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Atam Verdi, Director at the property regeneration consultancy, gives and outside perspective of the civil service

Labour’s Digital Government Review could recommend a regional model for a local version of the Government Digital Service, shadow Cabinet Office Chi Onwurah has hinted.

Since becoming the government’s executive director of digital in 2011, Mike Bracken has transformed Whitehall’s approach to IT and web services. He’s done so, he tells CSW, by disrupting the status quo to implant a revolutionary new agenda

A monthly interview with people who've crossed organisational and sectoral boundaries to join a new working world.

Perspectives from outside the civil service

"I trailblazed freedom of information on Whitehall"

 

On 27 March, Lucy Powell MP asked 21 departments to explain: what proportion of civil servants, of each sex and grade, work part-time.

Malcolm Stirling, Business Consultant, Monster Worldwide Ltd

The Veterinary Medicines Directorate saw its people survey score for management visibility rise by 12 points in a year. Its programme strategy manager David Lewsey explains how he did it

Too many organisational cultures push clever people into doing daft things. The solutions start at the top.

Sir David Nicholson was appointed chief executive of the NHS in 2006. He retained his position after the coalition came to power and pursued a set of reforms so big, he said, that you could probably see them from space.

Like Robert the Bruce’s persistent spider, the people trying to reform the way the Ministry of Defence buys and manages equipment keep returning to the fray. Colin Marrs reports

An official responsible for an IT contracting error which cost the Ministry of Defence (MoD) £70m is no longer working for the department, its permanent secretary Jon Thompson told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on 16 June​.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life thinks it knows how to halt the seemingly endless scandals about outsourcing. Report by Colin Marrs. Illustration by John Levers

Lord O’Donnell, former head of the civil service, has dismissed as “silly” suggestions that permanent secretaries should only serve the “priorities of the government of the day”, rather than balancing them against the long-term aims of their department.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has committed to spending up to £10bn on the government’s Help to Buy scheme without establishing whether it represents the most effective way of using taxpayers’ money, the Public Accounts Committee have said in a report published on 18 July.

The Committee for Standards in Public Life has called for new contractual and monitoring arrangements to ensure private providers meet the same ethical standards which apply to civil servants.

Civil service job cuts and hikes in employees’ pension contributions saved the government almost £4.7bn during 2013-14 – providing a third of its overall efficiency savings and showing a rise of £1.3bn on 2012-13, according to new figures.

The Civil Service Competency Framework should be updated to require all staff to have minimum skills in critical thinking, quantitative analysis and digital skills, according to think tank Policy Exchange.

Three top civil servants have written to Public Accounts Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge, strongly rejecting calls made by her committee for the centre of government to take a stronger lead.

 

Garden cities have long been a fertile idea in public policy. First planned over a century ago, they flowered in Hertfordshire in the ‘20s – and now this perennial concept is set to bear fruit once again. Colin Marrs reports