Talk about reforming the machinery of government often sounds like a wine tasting. One expert raises the glass, considers the latest initiative and says: ‘An interesting effort, but not enough depth.’ Another detects ‘promising notes of delivery, rather spoiled by departmental silos’. A third finds ‘hints of innovation and accountability, but with a disappointingly familiar finish’.
Everyone knows the vocabulary. Everyone has heard the speeches. Whitehall must be more agile, more mission-focused, more digital, more accountable, more joined-up, more innovative, more outward-looking. The words change a little with each administration, but the ritual is repetitive. A new government arrives, a new review is launched, a new unit is created, a new organogram is drawn, a new acronym is born. Then the system absorbs the initiative, waits for ministerial attention to move elsewhere, and carries on much as before.
Since the Fulton Report of 1968, there have been 17 major attempts to reform government, and not one has made a lasting change
The problem is not that Britain lacks reviews. It is that the system is exquisitely designed to produce them, praise them, file them and forget them: since the Fulton Report of 1968, there have been 17 major attempts to reform government, and not one has made a lasting change. The failure cannot credibly be blamed on one party, one ideology, one prime minister or one awkward generation of officials. It is too consistent for that.
Why does the pattern keep recurring? In a new paper, Kakabadse argues that reform fails because that is what the system rewards. The political credit comes from announcing reform; the pain of implementation comes later. Ministers often leave before the consequences of their decisions become visible. Departmental budgets and accountability reinforce the silos every reform programme claims to dismantle. And, most damagingly, governments rarely measure whether the Civil Service is stronger or weaker after a reform programme than before it.
The result is a cycle of ‘announcement substitution’. The launch becomes the reform. A White Paper, a delivery board or a new central unit is treated as proof of action before anyone has assessed whether the new system has the capability to deliver. When reform stalls, the blame is too often placed on ‘resistance’ rather than on poor programme design, inadequate resources or impossible timetables. Then the initiative is wound down without independent evaluation, leaving the next government to start again from institutional memory loss.
Seen in that light, the review just announced by the Cabinet Secretary, into the organisation, performance and transformation of the Civil Service, is hugely encouraging. But it is also a test case. If it becomes another diagnosis of known problems, it will join the crowded shelf of well-intentioned failure. If it is tied to ministerial accountability, rapid implementation and a permanent machinery for driving change, it could mark the beginning of something different.
To have a lasting impact, the review will have to go further. Here are six ways to really transform the performance across the Civil Service, drawing on Bernard Jenkin’s new report for the Effective Governance Forum.
The Cabinet Secretary’s review must not just focus on structures. The hardest questions are not about organograms, reporting lines or the wording of the Civil Service Code. They are about culture – by which we mean attitudes and behaviour – and about whether Westminster is prepared to change the habits that have defeated previous reforms: the preference for announcement over implementation, the tendency to reward proximity to power over management ability, the reluctance to confront poor performance and to challenge Ministers appropriately, a negligible appetite for risk and collaboration, the resistance to learning from failure (and success) and the habit of moving difficult problems sideways rather than solving them.
We need a clear statement of what the programme of transformation will involve – and what it will mean in practical terms for ministers, civil servants and above all the electorate. And an explanation that the final result of this activity is not abstract, but crucial: better public services delivered at better value for money.
This has to be the foundational programme of government, otherwise it will fail just as the 17 previous attempts did. So it must be owned by the Prime Minister, Cabinet, ministers, permanent secretaries and senior officials together. It cannot be delegated to a junior minister, a Cabinet Office team or a clever secretariat. The final programme must be implemented by political and administrative leaders with absolute consistency for the lifetime of at least one Parliament. Ideally, for longer.
The terms of the review never really ask whether ministerial behaviour contributes to poor delivery. Yet ministers cannot be spectators in this process. They can set priorities, demand information, approve structures, make trade-offs and create the incentives under which officials operate. If ministers are rotated every few months, have no training, chase announcements and lose interest after launch (or sometimes lunch), no amount of internal Whitehall reform will work. State effectiveness must therefore include ministerial capability: longer tenure in major departments, serious preparation before office, training in leadership and management, and a clear expectation that appointments are made for competence rather than party management.
All this needs an effective implementation engine. Reviews diagnose; institutions deliver. Jenkin’s proposal for a State Effectiveness Council is therefore vital. Modelled on the National Security Council, chaired by the Prime Minister or Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and including ministers, senior officials and relevant non-executives, it would give reform the authority and continuity it has always lacked. It must not be another Whitehall talking shop. Rather, meeting fortnightly, it would be the board of government transformation: setting the programme, monitoring departments and public bodies, commissioning independent analysis and maintaining pressure over a rolling five-year plan within a ten-year strategy.
The importance of professional leadership and management cannot be overstated. Government departments are vast organisations, often responsible for budgets, workforces and operational risks larger than our biggest companies. Decades of fragmented pay, seniority-driven promotion, weak performance management, undervalued domain expertise and excessive churn are causes of poor state performance and would not be tolerated in any well-run organisation beyond Whitehall. A serious reform programme must therefore install leadership and management skills at the heart of the state, supported by a National School for Government and Public Service capable of training ministers, special advisers and officials to lead change in practice, all underpinned by a rigorous performance assessment.
Modern high-performing organisations are learning organisations. They make mistakes. But they learn from them – and quickly. And this is where so much goes wrong. Evaluation of policy is weak. There are few after-action reviews. Institutional memory and knowledge management are eroded by churn. Consider HS2 and you will be thinking of insufficient consultation, unrealistic implementation plans, lack of operational testing, legislation written without delivery expertise and endless ministerial changes of brief.
If the new review actually follows the EGF approach, it will prove different to its 17 precedents and actually deliver. This approach is designed to build a coalition, without which reform always fails, bringing together cross-party support, senior political ownership, civil service engagement and external management expertise.
Reform imposed on Whitehall as punishment has always failed. But a programme built with ministers, officials, non-executives and serious reformers from across parties has a chance of surviving long enough to change behaviour. Britain does not need another expert swirling the glass. It needs a team who can open the cellar and start pouring.
Read the report ‘Restoring public confidence in government: practical steps to restore state effectiveness’ by Sir Bernard Jenkin and Nada Kakabadse here.
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