Permanent secretaries' round-up 2011: CSW analysis

05 Dec 2011

Gathering the opinions of 21 top officials, Matt Ross picks out the trends revealed in this year’s perm secs’ round-up

Welcome to Civil Service World’s annual permanent secretaries’ round-up: a unique snapshot of the thinking, policies and priorities at the very top of the civil service. In fact, this year’s round-up is particularly unique, for the civil service is living through times of wholesale change on many fronts – and our round-up clearly reflects the dramatic reforms, stresses and challenges at play across Whitehall.

Over the next 19 pages you’ll find contributions from 18 permanent secretaries – including the incoming cabinet secretary and the new head of the civil service, plus outgoing national security adviser Sir Peter Ricketts – and three heads of profession (among the departmental permanent secretaries, only Nick Macpherson, Jonathan Stephens and Moira Wallace declined to contribute). Each of our contributors has answered five questions – two regarding 2011, two on 2012, plus a lighter, seasonal question – and the overwhelming message pervading their various answers is that the long-awaited storm has broken.

Introducing last year’s round-up, I mentioned that 2010 had been an extraordinary year, and talked of the huge challenges facing the civil service. Well, departments are now in the midst of addressing those challenges: the public finances squeeze, anticipated ever since the credit crunch reached its peak in 2008, has finally engulfed the civil service.

Indeed, during 2011 many departments have pretty much completed most of the changes to their finances, workforces and structures made necessary by last year’s spending review. Among our contributors, seven name workforce reductions as a structural change undertaken during 2011, and four say how proud they are of the way in which these reductions have been achieved; four more point out the progress made in terms of stripping out layers of management. Asked to name the challenges facing them in 2012, meanwhile, none cite job cuts, and only four mention that the civil service will continue to shrink in 2012. In terms of shedding staff, the civil service is probably over the worst.

Similarly, many of the structural and organisational changes that will be necessary are well-advanced. Nine contributors talk about the organisational reforms made in 2011; four more mention the mergers of government bodies (though, interestingly for the ‘bonfire of the quangos’, between them the perm secs mention seven new arm’s length bodies that have been established this year). However, only three talk of such reforms as an important task for 2012.

Asked what the civil service will focus on in 2012, contributors often cite the Olympics, stimulating economic growth, and – overwhelmingly – delivering on the coalition’s policies. Nine mention major policy change and delivery as achievements of 2011, but 11 say that 2012 must be a year of policy delivery. This message chimes not only with the PM’s speech at the recent Top 200 meeting, but also with the key messages expressed in our exit interview with outgoing cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell – who both defends the civil service’s ability to deliver, and urges officials to move faster still.

There are also plenty of ideas about 2012’s objectives in terms of internal change: a number of permanent secretaries talk about the need to strengthen cross-departmental teamwork, change working methods, and develop new skills. But all in all, this year’s permanent secretaries’ round-up reveals a growing readiness to look outwards, and to focus on creating results on the ground rather than internal cost savings and reorganisations. In 2010, many perm secs talked of the importance of good management, leadership, staff engagement and communications as the cuts bit – and that approach bore fruit, maintaining staff engagement even as the P45s landed in pigeonholes. But civil servants know that in 2012 they’ll need to concentrate all their energies on driving through the coalition’s ambitious policies in an extremely harsh budgetary and economic climate. The civil service in 2012 will clearly be smaller, less stratified, more flexible and better connected; it will also, on the basis of these civil servants’ answers, be a more mature and task-focused organisation.

Permanent Secretary round-ups:

Jeremy Heywood
Number 10

Bob Kerslake
Communities and Local Government

Ursula Brennan
Ministry of Defence

Suma Chakrabarti
Ministry of Justice

Robert Devereux
Department for Work and Pensions

Paul Jenkins
HM Procurator-General, Treasury Solicitor and Head of the Government Legal Service

Sir Peter Ricketts
Prime Minister's National Security Adviser

Dame Helen Ghosh
Home Office

Lin Homer
Transport

Sir Peter Housden
Scottish Government

Dame Gill Morgan
Welsh Assembly Government