There has been a lot of froth and bubble in the national press about the civil service over the last couple of weeks.
For the record, most of the civil servants I know work hard. They believe in public service, and made their career choices from a sense of vocation. They care about our democracy and think that an impartial, politically independent and meritocratic civil service is an important part of it. They believe in our values – honesty, impartiality, objectivity and integrity – and strive to live up to them. They also think that the country faces real challenges at the moment, and that the civil service has a crucial role to play in helping ensure they are dealt with as effectively as possible. And they would like to be respected and valued for the work they do.
So some of the sillier stereotypes paraded in the national newspapers tend to annoy civil servants. That’s partly because they don’t recognise them, and they are not corroborated by serious analysis. International assessment of the quality of governance across countries, for example by the World Bank, sees the UK rated highly. One league table produced in 2010 by [Brookings Institution senior fellow] Daniel Kaufmann and others ranks the UK above Germany, the US, France and Japan. In his first annual report Lord Browne, the government’s lead non-executive director, recently reported that “non-executives arriving in Whitehall have found that the calibre of civil servants is generally very high, and that they are committed to improving public services”.
But the other reason why the silly stereotypes frustrate people is that they distract attention from the real issues we need to grapple with to improve the civil service and enable us to do our jobs better; the real issues that are being developed in the civil service reform plan which Bob Kerslake and Jeremy Heywood set in train on their appointment .
We know lots of things have to change. We sometimes think we’re not as good as we need to be at managing change. There is something in that, but it’s also worth remembering that we regularly handle seamlessly the transfer of power from one government to another, which involves much greater change than many other organisations ever face.
There are three big drivers of change we face right now. First, there are things we know we have never been good enough at which we would want to address even if everything else was static. Our commercial skills, project management and performance management are sometimes excellent, but too often far from it. We have always been better at dealing with issues within the control of a single department than those requiring collaboration across the system. And because we are the custodians of proper process, we sometimes over-do the process at the expense of the outcome.
Second, the economic challenges the UK faces, like those of most other developed countries, are currently unusually severe. The economy is 10 per cent smaller than pre-financial crisis projections had envisaged it would be by 2012. The recovery is slow and, although the government’s deficit reduction plans are on track – for which, incidentally, civil servants who collect revenue and manage expenditure deserve part of the credit – further difficult decisions seem likely to be needed over the years ahead. Ministers will have to make the choices, but they will look to civil servants to help identify, analyse and assess the feasibility of the options – and then to implement successfully many of the resulting decisions.
Third, there are other changes in our society and the wider world to which we need to adapt: life now is faster, less hierarchical, more diverse. People want their public services to be more joined up and more convenient. We have great examples we can build on. I recently traded in my old paper driving licence for a new photographic one. I did the whole thing on-line, did not have to send in a photo because the service was able to access one used previously for a passport renewal, and the product arrived in the post within three days. It was much less faff, and offered a more efficient service, than some some interactions with my bank.
Some of the change coming down the track will be painful and difficult, not least because it comes against the backdrop of years of pay restraint and pension changes. We need to face up to that, and leaders have a responsibility to engage staff and work through the issues with them. We did not cause the problems we now face – but we still have a key role in solving them.
The civil service has changed dramatically since I joined in the 1980s. I don’t know many people who in their hearts think it was better then than now. What was so great about Tippex and carbon paper, the prevailing technology of that era? Does anyone really regret the passing of the typing pool and the filing registry? Or the approach to talent management – which meant that at the end of my first year I was told that my potential had been assessed, but the result was too secret to tell me?
The civil service reform action plan, which is due to be published shortly, is a real opportunity. We have to deal with the set of challenges confronting us. Our track record over the last few years in handling the deficit reduction and all the change that has gone with it – through which, for example, the civil service delivered £3.75 billion in savings in property, procurement, IT and staffing – should give us confidence in our ability to meet the challenge. We have to counsel against change that would undermine our fundamental strengths and values. But we should not be distracted from focusing on how to make the civil service better in future than it is now. I for one am convinced that just as we have transformed ourselves in the past, we can do so again.
Mark Lowcock is the permanent secretary of the Department for International Development