence and Security Review.
Where have you made the most progress in implementing the Civil Service Reform Plan, and what are your reform priorities for 2014?
We’ve made massive progress on the people strands of CSR. Taken together with some people priorities we wanted to implement over and above CSR, we have 33 changes to people policies or processes and we’ve made huge progress this year. We’ve invested a huge amount of time in talent management, leadership development, and getting the SCS to connect with their people and each other. They have responded superbly to the call to lead, and I’m really proud of the team we have and are developing. There’s more to do to modernise our people approach, but I think we made a real step change in 2013. The 2014 challenge for us is information: we’ve managed to diagnose the problems we have, and now need to tackle them as we aren’t giving our people the tools and the technology that they need to work in a digital age. We have got to close the gap between people’s use of technology in their lives and their experience in the workplace.
What are your key challenges in the last full year of the Parliament, and how will you tackle them?
Personally, I have six challenges for the rest of this Parliament: delivering the massive policy agenda we have to build towards Future Force 2020; keeping us on track financially; improving the use of information across the organisation; transforming defence; improving our leadership of our people; and stripping down the bureaucracy of the organisation to improve the way we all work.
What would you most like Santa to bring you this year? And what should he take away?
I’d like Santa to bring me a Two Ronnies box set – I think Ronnie Barker was the greatest comedy actor ever. If Santa could take away those who love to opine on everything after they have left the military but know very little at all about what is really going on, that would be great!