07 November 2008
The new head of the National School of Government combines a traditional civil service background with a reforming zeal. Paul Dicken went to meet him
When the pressure and politics of Whitehall get too much, civil servants are doubtless grateful if they have a good excuse to head to the leafy surrounds of Sunningdale Park for a day or two.
Set in attractive grounds in Ascot offering, among other activities, the chance to play giant chess, there is a definite sense of the field trip at the National School of Government headquarters.
Launched as the replacement to the Civil Service College in 2005, the school is increasingly concerned with teaching strategic leadership, alongside a range of courses covering areas from Professional Skills for Government to working with ministers and Parliament. Its overall aims are to help civil servants tackle 'key public sector challenges' by sharpening their skills and providing qualifications.
Sunningdale Park is where I meet the new principal and chief executive of the school, Rod Clark. It is also where he began his career in the civil service almost 25 years ago, training at the Civil Service College after entering the Fast Stream graduate recruitment programme in 1984 . But the civil service today is a very different animal, increasingly preoccupied with public service reform and the accompanying challenges of innovation and collaboration. The school has a central role to play in these reforms but has been accused of a lack of independence. Although it is a non-ministerial department in its own right, doubts have been raised over its ability to truly take the lead on public service improvement. Clark describes its HQ as a 'safe place' for civil servants to reflect, but the site – a mix of contemporary facilities alongside the grade II listed Northcote House – also represents the way Clark wants the school to be seen. 'There is something about having somewhere that stands for what you want the civil service to stand for and also a sense of tradition, but a really modern training environment,' he says. Clark first worked in social security a year after Margaret Thatcher was re-elected to her second term as prime minister, in a decade of centralisation and upheaval in the public sector. 'I don't think we talked very much about leadership back in those days,' Clark says. 'Now there is a more sophisticated view about how to engage people within the civil service and there is a much higher value put on professional skills and experience. 'What could be characterised as the “gifted amateur” has definitely receded.' Now living in London with his wife and 12-year-old daughter, Clark was born in Tanzania but moved when still a baby to Kent. Of his own education for public services, he says: 'I studied Classics at Oxford,' adding with a smile, 'so traditional mandarin training'. After university he joined the then Department of Health and Social Security and stayed there in various roles until it became the Department for Work and Pensions. He then left for a post at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, and played a major role in establishing the Ministry of Justice in 2007. 'I had a strategy function within the DCA, so partly it was a classic mergers and acquisitions kind of function,' he says. Clark is confident that he can make an impact in his current role, though not necessarily preparing civil servants for creating new departments every week. He talks up the role of the school in providing real knowledge of how Whitehall operates. 'Doing things in government is sometimes more complex than working in other environments because it tends to be more exposed publicly and with a more complex set of stakeholders. So developing some public service learning about how to tackle some of these problems is really valuable.' Critics of the school, however, say it should be more like the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in the US or the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, which offer independent and research-based approaches to learning. Professor Colin Talbot from the Herbert Simon Institute at Manchester University believes the school should have greater independence, and take in the wider public sector and the public management research community. He says: 'The problem with the National School of Government is that it is not a national school of the government; it should be jointly owned by Westminster, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Stormont and the Local Government Association. He also says the school might face competition from the independent Institute for Government, which recently appointed former permanent secretary Sir Michael Bichard as its director and is expected to be fully up and running next year. But Clark defends the academic side of the school's operation – a virtual academy known as the Sunningdale Institute. This is designed to link 'high-level thinking with practical advice'. He explains: 'Rather than building a great big building, it is a virtual grouping of leading academics from across the UK and indeed beyond. I think that's a good way of drawing on an academic community while also tying it into what we can deliver, the context within government itself.' The institute has more than 40 fellows, including Dr Elaine Kamarck from the Kennedy School and Christopher Hood, professor of government at Oxford University. Clark says the school partners with organisations such as Warwick University to deliver accredited qualifications. It also recognises the importance of involving ministers while being 'cautious of the risks of politicisation'. Despite his professional roots in Whitehall, Clark is comfortable with the language of reform, from leadership and innovation to devolution and cross-governmental working. 'The way we've developed our organisations aren't always conducive to bringing people together. They tend to define problems and areas of responsibility narrowly, which means that you're struggling within a narrow set of constraints.' He says cross-cutting Public Service Agreements and Local Area Agreements are developing Whitehall's sense of joined-up working, but there is potential for going further. He is keen to 'break down some of the barriers between the central civil service and the wider public sector', he adds. 'I think some of that is really understanding the world from the different sectors, having greater interchange and forming leadership coalitions that bring these groups together. 'We still have some things we are struggling with and we need to get better at. Those are very often to do with what can be described as some of the “wicked” problems that government now faces around behavioural change, climate, obesity… issues where the command and control model from a cockpit in Whitehall just no longer works.' Clark's own wealth of Whitehall experience stands him in good stead to meet these challenges, one of his former colleagues believes. Speaking shortly after Clark's appointment, the former head of communications at the school, Rob Reynolds, told Public Finance that the new principal's network and influence would 'help position the school in the minds' of senior civil service colleagues. 'Having a chief executive at director general level will raise the standing of the school,' he said. Clark himself believes the school has 'tremendous potential' for tackling the challenges faced by the civil service, not least in looking to Whitehall itself. 'Intellectually, civil servants have a huge capacity,' he insists. 'It's about creating the right environment.' In the brave new world of public sector reform and change, he comes ready for those challenges, with the reassuring belief that so do his colleagues. l
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