22 October 2004
There will be no more room in Whitehall for tension between generalists and specialists, Cabinet secretary Sir Andrew Turnbull warned this week.
Instead, mandarins hoping to climb the career ladder to the senior civil service will be expected to display a wide range of skills, including frontline delivery, management experience, financial acumen and an ability to communicate and manage people.
The move is part of a concerted effort by Turnbull to reposition the role of civil servants as 'professional managers'. The key, said one Cabinet Office source, 'is that we attract and recruit from a broad base of people with wide-ranging experience'.
Turnbull is hopeful that the changes will make Whitehall more attractive to outsiders, who would be more open to the new professional categories of policy expert, professional manager and corporate services.
Launching the Professional Skills in Government programme, Turnbull said the changes would ensure that Whitehall became more capable of implementing programmes, rather than just devising them.
At a meeting of 200 senior civil servants this week, he said it was crucial that people 'can reach the most senior positions in a department through a variety of routes: and so that the best talent we recruit is made available to all disciplines'.
Removing the division between generalists and specialists would make the civil service more welcoming to those whose view from the outside is of a bunch of outdated Sir Humphreys.
Turnbull said: 'We want to get rid of the image of mandarins and bureaucrats… so that people will want to come and work for us'.
PFoct2004
