News

Central departments must communicate better with councils, the National Audit Office (NAO) has said in a report published today.

Senior civil servants’ career progression should be tied to their efforts to reform the civil service, the Institute for Government (IfG) has said in a report published this week.

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Ministers are poorly placed to ensure that their special advisers do not breach codes of conduct, the chair of the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) suggested yesterday.

Two government departments are preparing to publish “choice frameworks” enshrining people’s rights to make key decisions over the public services they receive, the official leading the ‘open public services’ agenda has told CSW.

The new set of business plans show that government departments completed 90 per cent of the “reform actions” planned for the 12 months to June 2012, according to the Cabinet Office. But changes to the plans’ format mean that in future the government will report less frequently on progress against deadlines, while some targets are to be sidelined in annexes to the business plans.

Since last year, the PM and DPM have been noisily pushing for the rapid implementation of coalition policies. Matt Ross meets Will Cavendish, whose job it is to chivvy departments into delivering on the government’s promises

Over half of all civil servants do not believe that their skills are being fully utilised, according to exclusive research conducted by CSW.

If only they’d do the same with elected police commissioners

Despite the rhetoric, government has failed to engage with the charity sector. Just look at the Work Programme, says Stephen Bubb

The Department of Health’s new information strategy sets out plans to standardise data collection in NHS bodies, and to share and use it more effectively. Colin Marrs examines a trailblazer for the open data agenda

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Three ground-breaking ‘carbon compacts’ have been signed, bringing together the spending power of departments and private businesses in a bid to push suppliers into cutting carbon emissions.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) failed to plan out the skills it will need in the long term before cutting its civilian and military workforces, according a report published by the Public Accounts Committee on Friday.

Cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood is “angry” at attacks on the civil service in the newspapers over the past month, and the prime minister and deputy prime minister share that anger, Heywood told the Public Administration Select Committee last week.

The papers have been full of frothy stories and silly stereotypes about the civil service, says Mark Lowcock. This risks distracting us from the real – and very important – challenge of adapting to the tasks at hand

The civil service should be more confident in its ability to deal with the challenges facing it, Department for International Development permanent secretary Mark Lowcock has said in an article for CSW.

Suppliers are interested in low-carbon goods and services, but doubts over demand limit investment. Becky Slack examines carbon compacts, which demonstrate that customers really are hungry for eco-friendly supplies