A persistent friction for the civil service is around how to connect the dots across departmental, policy and operational boundaries. This is not just true of central government, but of engagement and learning from arm’s-length bodies, devolved administrations, local government and the NHS. Central government officials rarely move across these de facto silos, which can distance civil servants from citizen experience. And like all large, complex systems, the potential for mission drift is always present. The worst-case scenario: well-intentioned, hard-working officials and public servants do lots but deliver little.
Maintaining strategic focus is challenging. Government suffers from weapons of mass distraction: crises, media and pressure group noise, and the persistent lure of novelty. There is a constant risk of resources being poached or pared back, staff reallocated, or ministerial changes reframing priorities. Without a laser focus on whether policies are delivering, emphatic announcements can fall short of achieving their intended effect.
All this makes prime minister Keir Starmer’s focus on five missions (economic stability and growth, clean energy, NHS reform, safer streets, and improving education) a compelling frame for cross-government action. As Starmer wrote before the election: “Mission-driven government means raising our sights as a nation and focusing on ambitious, measurable, long-term objectives that provide a driving sense of purpose for the country. It means a new way of doing government that is more joined up, pushes power out to communities and harnesses new technology, all with one aim in mind – to put the country back in the service of working people.” This is his “commander’s intent” – a phrase military planners use to set out what success looks like, and to drive coherence in a dynamic environment. While politicians and civil servants aren’t usually intending to use lethal force, they do sometimes kill off policy initiatives.
Most governments try to focus on a few core goals. Frequently they get distracted from these by the sheer multitude of issues (and left-field crises) they are responsible for. The bureaucratic tools and approaches that can help are well rehearsed, even if experts argue over which have most purchase. From my perspective, three are key.
“Government suffers from weapons of mass distraction: crises, media noise, and the persistent lure of novelty”
The first is money. Shared money; shared goals. As one leader of a complex bureaucracy once told me, it’s challenging to direct from the centre in an environment that is not “command and control”. Think of the parts of your organisation as cats, they said. You can’t tell cats what to do – but you can move their food. Shared funding fosters shared effort. One good example of this in British public policy was the introduction of shared conflict funds between the FCO (as was), the MoD and DfID (as was). Pooled programme funding outside an individual departmental envelope not only forced DGs and directors to work collaboratively, but it also brought together interdepartmental teams at G7 and SEO level – leading to better information-sharing and more coherent spend.
The second is (properly) excellent performance and input data. This needs to flow to the centre, independent of “editing rights” shaped by worries about how it makes an individual minister or department look. Such data does not need to be secretive. Working off a single version of the truth is additive to good policy delivery.
The third is consistently fostering challenge, and red-teaming. Government spends large amounts on research; stakeholders fill meeting rooms up and down the country. But the rituals of funding research and engaging with stakeholders can become tame. Research isn’t always digested by strategic decision-makers (both ministers and very senior officials) while stakeholder engagement can be formulaic. This is where bringing properly diverse and challenging externals into the room can help far more than a passing meeting or two with the usual suspects. Add greater porosity in and out of central government and missions can benefit from properly interdisciplinary insight. Non-executive directors picked to challenge as well as sustain delivery are another plus, as is extensive policy experimentation (as Ravi Gurumurthy from the innovation agency Nesta has rightly proposed). A confident, excellent minister or permanent secretary should not be afraid of challenge.
A novel approach alone is not enough. The language of mission-led government is compelling: it communicates intent and focus. But, as Sue Gray knows, the “how” really matters. Cross-government working is about the mechanics as well as the design. For mission focus to become mission: possible, this will need close attention.
Alexander Evans is a professor in practice in public policy at the London School of Economics and former strategy director in the Cabinet Office