The Fast Stream enters the rapids

Exiting university with a bank account bereft of savings and a mind filled with ideas, a new graduate may be tempted by the challenges and rewards of working for the civil service. And like generations before them (perhaps including you), the best applicants will join the graduate Fast Stream programme, giving them the skills to rise to the very top of Whitehall.

But the scheme is now seen as anachronistic. Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude wants it modernised, bringing it more in line with graduate schemes in the private sector. Maude’s plan would halve the Fast Stream’s length from four to two years, take control back from departments to the centre, and see graduates rotating around departments rather than staying predominantly in one place.

Maude’s plans met some resistance from the senior civil service. On 27 January the chair of fast streamers’ body the Fast Stream Forum, Elspeth Robinson, sent a letter to all members of the Fast Stream. The letter, subsequently obtained by CSW, details a meeting between ministers and a group of civil servants – including Robinson – looking into Fast Stream reform.This group, the Fast Stream Task and Finish Group, is led by HMRC chief executive Lin Homer and was, the letter says, established to find a “middle way between the fairly radical Fast Stream that Francis Maude would like to see, and what would work for government departments both in the medium and long term.”

In the light of departmental resistance, the introduction of some of Maude’s plans has been delayed from this year to next – but others may soon go ahead. Meanwhile, the debate over the future shape of the Fast Stream is far from over; so CSW has spoken to civil servants and private sector experts to discuss what Maude’s reforms would mean for the Fast Stream, and to examine how the scheme compares to equivalent schemes in the private sector.

What is the Fast Stream for?
The purpose of the Fast Stream differs depending on your perspective. This difference of opinion in part explains why the scheme is causing so much debate: everyone wants to get something out of it, but their interests aren’t always aligned.

Government as a whole needs the scheme to build a “talent pipeline”, a member of the Cabinet Office Fast Stream reform team explains – like a vacuum tube designed to equip the best candidates with appropriate skills and experience, then propel them into management jobs as vacancies emerge.

However, the expert acknowledges that fast streamers perform a different role for departments, providing a “highly capable, flexible and cost-effective resource that can be readily deployed to deliver on the government’s commitments.”

For individuals, the aims are different again: the scheme should provide them with “development opportunities and experiences that will enable them to reach their full potential,” he says.

It’s these different aims that give rise to the discussions over the scheme’s future. Departments are investing time and money in familiarising their fast streamers with their own culture, processes, partners and technologies: they want to reap the rewards of that investment – and many would like to see fast streamers seeing individual projects through to completion, suggesting long-term placements. The Cabinet Office, though, wants to see fast streamers circulating around departments and agencies in order to get the best possible understanding of how government works as a whole, and to build a variety of skills and experiences. Fast streamers may also want to gain more cross-departmental experience than their home departments may allow. All of these perspectives need to be put against the specific reforms suggested by Maude and compromise plans from the Task and Finish Group.

Centralisation
“Talent isn’t always matched to where it can be best used… Fast Stream graduate entry should be centrally managed.” Francis Maude, Civil Service Live 2011.

At present, fast streamers are recruited centrally by Civil Service Resourcing (CSR) and then assigned to departments. Applicants express interest in particular policy areas, but it is up to CSR to determine where they end up, based both on their interests and aptitudes, and on departmental needs. Therefore, as a fast streamer explains, “some people find that they get the opposite of what they put on their form.”

Fast streamers “are managed by a specific department from day one,” according to the Cabinet Office. This means that Fast Stream experiences can vary wildly, because “departments have different ways of managing fast streamers,” our fast streamer says.

Ian Moss was a director at the Ministry of Justice who managed fast streamers and, when seconded to the Institute for Government (IfG), subsequently researched the Fast Stream system. “It’s a complete lottery,” he says. “Some [fast streamers] will have a terrible first month, and others will have a fantastic first month. Some will find themselves in a really good stint, and others will find themselves in an obscure agency wondering why they’re there – and it may be that there aren’t many other fast streamers in their agency, and there is no experience of managing them.”

Maude is “intent on having a centrally-managed Fast Stream” to iron out this variation, according to the letter obtained by CSW. And, as he told Civil Service Live last year, he believes that “this would not only equip fast streamers better for the variety of challenges that will lie ahead of them, but it would gradually build new cohorts who have a common ethos and experience that would help to bond the service together.”

Maude’s model fits that of some private sector schemes. Despite having a mix of employees, BT centralises key parts of its graduate scheme to ensure a common experience. “Bringing it down to the basics of cost, the more you can aggregate demand into a single programme, the better,” says Andy Palmer, BT’s director of education and skills.

However, there are some sticking points for centralising the management of the Fast Stream programme, as Homer explains. “We’re having quite a lot of debates about this because we think there’s a balance to be struck between having better central information, but also trying to ensure that if we talk about centralisation, that doesn’t mean that departments drop out,” she says. Departments pay for their fast streamers, and so naturally want to retain control over where those talents are applied – but simply sharing data on their fast streamers shouldn’t scare them off, Homer believes. The aim, she adds, is “better collective ownership of the Fast Stream, and we all think that necessarily includes some better coordination of data and information on the people who are going through the scheme.”

Flexibility and rotations
“[Maude] would favour a system in which fast streamers were not assigned to one department but instead had posts in a variety of departments.” Letter to fast streamers, 27 January 2012.

Currently, fast streamers are embedded in a department and won’t necessarily take up a placement at another department throughout their four years of training. As Moss wrote for the IfG last year, “some departments are relaxed about interdepartmental moves – others hang on to their new acquisitions with a vice-like grip.”

Maude wants to see civil servants take on four different postings while on the Fast Stream, rather than stay at one particular department for the majority of their time on the scheme. Our fast streamer was enthusiastic about this change, saying: “It would make sense to force fast streamers to go and do secondments, because it’s rare for our senior civil servants to stay in the whole department for a long time.”

Indeed, rotation is a key ingredient of good graduate programmes, says Angela Barron, an adviser on engagement and organisational development at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). “Lots of evidence suggests that you should have people moving around,” she says. In particular, Barron has just completed some research on what graduates want from their schemes. “They’re looking for ways to keep a number of opportunities open, a number of alternatives as to where they might go next – they don’t want to be constrained down too narrow a career path early on in their careers,” she says.

Barron says that the Marks and Spencer graduate scheme is held up as a good model because of its flexibility. On that scheme, graduates choose their own programmes and can tailor the length of each placement. “Flexibility is key, enabling people to tailor a scheme that suits them as an individual,” she says.

The Fast Stream Task and Finish Group is not opposed to placements; indeed, Homer intends to move quickly to ensure that all fast streamers, including those on the 2010 and 2011 intake, are able to go on “at least one” placement to another department. She also wants to see fast streamers exposed to different skills. “These two things together will start to give a rounded and solid base for people to move forward on,” she says. However, the group intends that civil servants have a “home department,” rather than be continuously hopping from one to another – something that could damage continuity and erode institutional knowledge. Whether Maude will swallow this remains to be seen.

Management and mentoring
“The progress of fast streamers would be monitored beyond their Fast Stream experience right the way into the senior civil service.” Letter to fast streamers.

Management of fast streamers remains inconsistent, Moss says, and is of variable quality. Certainly, our fast streamer is unhappy with the management he received, particularly surrounding his career development. “At times, I felt I was being shoehorned into fitting a vacancy rather than what was best for my development,” he says. Some departments make jobs available to all fast streamers based on open competition, he adds, while others try to allocate positions based on their own preferences.

Moss wrote for the IfG that, overall, fast streamers receive “little continuity of care as they move postings and line managers.” In short, “they’ll get a good manager and then a crap manager,” he tells CSW.

He wants all fast streamers to be allocated a mentor from the senior civil service for the first three years of their career, and for mentors to be given set objectives and a framework to work within. “I managed a lot of fast streamers, and it was never quite clear what the objective was,” he recalls. “Were you supposed to take them down a specific career path, or were you a sounding board?”

Homer’s group is looking at fast streamer management, and while the discussions have “not totally concluded yet,” it does “have a view that there should be more clarity about what’s expected of people and more feedback to people about what they need to do to be successful. We are talking about whether there might be some better way of assessing people’s readiness for promotions and also a range of jobs.”

“We’d like to make sure that there’s better continuous assessment as people progress,” she adds, “and that they’re being given help to make the best of their skills so that the eventual outcome is that a really significant number of our folk [are promoted].”

The letter to fast streamers set out specific proposals for reform, including that progress be “monitored” as fast streamers move into the SCS; that “fast streamers would be expected to hold a portfolio of evidence as to the various roles and skills they have gained”; and that they “would be marked against a nine-box matrix in each post.”

Training
“[The Task and Finish Group advocates] a particular focus on what skills the leaders of tomorrow will need.” Letter to fast streamers.

A core curriculum exists for all fast streamers, featuring courses they “should consider taking,” the Cabinet Office expert says. “However, it is for fast streamers and their grade managers as part of their personal development planning to decide what training would provide the greatest benefit,” he adds.

If the image of the Fast Stream system you’ve built up so far is one of variable provision across departments, then the situation on access to training will fit that picture. Meanwhile, budget reductions are putting more pressure on provision of training courses, our fast streamer explains

Another problem, Moss says, is that Fast Stream training is “nearly all skills-based.” The civil service’s ethos, principles and code, and the issues around how departments interact, receive less attention, he says: fast streamers won’t be taught: “This is what we believe; this is why we do what we do.”

Moss therefore calls for a common induction programme, as seen in many private sector companies. BT has one, says Palmer, who argues that the course creates a sense of belonging to the company. That in turn, he says, means that if graduates are not happy in one job, they’re likely to try another role within BT rather than leaving the organisation.

The Task and Finish Group is looking at “how we work collegiately to make available the right forms of development and training opportunities,” says Homer. This problem of variation is something that the group can quickly make progress on, she thinks – and it ties into the next point: specialist skills.

Specialisation
“A greater emphasis would be put on operational delivery and more technical competencies.” Letter to fast streamers.

Francis Maude has frequently called for a greater focus on operational and technical skills – and the letter explains that the Task and Finish Group wants to put more emphasis on such competencies. Some specialists would like to go further: one member of the Treasury’s finance professionalism team tells CSW that civil service “financial literacy needs to be increased. Those on the Fast Stream should have financial management skills; it should be part of the programme.”

Homer suggests that a reformed Fast Stream programme may indeed provide training in the basics of some technical and specialist skills. “Fast streamers want the training period to be as broad and developmental as they can,” she says. “We want as many fast streamers as possible to reach the higher echelons of the civil service and, these days, we think the best bet for doing that is to have a good and varied skills base – as a precursor to specialisation, not as an alternative to it.”

Timescale
“The minister wants the Fast Stream to be intensive but shorter, lasting only two years.” Letter to fast streamers.

There is a big debate over the length of the scheme. At present, it lasts an average of four years. However, with fewer jobs available in the civil service, some fast streamers are experiencing a bottleneck in progressing to the next stage of their career, CSW understands.
Maude wants the scheme’s length to be halved to two years. Homer explains that there’s an “ongoing debate; it’s quite lively, and there’s quite a range of views” on this topic. She adds that “there is some interest in making the early part of [the Fast Stream] more consistent and a better base for everyone, but there’s a continuing debate about whether particular types of role or department might need longer than others. For instance, if you’re going to do significant postings somewhere like the international development department, one of those postings might be 18 months. Therefore, it might be less realistic to think you can do a Fast Stream programme in a total of two years, but in other cases that may be possible.”

Homer adds that there’s a parallel debate over what circumstances could shorten the length of an individual’s Fast Stream programme – for example, if someone joined with “significant pre-experience.” Departments hope that they can agree a compromise with Maude, under which a core two-year programme could be extended by some departments.

Timeline
“Since there are quite a few things to be ironed out to bring the current proposal more in line with the expectations of the minister, it is likely that [reforms] will be implemented from 2013 instead of later on this year.” Letter to fast streamers.

The Task and Finish Group reports back to the Cabinet Office at the end of March. “I don’t think we’ll see this work as a single, one-off: there may well be things we can do almost immediately, and some things that will be slower burn and take longer” Homer says, adding that “we are quite keen that some of the things, like training, can be brought in fast” and will affect current fast streamers.

It is “doubtful” that changes to the Fast Stream’s length will affect even the 2012 intake, she says: “They’re already in the system, and one of the things that we’re very keen not to do is make people feel like we’re changing the offer part-way through the process.”

While Fast Steam reforms are far from decided, it’s clear that these negotiations are likely to lead to substantial reforms. Currently, news of plans to change the Fast Stream is trickling out – but soon the reform plans will be making waves across Whitehall.

See also:Francis Maude locking horns with permanent secretaries over controversial Fast Stream reforms