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