The Covid Civil Servant
The man in Whitehall does not know best Having spent nearly half my career working as a civil servant delivering complex projects, on time and within budget, it is saddening to see the debacle that the Civil Service is making of what is now a crisis. There are various causes of the management failure, a number of which I will briefly expand on below. Lack of accountability and responsibilityThis has been a feature of the Civil Service for many years. The Senior Civil Service (SCS) are responsible for managing development of policy and its delivery. Whilst it is convenient for politicians to blame Ministers for failings, the real issues and causes of failure generally occur within the various teams. In a number of areas the problem is further complicated by the cross-departmental nature of much of the policy setting and delivery – further allowing Ministers and their SCS to spread the blame. This is exacerbated by the relationships between Ministerial Departments and the plethora of arms-length bodies (ALBs), who notionally report to a Minister, but in practice operate with a significant degree of autonomy within the policy framework set by the sponsoring department. If we add to that the regular changes to the machinery of Government, i.e. creation, merger and disestablishment of Ministries, ALBs, etc., there is plenty of potential ...