Tag: civil service cuts

Stra’tegy (n) art of war: art of planning

Every so often I agree with something  in the Daily Telegraph.  It happened again today.  I had to mark it somehow.

In the wake of a strategic defence review  which has given us new aircraft carriers but no aircraft to launch from them, Philip Johnston has identified a lack of capacity to think strategically as a major failing of British government.   The Public Admin Select Committee has come to the same conclusion: “We have all but lost the capacity to think strategically,” it said yesterday. “We have simply fallen out of the habit, and have lost the culture of strategy making.”

Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin was on the Today programme yesterday making the same point “We seem to be operating under the imperative of deficit reduction, there’s very little in what is being done now that really reflects deep and sustained analysis of what kind of country we want to be in ten or twenty years time. “

Hang on a minute while I climb on my high horse…

I had to smile when Jenkin said that a strategy “isn’t a document the government publishes and then sticks on a shelf” – this is, of course,  exactly what a strategy is in many  departments.  When I was there, there was an almost mystical belief that the  act of publishing a strategy  absolved everyone from the burden of delivering it.  I agreed with much of what Jenkin had to say, though – and have said quite a lot of it here in the past.  Dangerous short-termism?  Check.   Cuts taking precedence over serious policy review?  Why, yes.  Lack of effective cross-departmental working in government? Yup,  although the structures of government make that hard and things are getting better.

Jenkin was concerned that the strategic thinking module in the civil service training programme has been shrunk to one week.  I’d argue that that hardly matters if we continue to  cut the service to the bone  – more short-term thinking.  Oh, and one way of getting people to think strategically is to fund higher education  so that  subjects which teach people how to think  (not just  how to make money) survive.  We need far more historians and Classicists in government!  At least one of the Telegraph’s commenters seems to agree – almost.  “What’s lacking in modern Britain IMHO is a professional, well-trained and remunerated civil service formulating long-term options” he said, adding  ” and selling them to the government of the day” .  Well, it is the  Telegraph.

On the outside looking in…

… at the people on the inside looking out.

I’ve been hearing a lot from friends still inside the civil service recently.  They generally echo the Observer’s  secret diarist who noted a slump in morale and a Wacky Races -style race for the exits in his piece on Sunday.  Those who can (the able ones,  the ones with a good shot of getting a job elsewhere – the ones you wouldn’t want to lose) are moving hell and high water to get a job on the outside before the real unpleasantness starts and the competition becomes  more intense.  They are astonished by the speed and the scale of the policy changes that are being introduced and the cavalier way that they are being announced.

There are lots of reasons why civil servants might be feeling bruised – a pay freeze, cuts to redundancy packages and pension entitlements, job losses reckoned in the hundreds of thousands, being asked to impose big cuts on programmes they have worked for years on and often care passionately about.  No wonder that no-one wants to stick around.  The timing’s terrible though.  A strong civil service is vital if proposed  changes in health, education,  the criminal justice system, the administration of benefits and all the rest are going to be introduced effectively.

Let’s hope the Observer’s Man from the Ministry is wrong when he says:   A brain drain has begun and our brightest graduates have got the message that this is not a good place to be. The implications will not be felt for some time, but the results will be devastating to our society and our economy.

This also, of course, represents a challenge for the internal (and external) comms and HR functions of government departments.  Managing change on this scale while keeping all the regular plates spinning  is a highly skilled job.  I wonder if they’re going to be strengthening those teams  to help them do it?  Oh yeah, I forgot.