Author Profile

Jess Bowie breaks bread with the outspoken chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

Between advising the foreign secretary on crucial policy matters and overseeing a network of 13,600 staff – 9,000 of whom are overseas – arch-diplomat Sir Simon Fraser has been busy championing the diversity agenda across Whitehall. As he prepares to retire from the civil service, he sat down with Jess Bowie for a final interview

As Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude has overseen the biggest shake-up of the civil service in living memory – and earned a reputation as ‘a man trying to fight everyone in the pub at the same time’. It’s a description he’s proud to embrace, he tells Jess Bowie.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude tells CSW that performance management should move from a system where managers categorise set proportions of staff as performing well, acceptably and poorly to one where employees are individually ranked best to worst

With the defence budget becoming ever more contentious, the MoD’s permanent secretary Jon Thompson must continue to balance spending decisions with national security. It’s a tough job – but one he’s privileged to do, he tells Jess Bowie. Photos by Paul Heartfield

Outgoing DCLG perm sec and former head of the civil service Sir Bob Kerslake chews the fat with Jess Bowie

The civil service’s first chief executive has an ambitious agenda to define the next era of Whitehall reform – whatever those “damn politicians” might be planning. Jess Bowie meets him

They do things differently in Totnes, and they have a Member of Parliament who does it her way too. Jess Bowie travels to Devon to spend the day with Sarah Wollaston, the Tory MP and select committee chair who has no fear of speaking the truth to power. 

Shadow Cabinet Office minister Dianne Hayter thinks politicians should show more respect to civil servants who “work their socks off”. But, she tells Jess Bowie, there are still plenty of areas where Whitehall needs to up its game.

Once an anonymous Whitehall lawyer, Shami Chakrabarti is now the very public face of Britain’s civil liberties movement – and a woman who inspires admiration and outrage in equal measure. Jess Bowie meets her

The government says that boosting our high-tech industries is key to getting the country’s economy moving again. But do its deeds match its words? Jess Bowie examines Whitehall’s work to support innovative businesses.

Helping charities deliver public services can be challenging work, says one professional at the public-voluntary sector interface.

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By William Keegan; www.searchingfinance.com