Conservative ministers must end civil service blame game – thinktank

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jun/10/conservative-ministers-civil-service-blame-game

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An exodus of senior civil servants will gather pace unless Conservative ministers end what has been described as a "blame game", the leading Whitehall thinktank the Institute for Government has warned.

The Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, and the head of the civil service, Sir Bob Kerslake, are due to publish a civil service reform plan later this month. It is likely to propose some outsourcing of policy, greater freedom to dismiss failing civil servants, and new benchmarks to measure performance. Kerslake also wants the civil service to be more open and less hierarchical. The report is likely to argue that civil servants need to develop new skills including procurement and purchasing.

Maude and Kerslake have been handed a difficult backdrop for the reform programme by a series of briefings by Steve Hilton, David Cameron's outgoing director of strategy and a fervent opponent of big government.

Hilton, in a scorched-earth policy ahead of his departure to California, used briefings to vent his fury at what he views as Whitehall's lazy aversion to change and claimed its task could be done by 4,000 civil servants based in Somerset House, the elegant Thames-side building that was once the Inland Revenue's home.

The Institute for Government paper warns that such dramatic attacks must end. It suggests instead that high-quality civil servants, wrestling with 20% spending cuts, need a reason to stay on and says if the reform plan contains a list of random actions without a compelling vision, the brain drain will continue: "Talented civil servants need a compelling reason to stay on and continue to implement change under the increasing pressure to make savings. Reform must be about more than just saving money. How will the civil servant in and outside of Whitehall be supported and why should they stay on? The reform plan must answer these vital questions."

It also warns: "This is a pivotal moment for the future of the civil service – despite a lot of pain over the past two years, the service is only halfway through its ambitious cuts programme, and reform is most definitely needed because it is going to get even tougher. The plan must address how Whitehall minus 20% will work and be successful."

The institute contends: "There is no more money to be saved from the back office – that tap has run dry. Such challenges to find savings will require a new way of working and different skills in Whitehall so the reform plan will need to spell out what the civil service is for and how they will work, not just those in London, but in the jobcentres, tax offices and at the borders too."

It says cross-departmental preparations should already be under way for next year's spending review, suggesting that "civil servants must be given permission and encouragement from the top to work across the department silos to find new savings now and not wait for the Treasury to tell them to start looking. If the next spending round is anything like the last, it will simply not work."

If this planning does not happen now, "the civil service will end up in the worse possible place of having to make hasty last-minute cuts to programmes and services during the short, bilateral phase of the spending review itself".

Whitehall at present acknowledges its own shortcomings, the report claims. "Departments lack good systems for judging continuous improvement in value for money, making it difficult to hold senior leaders to account in this way. A recurring issue raised across the institute's work has been the degree to which the civil service is unable systematically to produce management information linking what it spends to where it generates value."

It suggests the action plans should allow the contracting out of some policy. "Opening up the process to outsiders can be a good thing – civil servants must be prepared to be challenged by others on their plans and be open to new ideas, and ministers must be able to engage earlier in the process. Permanent secretaries must play their part too, and challenge ministers when they see policy may not work."