News

The number of civil servants taking courses with the government's new training provider, Civil Service Learning (CSL), has increased from 40,000 to 400,000 in the past year, it was revealed today.

Benjamin Franklin once spoke of the perils of sacrificing precious liberty for a little temporary security. His words have a powerful resonance following the saga of state surveillance exposed in recent weeks.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) officials believe the department will be criticised by Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into the Iraq War over the poor state of its record-keeping, according to its 2012-13 departmental improvement plan published last month.

The Land Registry is making a data set that previously was paid-for available for free, as part of its open data programme, it has been announced today.

The delivery of “crucial” infrastructure projects is to be coordinated by "commercial experts" - not civil servants - Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury announced today, when setting out  the government’s £100bn infrastructure plan.

Bringing the UK Border Agency back under Home Office jurisdiction has involved more than cosmetic changes, the department’s permanent secretary has insisted.

CSW sets out the Spending Review’s main implications for each department below, covering the changes in their resource and capital DEL, their administration budgets, and explaining the main policy and operational challenges facing civil servants.

• A new unit has been set up in the Treasury to represent the public sector on the boards of Private Finance 2 (PF2) projects.

Jonathan Stephens, permanent secretary at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, who’s due to leave the department at the end of July, was awarded a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath for public service in the Queen’s birthday honours list earlier this month.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL), which monitors the conduct of MPs and ministers, has had its budget slashed by £104,000 – from £504,000 in 2012-13, to £400,000 in 2013-14 – and its secretariat and members’ numbers cut.

Communications spending by government has been cut by £47m in 2013-14, the new annual communications plan reveals. The proposed budget is £237m, compared to just under £285m in 2012-13. In 2009-10, it was £532m.

The government must move faster in developing policy measures to help meet its greenhouse gas emission targets, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has warned in a report published today.

The Troubled Families scheme run by the Department for Communities and Local Government will be given an additional £200m for 2015-16 in the Spending Review, the DCLG announced last week.

The coalition’s Green Investment Bank has been tasked with boosting private investment in the green economy – a high-potential sector constrained by limited finance. Winnie Agbonlahor meets chief executive Shaun Kingsbury.

Outgunned on salaries by the private sector, the civil service often struggles to recruit and retain world-class talent. Stuart Watson attends a CSW round table on how to bring top employees into Whitehall – and keep them there.

Battered departmental administration budgets received a further pounding in today’s 2015-16 spending round, with the Home Office (HO), Cabinet Office (CO) and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) seeing punishing settlements that will accelerate civil service cuts as we approach the end of the Parliament.

So much has been said about Iraq in the 10 years since war was declared that it feels as if there’s nothing this new documentary from the BBC could possibly tell us. But its sober re-examination of the lead-up to the invasion and the subsequent attempt to rebuild the Iraqi state astonishes with the depth of its access, and in its detail rescues the Iraq War from the political and cultural mythos.

I like a restaurant to be lively, but I want it to run efficiently.  And when I visited the Beehive pub-restaurant it was brightly lit, welcoming, and packed with cheery drinkers and diners – first box ticked. Unfortunately, in contrast the waiting staff were rather dim, slightly off-putting and a little vacant, leaving my efficiency box disappointingly empty.

Permanent secretaries should set “clear targets for advancing diversity in their departments”, head of the civil service Sir Bob Kerslake said in a House of Commons lecture on Monday. Part of being a stronger civil service, he said, “will be being more diverse at all levels, fully harnessing the talent available to us”.

Permanent secretaries should be appointed by the Prime Minister (PM) on fixed-term four-year contracts, according to a report commissioned by the Cabinet Office and published today.

The Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP’s) major projects portfolio contains both a higher proportion of projects where success is “highly likely” than any other department of state, and the highest proportion where successful delivery is “in doubt”, according to the Major Projects Authority’s (MPA) annual report.

The Treasury’s commercial secretary has called for much more continuity in project management, with managers kept in place overseeing projects “until the end”.

Very few jobs these days can be undertaken without any qualifications or tuition – but if you’re running the country, you may not even receive an induction. Joshua Chambers reports on the prospects for ministerial training.