Leatherhead Matters

One of the “strategic” changes implemented by New Labour has been to transform the role of the Civil Service from policy advisors & administrators to “Delivery Agents”. This transformation has been accompanied by the employment of low paid, mainly immigrant “civil servants and billions of pounds “invested” in I.T systems. There are now new public sector agencies galore and more added every week. But, have things got better as a consequence of these changes. Perhaps more to the point do the New Civil Service deliver noticeable improvements to British citizens?

Well judging by the sheer volume of negative feedback in the media & dinner party chat, the reputation of the New Civil Service (NCS) appears to have been irreparably damaged. After the party, comes the hangover and even civil servants (but, not New Labour politicians) are in the confessional. Take for example Civil Serf, a 33 year old civil servant in London who says:

 There are a lot of reasons why we are so poor at it – here are just a few:

(1) We don’t employ enough lawyers, accountants and other specialist staff which are all required to run ‘cottage-industries’ in collecting and reporting data to make it all work.

(2) We have appalling IT systems (I would swear my desk top is powered by a hamster setting fire to jaffa cakes…the incessant squeaking is driving me crazy!)

(3) We can’t penalise anyone for their poor performance because that’s seen as cruel, especially when we are contracting with charities and do-gooders that complain to journalists “Ooooo the DWP are reducing funding to a project supporting 50 unemployed disabled people in Cornwall…. how terrible” Tough choices are impossible…

(4) We can’t really prove a link between anything we are doing and any actual improvement in the state of the country because everything is so complex and can’t be measured (even if we had the accountants and the IT to do it.)

….In short we are all pointless and doomed

In other posts on her blog she also says that

There is the continuing presence of a very large number of low paid, low skilled workers EVERYWHERE in government.

The characteristics of this group are that they earn scandalously little (perhaps £12,000-£14,000 in London,) they are heavily unionised and they have no intention / ability of leaving serfdom so the rate of churn is very low. It sounds harsh (and this is an unashamed generalisation) but many of them are also under utilised .

We now have a hugely bloated public sector which is supposed to DELIVER (benefits, driving licences, passports,health,policing etc etc). However, delivery performance is abysmal because:

• There is a culture of ducking personal accountability at every level
• The focus of the NCS is to meet political targets….everything else is secondary to this primary role (keeping our personal data secure, efficiency, hospital cleanliness, integrity, social justice…..)
• Little progress has been made in adapting/transforming the skills & competencies of the NCS to it’s new delivery role.
• The NCS has focused on image at the expense of performance. An expensive public facade for the NCS has been constructed with thousands of glossy new web sites (many of them never visited), serial re-branding campaigns by expensive media consultants and a whole new language invented to convince the public that the NCS is trendy, savvy & consumer focused.
• The NCS has dismantled traditional lines of accountability. Unelected. politically appointed boards and the blurring of responsibilities have weakened democratic control and trust. The UK system of public administration, has taken over 100 years to evolve trust. That trust has been destroyed in just a decade.

Civil Serf is correct in her observation…….”in short we are all pointless & doomed”

UPDATE 9 March, 2008

Oh Dear! The Inquisition has started in Whitehall to track down the blogger Civil Serf. See press report HERE. The Civil Serf site has now been pulled down so that the links in the above article no longer work. The site gave us a unique insight to the dysfunctional world of New Labour’s version of Whitehall and culture of meetings versus action. We miss you already Civil Serf!

Update: 16 March, 2008

Civil Serf has been outed by a crack IT team in Whitehall read more HERE

The Muslim Community and the subject of “honour” crimes has been on the front pages over the last week. A high proportion of working Muslims are now employed in the Public Sector, particularly in the Department of Work & Pensions and Job Centres. This type of work provides easy access to our personal data.

The Centre for Social Cohesion’s recent report, Crimes of the Community, documented several instances when young women have fled honour-based violence in the family home, only to be tracked down via informal family networks, the police and civil servants often using national databases used by public sector workers. From p95 of the report:

Women have been tracked down through family members working in Job Centres accessing their National Insurance (NI) data which indicate where they are collecting their benefits. The Asha Project in Streatham recorded one case when an 18-year old Pakistani Muslim woman was almost abducted from a Job Centre as she went to sign-on after her relatives accessed confidential National Insurance information. Ila Patel, director of the Asha Project in South London, says: “she went to sign on, and the family was there, and abducted her. Luckily her boyfriend was there and immediately alerted the police.”

Our Government has literally spent billions on IT projects to develop huge central data bases in the NHS, Police, Job Centres, DWP  Justice & DVLC and now we are witnessing one of the unintended consequences of this approach. With lax access controls & minimal security there is growing abuse of our personal data by both Government and Public Sector employees.

Regardless of these worrying signs the Government seeks to press on with Identity Cards and other large, public sector, data base projects. They appear immune to systemic feedback from their failing centralisation approach.

A recent poll shows that only one in five of us believes the Government’s are dealing effectively with crime and violence, the lowest rate out of all 30 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The 43 police forces in England and Wales are wholly accountable to the Home Office.

The Governments big idea of the last 10 years has been (yes you guessed it) …..TARGETS. As with the NHS, centralisation of authority to Whitehall has led inexorably to tighter government control in the form of targets. The Home Secretary sets police budgets, intervenes in forces that are thought to be failing and can punish recalcitrant chief constables with not only the sack but the loss of their pension.

The Government all too often measures the wrong things - and tolerates dodgy data for political ends and media headlines. Targets work! they force organisations to focus on targets to the exclusion of other activities through a combination of reward & fear

But targeting conviction rates means that serious crime is ignored and minor crime elevated to the serious in order to satisfy the target regime.

As a result, police complain that they are criminalising a generation and alienating the public.

Targets also miss the point of what the public wants. The Home Office judges each police force by how many crimes they detect and clear up.

Ordinary people want something different. They don’t want the crimes happening in the first place.

When asked to choose which activities the police should spend more time on, the public’s top three priorities are preventing crime, community policing and foot patrols - all of which are about deterring criminals.

Sir Robert Peel, the founder of the police force nearly 180 years ago said that ” it is not dealing with crime that is the test of police efficiency, it is the absence of crime and disorder”. Sadly, the absence of crime is not a target any more.

One constable said: “I remember when it was a matter of pride to come back after a night shift and report that nothing had happened.

“Now all we are asked is why no one was locked up or issued with a penalty notice.”

Targets measure crime committed rather than crime prevented. They allow the Government to score politically - but in the process, police complain, the Government has sacrificed their integrity and their relationship with the community.

As one officer said: “Politics currently control the police.”

This growing alienation between the public and police is deeply worrying but, is symptomatic of this governments obsession with control from the centre

The US administration is pressing the 27 governments of the European Union to sign up for a range of new security measures for transatlantic travel, including allowing armed guards on all flights from Europe to America by US airlines.

The demand to put armed air marshals on to the flights is part of a travel clampdown by the Bush administration that officials in Brussels described as “blackmail” and “troublesome”, and could see west Europeans and Britons required to have US visas if their governments balk at Washington’s requirements.

According to a US document being circulated for signature in European capitals, EU states would also need to supply personal data on all air passengers overflying but not landing in the US in order to gain or retain visa-free travel to America, senior EU officials said.

And within months the US department of homeland security is to impose a new permit system for Europeans flying to the US, compelling all travellers to apply online for permission to enter the country before booking or buying a ticket, a procedure that will take several days.