15 December 2006
Cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell and a senior adviser to the prime minister this week urged Whitehall to focus on a four-pronged plan to improve public services amid further evidence that departments lack delivery capabilities.
O'Donnell and Ian Watmore, head of the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit, want mandarins to accelerate Whitehall's shift away from an over-reliance on targets towards a model that also assesses an organisation's capability, consults with the public effectively and improves the contestability of services.
'The big shift for us is to move to a public service reform model where we're not just trying to deliver on the back of pressure from targets. We must focus on capability, connect with the users of services… and improve contestability and market shaping,' Watmore told Public Finance.
O'Donnell and Watmore were speaking after they published the second wave of Departmental Capability Reviews, Whitehall's forward-looking inspection programme, on December 13.
The DCRs, overseen by the PMDU, revealed that the departments for Communities and Local Government, Trade and Industry and the Cabinet Office could encounter future problems in delivering services.
The findings of the first wave of DCRs, last July, highlighted even more serious problems at Education and Skills, Constitutional Affairs, Work and Pensions and the Home Office.
'It has emerged through all of these [DCRs] that we are not strong at delivery,' O'Donnell acknowledged.
Both he and Watmore have long been aware of the main reason – the civil service's traditional focus on policy formulation. But O'Donnell stressed that improvement required a long-term 'culture change' boosted by his ongoing recruitment of expertise from the private and wider public sectors.
Across the three DCRs published this week, not one department achieved the highest possible rating for any of their ten assessments – which also looked at leadership and strategy functions.
However, none scored the lowest possible rating either. One department, Trade and Industry, even managed to buck the trend and was assessed as 'well placed' in two out of three delivery functions.
The picture for leadership and strategy was healthier, with the three departments considered 'well placed' or average in 17 out of 21 assessments.
Guy Lodge, civil service expert at the Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank, said that O'Donnell must consider more fundamental reform.
'The capability reviews expose significant weaknesses with the way Whitehall works and help explain why public services remain only partially transformed,' he told PF.
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