News

The Commons’ Liaison Committee is today calling for an independent commission into the future of the civil service, and in a report published today raises concerns that the government’s reform plan is not based on a “strategic consideration of the future of the civil service”.

The government’s vision for local growth, as set out in its 2010 white paper ‘Local growth: realising every place’s potential’, has “not been translated into measurable objectives against which to judge achievement and hold departments to account”, a report by the National Audit Office has warned.

Universal Credit (UC) director general Howard Shiplee has blamed a “mantra of digital by default” for some of the problems in the government’s flagship programme.

Mark Lowcock, permanent secretary of the Department for International Development, this week apologised to Parliament after one of DfID’s programmes failed to make use of millions of pounds.

The education department has “achieved clear progress on a policy priority” by opening 174 free schools since 2010, and has used new approaches to deliver “much lower average construction costs than in previous programmes,” according to a National Audit Office report published today.

The Institute for Government (IfG) has called on the government to provide greater openness about the reasons for permanent secretary departures and moves in a report on accountability in Whitehall.

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The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is creating a digital academy to develop the skills to use a range of new technologies, the department’s chief information officer Andy Nelson, has said.

Departments are set to lose £1bn out of their combined contingency reserves this year and will have their budgets cut by a total of £1bn each year until 2015-16, chancellor George Osborne has announced in his Autumn Statement today.

Like many of our cities, the government’s policies on property and construction contain a mishmash of approaches and styles. Colin Marrs names this policy world’s up-and-coming neighbourhoods – and its troubled estates

The PM used to talk a lot about the Big Society, but it was rarely clear exactly what he meant. Joshua Chambers meets Helen Stephenson, who’s been charged with turning his vague aspirations into tangible work programmes

Permanent secretaries’ tenure is too short and the high turnover is sometimes to blame when “things go wrong”, according to former cabinet secretary Lord Butler, who also warned that civil servants “aren’t encouraged to speak truth to power”.

Three-quarters of former secretaries of state surveyed by Civil Service World support the calls for a commission to consider how the civil service should develop and reform.

As the head of the Office for Fair Access, Professor Les Ebdon is in charge of ensuring universities open their doors to a broader range of applicants. Joshua Chambers meets a surprisingly controversial public servant

The MoD’s procurement reform offensive has suffered a heavy defeat. John Louth considers the prospects of a successful counter-attack

But if the Treasury gives way, civil servants could do the job.

One of the two remaining consortia bidding to run the Ministry of Defence agency Defence Equipment & Support has pulled out of the competition, leaving chief of defence materiel Bernard Gray’s plans for a ‘Government-Owned, Contractor-Operated’ organisation in disarray.

The Home Affairs select committee is today calling on the home secretary to rethink her decision to ban khat – a plant which has a stimulant effect when chewed – and warns that the decision has “not been taken on the basis of evidence or consultation”.

The government should send more civil servants to the European Commission (EC) as part of their regular career paths, chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has said.

A former special schools headteacher explains how child protection rules swing from pole to pole, creating confusion all round

Stephan Shakespeare, author of a government report on the better use of public sector information, has supported calls to amend the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act to guarantee the future of the open data agenda.

Prime minister David Cameron has called on civil servants to “talk truth to power and tell it like it is” in order to improve policy.