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Challenge must be encouraged, no matter what the project.

The UK has long had a strong space industry but, until recently, government support for it was small-scale and fragmented. David Parker, UK Space Agency chief executive, tells Joshua Chambers how things have changed.

The worst thing about this documentary was its almost complete lack of insight into its billed subject matter.

The health and business departments are behind a big push to help Britain’s life sciences sector realise its economic potential. Joshua Chambers examines the treatments given, and the progress of the patient so far.

Staff in job centres working on the Department for Work and Pensions’ flagship Universal Credit system are writing jobseekers’ personal information down on paper because their IT systems are so “clunky and cumbersome”, Dame Anne Begg (pictured), chair of the Commons’ Work and Pensions Committee, has told CSW.

In 2012-13 10.5% of central government expenditure, £4,577m, went to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), according to Cabinet Office figures released last week – up from 6.5% in 2009-10.

The annual report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner reveals that law enforcement agencies substantially increased the amount of data they gathered in 2012, compared with the previous year. 

Civil servants believe their employers failed to manage talent effectively during their redundancy programmes, a CSW survey has found, with the result that many talented and highly-skilled individuals left the civil service whilst poor performers were allowed to remain.

In a rare public appearance at Civil Service Live earlier this month a GCHQ official warned civil servants about IT security. Joshua Chambers listened in

How do you get civil servants to try new things? Joshua Chambers meets Paul Maltby, a man who thinks he knows the answer.

Sir Andrew Witty, lead non-executive director of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), has announced that he will step down from his government role in December.

Jane Platt is chief executive of NS&I, Britain’s venerable state-owned savings bank. She talks to Joshua Chambers about keeping rival financial institutions sweet, diversity in the City, and the future for arm’s-length bodies.

The Home Office has outsourced its payments processing to NS&I, the state-owned savings bank, it was announced earlier this month.

If Peter Hennessy didn’t exist, you probably wouldn’t be reading this – and not just because this is a review of one of his books. For without Hennessy, the civil service as an institution might never have felt comfortable with press coverage, even within a newspaper dedicated to serving civil servants.

The civil service has been too slow to improve the working conditions of staff, civil service leaders have admitted. Speaking at Civil Service Live last week, they pledged that much more will be achieved over the next year.

After less than two years leading the coalition’s civil service efficiency drive, Ian Watmore has quit for a life as a vicar’s husband. Giving his press officers the slip, he explains to Joshua Chambers what he’s learned in the job

Civil service project leaders – ‘Senior Responsible Owners’ (SROs) – are to be held directly accountable to parliamentary select committees, Sir Bob Kerslake announced today.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude will today announce that secretaries of  state are to be allowed to expand their private offices, mainly by appointing  policy advisers on short-term civil service contracts. He is also expected to  say that he does not intend to push for further changes to the permanent secretary appointments process this year.

The government will do more to improve the workplace conditions of civil servants over the next year, cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood pledged this week at Civil Service Live.

As chief executive of the Shareholder Executive, Mark Russell is responsible for overseeing the running of more than 20 government-owned businesses. Joshua Chambers meets him to discuss transparency, pay and privatisation

Ordnance Survey and the Met Office should do more to support the open data agenda, according to Mark Russell, chief executive of the Shareholder Executive.

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 government is risking an “exodus” of talent because of its decision to squeeze civil service pay, pensions and benefits, according to a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) 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.

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.

Former culture secretary Dame Tessa Jowell has attacked as “spiteful” an anonymous press briefing against Jonathan Stephens, permanent secretary of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), and called on the culture secretary to disavow it.

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is not intended to continue working in its current form forever and will eventually step back from working on department's transaction services, Liam Maxwell, the government’s chief technology officer, has told Civil Service World.

As government’s chief technology officer, Liam Maxwell is responsible for shaking up Whitehall’s IT operations in the pursuit of cost and time savings. Joshua Chambers meets the radical reformer in conservative cloth

Just along from the Houses of Parliament there used to stand an old slum, described in The Times as “a reproach to Westminster”. 

A promising model requires evidence and caution.

The new chief executive of the Food Standards Agency, Catherine Brown, tells Joshua Chambers about the pressure her organisation faced when, just after she joined, traces of horsemeat were found in food products.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) should retain its current structure because it responded swiftly and retained public trust after the discovery in January that horsemeat was appearing in frozen food products sold as beef, the organisation’s chief executive, Catherine Brown, has told Civil Service World.

The Cabinet Office has established a new structure, chaired by cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, to improve government’s long term planning, Civil Service World can reveal.

Government must plan ahead for long-term social, economic and environmental change, so it employs ‘horizon scanners’ to predict likely scenarios. Joshua Chambers looks at what the future holds for this unusual profession.

Companies run by two lead departmental non-executive directors (Neds) have been publicly accused of serious wrongdoing.

People are using their mobile phones and tablet computers for a fast-growing range of tasks, and service providers must keep up. Joshua Chambers reports on how digital by default has morphed into mobile first