Civil Service reform: another Minister speaks

I’ll be honest. When I hear that a Government Minister has made a speech on Civil Service reform and modernisation, in my heart I expect not to like what they’ve got to say. More often than not, I don’t. There’s a tendency for politicians to see us bureaucrats as being an obstacle to change, a barrier between the world they want and where we are now. Accordingly, reform and modernisation are a shorthand for giving the Civil Service a bloody good kicking.

Don’t get me wrong. As a bloodied veteran of the public sector trenches, I would be the last to suggest that all is well. But, living the experience every day for more than thirty-seven years gives you a perspective that politicians seldom see. They’re, for obvious reasons, several steps removed from the reality of service delivery, the daily battle to achieve not the targets set necessarily, but to do your best and achieve something tangible that is for the public good.

So, John Glen’s recent speech to the Institute for Government, just ten weeks after he became the Minister for Civil Service Reform, was always going to grab my attention.

And, actually, it wasn’t a bad speech. Yes, he talked about reducing numbers - hardly novel, or a surprise for that matter - but there was a sense that he perhaps understands some of the changes that are needed. His speech revolved around three key themes -embedding technology, embracing simplicity, and enabling people’s potential. 

There can be no doubt that we need to use technology more effectively and I’ve seen much new technology introduced over the course of my career, some of it better than others. But AI is, according to Mr Glen, a potential game changer. Admittedly, for a dinosaur like myself, the impact is likely to be minor but, if it can make it easier for our customers (a word that I still vaguely struggle with in this context) to comply or to get what they need, then it can only be a good thing.

That might also allow for a smaller Civil Service and, whilst you never want to see jobs lost unduly, we will never be a group that attracts mass public support. If the public want fewer bureaucrats and administrators, that’s what they should get, so long as the potential consequences are broadly understood and accepted. Alternatively, it might free people up to do the jobs that currently aren’t done and might benefit from attention.

I’m slightly more cynical about “embracing simplicity”, in that much, if not all, of the complexity is the result of Government intervention, passing more laws. Now I’m not saying that Government shouldn’t be doing that, but the consequence of more complex legislation is that it becomes harder to administer. But, coming back to how technology can be our friend, enabling more and more people to get the information they need without the need for human intervention should be a good thing.

As for “enabling people’s potential”, there does appear to be a little wishful thinking going on. To suggest that sinews are being strained in order to make pay rates in certain key roles become competitive might imply that salaries have been too low for too long. And I cannot bring myself to believe that Ministers really want to make Civil Service salaries properly competitive, especially after everything that has been said by Government ministers in the recent past.

The rest of it was a bit “motherhood and apple pie”, talking about making it easier to get rid of poor performers and improving management skills. And there was the mandatory warning about staff working from home. I've already addressed this - it's about where people are most effective, and about management that addresses poor performance and has the right data to judge - but it's clear that the Government aren't going to let up on this.

Of course, the probability that Mr Glen is going to be around long enough to actually have any impact appears to be vanishingly small. I wonder what the Labour Party is thinking...

Time to push the "cut Civil Servants" button again, it seems...

I am a civil servant. Yes, I admit it, albeit perhaps not what some might expect. I serve the Government, whether or not I agree with its policies, because that is my function. I will deliver my designated role with as much enthusiasm and skill as I possess, as my job is to ensure compliance with the law of the land as far as is possible. I even argued in my younger days that, if Government wants to reduce the number of civil servants, it's not for us to argue - it's for the Government to justify what will probably happen next, i.e. a collapse of service quality or compliance function.

And, after many, many years doing so, I am quite cynical about what elected politicians say as opposed to what they actually do when push comes to shove.

So, if it is to be the case that the Government intends to save money by freezing the size of the Civil Service, you might not be surprised if I greet the announcement with a slightly jaundiced gaze. Not because I oppose the idea that we need to deliver public services more efficiently - we do, and should. The problem is, in the nicest possible way, politicians and their enthusiasm for new laws - to be seen to be doing something.

Passing legislation, any legislation, tends to require someone to implement it, or enforce it, or support the public or businesses to understand it. That someone is almost certainly going to be a public servant, i.e. someone like me. You can contract it out, but private sector organisations have to compete in the free market for qualified staff, something the public sector increasingly doesn't bother to do. That costs and, once you've built in a profit margin (and private companies are seldom altruistic enough to want to provide a service at a loss), you may find it to be more expensive, especially if demand is not quite what you expected. A public servant can be reassigned to other work, whereby a contracted-out service will expect to be paid on the basis of the contract, not necessarily actual demand.

And, if a contracted-out service fails, or the contractor decides to walk away, Government is the provider of last resort.

Compliance is important too. Passing laws and then not seeking to ensure compliance tends to mean that bad actors won't, tilting the playing field against those who do comply. In areas of tax, as opposed to spend, you might actually want to increase the number of staff tasked with addressing attacks on the system, which can run to billions of pounds in lost revenue. 

But there is an easy way to cut civil service numbers. Digitise services so that most people deal with the issues using computers or smartphones rather than through talking to people. And, most radically, stop passing new laws and use the existing ones more effectively, even simplifying legislation where possible. Now, some things that matter might slip through the net, things that politicians think are important, but that might be a price worth paying. And the public might not appreciate having to deal with a Chatbot or guidance written by technicians for technicians.

Alternatively, you could look at public servants as part of the cost of managing an efficient economy. So, employing a few more civil servants to process asylum claims as a quicker rate would almost certainly reduce the number of asylum seekers requiring accommodation by the State, and bring about a modest reduction in overall expenditure, for example.

Freezing civil servant numbers is a blunt tool, albeit an easy to understand one. And there is no harm in asking departments to consider whether they can do what they do with less people or, if they do cut posts, indicate what won't or can't be done. For, if a minister pulls a lever of power, expecting something to happen, they might be unpleasantly surprised to find that there's nobody at the other end to carry out their wishes.

So, if it's a headline they're after, the Government have probably got one. They'll have unsettled most of the Government Departments in the process, something which tends not to aid productivity, but then most people will remember the headline rather than the results...

Conservatives lack an understanding of the Civil Service - which is why they're fated to make the same mistakes over and over again

I have to admit that "Centre Write", the inhouse magazine of "Bright Blue", which describes itself as;

 the independent think tank and pressure group for liberal conservatism

is not my everyday read. Indeed, I probably wouldn't have gone out of my way to read it if I hadn't been referred to it by an article in that pageturner "Civil Service World". It just goes to show how the internet works really, luring you down a darker and darker path until, lurking in the forest, you encounter a Conservative.

I jest... a bit.

What drew my gaze was an article by Simone Finn, or Baroness Finn as I should correctly refer to her, who is Boris Johnson's Deputy Chief of Staff and, somewhat curiously, a Non-Executive Board Member at the Cabinet Office (that does feel like a conflict of interest, but...), in which she argues that reforming the civil service is vital for spreading opportunity.

In particular, my attention was drawn to this;

This means breaking up the current career ladder, welcoming people into the service not just for secondments but for periods of two years or more, so that the civil service can gain from people whose expertise is in, for example, renewable energy.

That rather makes me want to shout, "Miss, miss, I know the answer. You mean "Interchange"!". Because yes, we tried that more than twenty years ago - I remember it well.

I had just joined my Regional Personnel Team as the new Internal Recruitment Co-ordinator and there was talk of a new scheme to inject fresh blood in to the Civil Service, new ideas, radical new ways of doing things. And it was meant to be a two-way street, with civil servants being sent off to learn cutting edge stuff from the private sector. Indeed, it was said that taking part in the Interchange programme was going to be something that was expected of you if you were to become a mandarin. And, as somebody was needed to go to a seminar in Grantham (yes, it's all glamour), it was decided that the rookie Executive Officer could take on responsibility for it.

There were some problems. Persuading private sector experts to join the Civil Service for a period was made difficult by the drop in salary implied unless their employer was willing to fund the difference, and there was some suspicion that some of these experts were focused on trying to work out how our systems worked so as to advantage their employers. And, because politicians and the media had done a pretty effective job in denouncing civil servants for being dull-witted and wedded to vast tiers of bureaucracy, it was hard to persuade the private sector that providing opportunities to such apparently useless people was a good idea.

Interchange, not surprisingly perhaps, suffered a slow, lingering death.

And, to be honest, not that much has changed. The civil service has come under more attack from politicians and the media, not less, the pay gap has not so much grown as yawned, and it takes more than two years to embed meaningful change. Besides, if a civil servant is that good, they're more likely to be poached than trained.

Building a trusted, modern tax administration system... am I missing something?

 

Alright, I admit that how our taxation system is administered is perhaps not high on the agenda of many of you out there. But, perhaps because I am part of the current tax administration system, I take a closer interest in the topic. After all, shouldn't the organisation which raises £600 billion for public spending be of interest to anyone who cares about governance?

Five weeks ago, HM Treasury and HM Revenue & Customs published "Building a trusted, modern tax administration system", which outlines a path towards a major overhaul of how taxation is administered over the next decade with, as you might expect, a significant emphasis on digital transformation. Naturally, I support anything which makes the taxation system easier to navigate for customers of HMRC - less time spent managing your tax affairs means more time to run the business, make profits or spend time with your loved ones and other interests.

And, over the thirty-four years that I've worked for HMRC, I've seen some enormous changes in how the system works, indeed, when I joined in 1986, we were still issuing paper assessments which required mountains of carbon paper (look it up if you're so young that you don't remember it), and an army of clerical staff to shuffle paper, transport it and store it so it could be retrieved later. Filing ranges full of highly flammable paper, repositories and increasingly complex references, these were a part of everyday life. Now, I press a button, and a machine springs into life hundreds of miles away prints my letter and envelopes it so that I never see a piece of paper.

Technology is, inevitably, more efficient than people, more reliable, less likely to fall ill (although when it does...) and produces a consistency of outcome that is desirable in a system which is bound by a set of published rules.

In truth, the prospects of a world where businesses upload information directly into HMRC's computer systems holds little real fear for me. It is, it seems to me, an inevitable result of the opportunities that digital technology creates. Besides, I'll be gone within twelve years anyway...

However, I am troubled by one aspect of the report, or rather the aspect which is noticeable by its absence, i.e. the people who will deal with the public facing stuff - compliance, recovery, advice. There is no reference at all to the people who will manage the brave new world of HMRC.

You see, a trusted, modern tax administration system requires bright, motivated people to do the things that technology can't. A computer program can assess the relative risks generated by the entries in a tax return, but only a human can go out and test the explanations given by the customer, or judge what is missing. Only a human being can negotiate payment schedules, or determine whether or not a reference is correct or not where the answer is unclear, or variable.

Salaries in HMRC are increasingly uncompetitive, with clerical staff increasingly being caught up by the National Living Wage - that contact centre staff member you're asking about your tax repayment is increasingly likely to be being paid the same as they would be stacking shelves in Tesco - and technically trained tax inspectors are easily tempted by the remuneration levels paid to tax advisors in the private sector.

Ensuring a trusted, modern tax administration system does imply that you can trust the skills of the people who manage it at every level, and you can recruit and retain the calibre of staff you need only by providing a competitive package of pay and benefits. Otherwise, you risk having a system like that of the Wizard of Oz, impressive looking on the outside but, once you pull back the curtain, increasingly ramshackle underneath.

There is only one thing more expensive that good administration, and that's poor administration, and reliance on only one aspect of what should be a holistic package of reforms undermines even the best of intentions. But, in a world where civil servants often seem to be treated as mere production units rather than partners in reform, perhaps I shouldn't be all that surprised...

Dominic Cummings and me - merely a coincidence, your Honour...

It was entirely coincidental that, more than 3,500 miles apart, Dominic and I were both blogging about his suggestions about changing the way Government is done. Trust me, my typing speed isn’t really that quick, and my drafting far too cautious to allow me to have responded that quickly. But now I’ve had a chance to read his blog, and reflect upon its content a little, perhaps I ought to offer some thoughts.

Firstly, the sort of people he indicates that he’s looking for. Smart, “weird” people, he suggests. Bright, young, without any baggage. And in at least one sense, he’s absolutely right, of course. The Civil Service requires regular infusions of talent, people who can rise through the ranks quickly, and in due course be the leaders going forward. How you recruit them, and how you retain them, he’s rather less clear about.

He could tear up the existing pay scales, the merit-based recruitment systems that exist, and he might even be right to do so. Do the basic rules of supply and demand apply in the public sector? Should they, and if the answer is yes, no matter how qualified, is there a will to change things? Do Civil Service entrance processes actually test the right things, do they discourage talented individuals from under-represented groups, do they promote the best skill sets going forward? Are they actually reflective of current best practice? As a relatively junior official, I’m not privy to that sort of information, nor is there any reason why I should be.

The sort of people he feels are needed are, I think, the subject of broad agreement, although fashions are, how can I put it, just that, fashions. The long-term impacts of individual reforms are often never truly known because so little time is given to allow them to bed in, and the transition is often under-resourced. Perpetual revolution means instability and caution amongst those who might at any time become victims of said revolution.

And the problem with instability in one of the three legs of the structure of the unwritten constitutional settlement is that it risks destabilising the whole arrangement. Now, if what I read is to be believed, that’s what Dominic wants, at least in the short term. How the effects of change are managed, controlled and limited to the specific field of battle is something he may well have thought through, and one would hope that this was the case. But he is, as I said before, more restricted by a legislative framework than he was as a campaigner.

He’s also at the mercy of someone who needs to get re-elected, which can be an uncomfortable place to be, as Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill discovered. Does he really have carte blanche, or are there limits when push comes to shove?

The general response so far has been anger and ridicule. Anger that he proposes to tear up something that, in the minds of some, works pretty well as it is, and ridicule in terms of how he proposes to go about things.

I personally wouldn’t recommend either. Dominic doesn’t play by the conventional rules - he seems to think that many of them are absurd and protectionist. He also has a record of getting what he wants, and given Boris’s reputation for granting wide discretion to his advisors, there is no obvious reason to assume that he can’t get his way. And, just because he’s Dominic Cummings, that doesn’t mean that he’s necessarily wrong.

Dominic Cummings vs the Civil Service - fated to end badly?

You can’t deny that, in terms of winning, Dominic Cummings has so far been very effective. Yes, he has driven a coach and horses through many of the conventions in terms of behaviour, and his tactics come with their own long-term issues, but I suspect that he is of the view that, in the long-term, we’re all dead, so that isn’t important.

The thing about a campaign though is that once it’s over, you generally move on to the next thing, preferably something interesting, where the results are visible. Civil service reform is seldom like that, because unlike a campaign, delivery of government happens day after bloody day. It operates within a rule-based structure which can be limiting rather than liberating to those both within it and served by it. Indeed, what most people want is not something radical, but something effective.

So, if Dominic really wants to change the way the Civil Service functions, he needs to take a holistic view across not only the Civil Service but Government too, and that’s an “interesting” challenge. If he thinks that civil servants are, for the most part, useless, cautious and obstructive, then perhaps he needs to consider why that might be.

There are issues of supply and demand, in that salaries for senior civil servants (and some relatively junior ones) are increasingly out of line with their private sector counterparts, especially in terms of skills such as procurement, IT and tax compliance. Do you really believe that you going to get, and more importantly, keep, talent if it is so easily lured away by the promise of higher salaries elsewhere? The pension schemes have been devalued somewhat by recent government reform, and you can’t live off of a knighthood, even were you to be far enough up the food chain to get one.

Another issue is the quality of legislation that emerges from Parliament. The House of Commons has an increasingly poor record in terms of scrutiny of new proposals, and whilst the Lords is far better, relying on increasingly partisan administrations to accept credible ideas for improvement is a gamble at best, a pipe dream at worst. Civil servants work with what they’re given, especially on the frontline, and if what they’re given is endlessly tinkered with as foreseen glitches begin to pinch, application of government intent is jeopardised.

A good point has been made about stability, i.e. leaving senior managers in post long enough to see through changes. Many frontline staff grow weary of a new senior appointment arriving, forcing through major changes against sometimes reasoned objections only to disappear before the effects are known. By the same token, attempts at cultural change tend to fall foul of corporate inertia - “if we wait long enough, leader X will leave, to be replaced by leader Y who will be enthused by something else”.

It is being suggested that there will be a focus on cutting out perceived deadwood. Removing the supposed feckless and incompetent has been an aspiration of ministers for the more than three decades that I’ve been employed, and the tendency is to apply blunt tools such as picking on, say, the worst-performing 10% of staff. Such broad brush approaches ironically punished relatively well-performing offices, leaving badly run ones roughly unchanged, because of the challenge in selecting 10% out of a broader pool including different types of work, in different offices, with varying managerial standards.

The answer, it is suggested, is a system of ongoing examination. That’s interesting, because it increases the risk of three things - an increased lack of stability, an aversion to risk and a disincentive to recruitment - that run counter to what Dominic wants. If you stick your head above the parapet, will you survive the experience? If you’re looking over your shoulder all of the time, can you take in the horizon? And if your job is as much at risk in the public sector as it would be in the private sector, why not just take the money?

I suppose that I am, in bureaucrat terms, something of a conservative, in that I want things to work, I want there to be a proper balance between state and individual, and I want the state to be a force for good in people’s lives. Ironically, that might be seen as radical in some quarters, and even more ironically, many junior civil servants would certainly support the first and third elements of my wishlist (the second is a bit esoteric, I accept).

So, we’ll see what Dominic and his friends have in mind for the bureaucracy. One can only hope that he can grasp the difference between resistance to change and genuine critique and alternative perspective. My door is always open though...