The role of the Civil Service is evolving. It has a deserved reputation for excellence in policymaking, but that must now be matched with excellence in the delivery of policy. With that in mind, the Coalition Government made a number of important changes to the way in which Whitehall departments operate. Secretaries of state now chair departmental boards, lead non-executive board members were appointed to each department from outside the Civil Service, and a more business-like approach to government was implemented. Non-executives have transformed the tone of departmental boards, bringing greater focus to problem solving, strategic planning and the implementation of policy. Outside the boards, they lead independent reviews and special projects, form audit and risk assurance committees and support the recruitment of senior leaders in the Civil Service. They have become advisers to, and critics of, ministers and civil servants, who value this new source of independent expertise. Enhanced departmental boards have become an established part of formal and informal governance in Whitehall.
As the Government’s lead non-executive board member, I have reported on progress so far in each of my annual reports. That progress is good, but incomplete. A reform programme of this magnitude takes time, and there is much more still to do. Here I want to set out four areas on which, from the perspective of the non-executives, government and Civil Service should focus over the year ahead and at the beginning of the next Parliament.
The first is the management of major projects and risk. Innovations like the Major Projects Authority and the Major Projects Leadership Academy have made important contributions to the professionalisation of project management, but the Civil Service has a long way to go before it becomes world-class in this area. The next important step is for departmental boards to take more responsibility for risk management. There should be explicit discussion of risk tolerance at board level to identify how much project risk a department is prepared to absorb, and large or particularly innovative projects should automatically go to the board for approval. This is not happening at present, which means that departments might be taking on risk without fully understanding its scale or implications. Non-executives can use their experience and expertise to help to judge risks inherent within projects and to act as an internal scrutiny panel for their department’s project portfolio. Some departments already make extensive use of this resource; all departments must now do so.
The second area of focus should be embedding functional leadership. In the Civil Service, heads of professional functions such as finance, project management and IT have not been full time positions and they have not traditionally spoken for the Civil Service as a whole. Reliable functional advice and activity enables management and boards to focus on the design and delivery of policy, in the knowledge that they can rely on heads of profession to supply and develop functional capabilities. The non-executives and I strongly support the Government’s move towards a more unified approach across a range of professional functions, but progress has been uneven, and IT in particular lags behind the development of other professional functions. The progress made in legal services, communications, HR and finance needs to be replicated across the board, so that governments of the future have the skills and capabilities needed to implement policy.
Human resources and talent management is of such critical importance to the delivery of government policy that non-executives have devoted significant attention to it, and it is the third area of focus which we have recommended. The effectiveness of talent management across the Civil Service varies significantly, and generally follows the amount of time available and invested by senior leaders to enact it. Permanent secretaries and directors-general should start by having a specific objective covering succession planning and talent management, and non-executives with talent management expertise should sit on the Senior Leadership Committee. World-class talent management requires that the right strategy, the right processes and the right culture are in place. The processes in the Civil Service are generally fit for purpose; the changes that are now needed are about behaviour and leadership.
Finally, we often fail to recognise that Secretaries of State are organisational leaders, which means that they should be provided with the support they need to lead effectively. That support should include the provision of time for them to discuss their approach to key strategic and delivery issues with board members, and providing them with training where necessary, particularly when it comes to the most effective ways to chair board meetings. As leaders of their departments, secretaries of state should also be allowed to devote sufficient time to managing the department’s project portfolio and to ensuring clarity in accountability for actions to be undertaken.
When the role and responsibilities of an organisation change as profoundly as they have in the Civil Service, so too must the skills and capabilities of those who work in it. Expertise from the private sector has a role to play not in telling the Civil Service what to do, but in advising it on how better to get things done. Non-executives in government have made a significant contribution in all areas of their remit, and can provide a valuable source of continuity and expertise during any transitional period following the election. With their experience in organisational change and transformation, they can also play a role in the ongoing discussions about Civil Service reform and the wholesale review which most people expect into the Civil Service’s capabilities, structures, processes and lines of accountability. That would be a valuable contribution indeed, and one which the non-executives stand ready to make.
This essay is part of a collection, How to run a country, to be published by the think tank Reform on Tuesday 9 September.