News

Sue Owen might be enjoying more evenings out as the new permanent secretary at DCMS, but her days are spent demonstrating and improving the value of culture, media and sport to the UK. Suzannah Brecknell meets her

When 1984 arrived, it didn’t neatly fit George Orwell’s vision of a cowed population kept in line by the feared Thought Police. But as Joshua Chambers discovers in that year’s Cabinet Papers, it’s not hard to find parallels.

The government monitored civil servants’ participation in industrial action so that it could illegally hinder their career prospects and block their promotion, according to government papers from 1984 released this month by The National Archives.

Government’s use of payment by results contracts will inhibit its ability to buy services from charities and social enterprises, the Institute for Government has warned.

Improved auditing could lead to a rise in recorded crime statistics, according to Andrew Dilnot, chair of the UK Statistics Authority.

Departments selecting contractors are to be permitted to disqualify firms with histories of poor delivery on public work, following the approval of new European Union procurement rules.

The Ministry of Defence’s recruitment project, which aims to hire more than 10,000 reservists through an online IT programme, is almost two years behind schedule and will not be fully operational until April 2015 at the earliest,the Times has reported.

The Civil Service Commission has today launched a consultation into whether it should give the prime minister a greater say over the appointment of permanent secretaries.

Andrew Manley, chief executive of the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), has been suspended pending the results of an investigation into his expenses.

Cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood and Sir John Chilcot have reached an agreement on the publication of classified memos from the lead up to Britain’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, according to newspaper reports.

The government is to hand additional powers to the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) to oversee departments’ contract management plans and “step in” when it sees fit, after it accepted all recommendations made by chief procurement officer Bill Crothers in a review of major government contracts.

V&A Museum

Until 19 January

117-119 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 3RN

020 7373 3990

The government is to strengthen the finance profession and hand its leadership to the Treasury's director-general of public spending, after it accepted recommendations by Treasury second permanent secretary Sharon White.

Mark Lowcock

Permanent Secretary of the Department for International Development

Paul Leinster faces growing threats, a declining budget, and objectives that don’t always line up – but the Environment Agency chief seems thoroughly at home. Matt Ross meets a man coping with complexity

Paul Leinster faces growing threats, a declining budget, and objectives that don’t always line up – but the Environment Agency chief seems thoroughly at home. Matt Ross meets a man coping with complexity

Recruitment to the public sector looks set to flatline in the next three months, according to the Manpower Employment Outlook survey published on Tuesday, after rising earlier this year.

Home Affairs committee chair Keith Vaz has thanked Home Office permanent secretary Mark Sedwill for his “extremely positive” interventions to help the committee secure information from his department, but raised concerns about officials’ willingness to supply data in some of the department’s directorates.

Governments must ensure that growth is shared by all citizens and that policy outcomes seem fair, otherwise they risk facing mass protests, leading academics warned this week.

Making public servants more accountable and paying them for results reduces both their motivation and the quality of their work, leading academics have warned.

Departments are submitting key documents to the Public Accounts Committee at the last minute, and this is “just not satisfactory”, PAC chair Margaret Hodge has told CSW.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) is the only department that hasn’t published information setting out its progress against the government’s digital strategy.

Lord Levene, the former MoD permanent secretary who advises government on defence reform, has mapped out a way forward for Defence Equipment & Support. Meanwhile, defence secretary Philip Hammond this week scrapped the ‘Government-Owned, Contractor-Operated’ (GoCo) model of defence procurement reform.