Civil servants are often blamed for problems that stem from unworkable policies. Perhaps it’s time to rethink relationships between politicians and officials
Much work is taking place in Whitehall to improve implementation capabilities. More is planned, with some debate in the run-up to next year’s election about whether faster and deeper civil service reform is needed.
But it’s also important to ask whether government policy decisions could be better, with a greater eye on their ‘implementability’ – to avoid the risk that civil servants are asked to deliver the undeliverable.
The highest profile here over the years has been reserved for big information and communications technology projects from Universal Credit or e-borders at present to Connecting for Health in recent history.
By any standards, many projects are challenging because of six key factors:
- scale – some UK public service is large – for example, the NHS is one of the biggest services in the world, and it is dependent on ICT for modernisation;
- user requirements are complex – these are not necessarily driven by operational considerations when the government makes frequent and complex policy changes that have considerable impact on systems;
- security considerations are material – national security and avoiding external fraudsters means that the supply and vetting of contractors requires a costly and time-consuming rigour;
- data quality is often appalling – because of the tempo of policy changes and consequent operational change over decades, the bread and butter is seldom good; contractors need time to understand the Heath Robinson design, which is costly to replicate by new contractors;
- ‘siloism’ is rife – the lack of a corporate culture means systems are designed that are not cognizant of other synergies or opportunities within the same department or across government departments, which leads to sub-optimal value for money for government or public services as a whole; and
- lengthy delivery – given the above complexities and constraints, it can take so long to implement systems that the original business case and technology strategy may be outdated by the latter stages of implementation. However, ‘pulling the plug’ and writing off costs is often politically sensitive. But soldiering on can mean even greater resource growth and asset impairment.
The Major Projects Authority is adding value to many big programmes through its assurance, expertise and toolkits, and the Cabinet Office is capping government ICT contracts at £100m to avoid monolithic deals wherever possible.
This announcement earlier in the year fits into the common narrative of an oligopolistic market for large government ICT contracts and clients’ lack of rigour in letting, managing and enforcing them.
As such, the announcement has been sensible. But we must also equip public services managers to act more assuredly with contractors. Public managers often let bigger contracts with more complex risk, reward and financing vehicles than they might in the private sector, so the job at hand is to show confidence in the competency of public management while importing some private sector expertise.
There are two points here: first, we need to move away from a simple ‘public sector bad/private sector good’ view and invest in public management capabilities, innovation and cultural transformation.
Travelling around the UK, I have observed a real difference with the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland seeming to value public sector competencies more genuinely. Secondly, in my experience of the civil service, I came across many gifted managers with delivery skills or potential, but few would make the senior civil service, which still has the mindset of giving operational experience to generalists rather than giving equal weight to promoting senior operational careers.
My final point, however, is about whether it is time to change the constitutional framework of relationships to drive better policy-making, which would give implementation a better chance of success.
Some of this is pretty unthinkable for many, but let’s have the debate that a local authority chief executive, for example, serves all parties by means of open and published advice, so decisions are carefully considered on all the options with an eye on minimal cost.
But for permanent secretaries and chief execs in central government, advice – even as accounting officers – is privileged, which has perhaps aided and abetted poor decision-making over the years. The Blunders of our Governments by Anthony King and Ivor Crewe is always worth a read as a stark reminder of this.
Many politicians want to change the traditional Northcote Trevelyan settlement, whereby civil servants are recruited on merit, and appoint their own top officials.
If this happens after the next election, perhaps as a quid pro quo, the incoming government could enshrine the independent finance advice and transparent scoring of proposals that we see in some systems overseas.
Rob Whiteman is the chief executive of CIPFA. He will be speaking at the institute’s annual conference in London, 1–3 July 2014
This opinion piece was first published in the July/August edition of Public Finance magazine
