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Identifying and meeting central government's skills requirements

Author : Great Britain: National Audit Office

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 40 pages

File Size : 25,53 MB

Release : 2011-07-13

Category : Education

ISBN : 9780102969863

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Book Description

Despite major expenditure by central government departments, weaknesses in departmental strategies and governance arrangements have limited the effectiveness of skills development activities. Despite major expenditure by central government departments on developing the skills of their staff, government does not know how much is being spent and has rarely evaluated its impact on performance. Government's estimate of £275 million (or £547 for each civil servant) in 2009-10 is a significant underestimate. In addition, only 48 per cent of civil servants said that the learning and development they received in the last 12 months had helped them to be better at their job. This has limited the effectiveness of skills development activities in meeting departmental business needs. Management responsibilities have been complicated and unclear, leading to incomplete and unreliable information on what skills development is being undertaken, by which members of staff and at what cost. Insufficient standardisation across departments and limited use of central government's buying power to cut costs have undermined value for money. There has also not been enough attention to on-the-job learning, with unnecessary costs incurred through over-reliance on more expensive forms of training and poor management of attendance rates. Government has recognised some of these issues and has recently introduced major changes to the way departmental HR functions operate. A new cross-government learning and development service called Civil Service Learning became operational in April 2011. While these changes are designed to address some of the weaknesses identified by the NAO, it is too early to say if they will be implemented consistently and effectively across departments.



Core skills at

Author : Great Britain: National Audit Office

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 40 pages

File Size : 38,48 MB

Release : 2011-12-02

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 9780102976991

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Book Description

HM Revenue and Customs will have to make sure its staff have the right skills if it is to succeed in cutting its running costs by 25 per cent by 2014-2015 and bringing in each year an extra £7 billion of tax revenue. It is estimated that HMRC spent £96 million in 2010-11 developing the skills of its staff but judges that spending is not systematically directed on top level business priorities. Staff skills will have been a factor in the improvement of HMRC's business results including the extra £1billion tax generated since 2010 by enforcement and compliance activity. But currently there is not a direct evidential link between results and training and development activities. Only 54 per cent of HMRC staff said that they were able to access the right learning and development opportunities when they needed to and only 38 per cent said that training had improved their performance. Evidence from a customer survey and external stakeholders also suggests that the Department does not have all the skills it needs, but HMRC does not have a good overview of its current skills gaps. It needs better data and information on gaps which would help it take a more strategic approach and gain an early warning of future skills gaps, such as the risk of skills depleting as experienced staff retire. This is of particular concern in HMRC as one in five staff in key business areas are over 55. HMRC also lacks governance arrangements or structures to hold the organization to account for money spent on training. Many of the points in this report were raised previously by HMRC's own reviews but the Department has not made the changes needed.



Building capability in the Senior Civil Service to meet today's challenges

Author : Great Britain: National Audit Office

Publisher : Stationery Office

Page : 60 pages

File Size : 38,31 MB

Release : 2013-06-19

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 9780102983746

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Book Description

The Government now accepts the urgent need for a leadership group that can think across departmental boundaries and lead change but there is still a long way to go to change the long-standing culture of the Senior Civil Service. The NAO watchdog welcomed the ambition of the Civil Service Reform Plan and emphasised the urgent need to make progress, given that the plan underpinned the Government's chances of achieving further efficiency savings. At present there are significant skills shortages, particularly in the areas of commerce, project management, digital delivery and change leadership. In December 2012, only four out of 15 Permanent Secretaries at major delivery departments had significant operational delivery and commercial experience. The 24 professional networks in the civil service lack influence across departmental 'silos' and may not be the right groupings to meet the needs of the modern service. The Government intends to open up the service, with more internal transfers and free flow of skills to and from the private sector, and build on an approach already in place for the top 200. But the proportion of new recruits from the private sector fell in 2009-10 as departments cut spending, and has yet to recover. Promotion to the Senior Civil Service is becoming so financially unattractive as to put off talented people. The NAO warns that the latest moves to increase pay flexibility and offer incentives for business critical roles may not be enough to recruit, motivate and retain the right people.



Managing early departures in central government

Author : Great Britain: National Audit Office

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 52 pages

File Size : 46,89 MB

Release : 2012-03-15

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 9780102975468

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Book Description

This report finds that central government departments have spent around £600 million gross on the early departures of 17,800 staff in the year from December 2010. These costs are around 45 per cent lower than they would have been under the previous Scheme. After meeting the initial costs, departments will save an estimated £400m a year on the paybill. The time it takes departments to start seeing these savings depends on how quickly they can eliminate headcount-related costs, such as on IT and property. The net present value of the early departures to the taxpayer will be between £750 and £1,400 million over the spending review period, depending on the ability of departments to eliminate costs. This figure will also be affected by whether those leaving find comparable work and pay tax, or claim benefits. Of those departments that are reducing staff numbers, the proportion of staff released ranges from less than 1 per cent at the Department of Energy and Climate Change to around 16 per cent at the Department for Communities and Local Government. Departments used large-scale open voluntary exit schemes to release staff as quickly as possible, though this meant departments could not predict accurately which staff would leave. Older, more senior staff are leaving in the first tranches. This is partly because of deliberate restructuring, but also because those staff who have worked in the civil service for longer, or who are over 50, gain more financially from taking voluntary exit or voluntary redundancy.



The Blunders of Our Governments

Author : Anthony King

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Page : 668 pages

File Size : 36,2 MB

Release : 2014-09-04

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 1780746180

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Book Description

With unrivalled political savvy and a keen sense of irony, distinguished political scientists Anthony King and Ivor Crewe open our eyes to the worst government horror stories and explain why the British political system is quite so prone to appalling mistakes.



Implementing the Government ICT strategy

Author : Great Britain: National Audit Office

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 44 pages

File Size : 10,22 MB

Release : 2011-12-21

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 9780102977066

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Book Description

The National Audit Office has commended the early progress being made by the Government in implementing its ICT Strategy but has identified areas where progress has not kept pace with the Government's ambitions. Launched in March 2011, the Strategy is intended to tackle systemic problems in government ICT projects which in the past have tended to be too big, lengthy, risky and complex. Departments have independently developed systems which have often not communicated easily with one another. The broad aim of the Strategy is to reduce waste and project failure, create a common ICT infrastructure for government and use ICT to change how public services are delivered. The Government has adopted a pragmatic and collaborative approach and has largely met the first round of deadlines for taking action. New arrangements are in place to implement the Strategy; and the leadership, governance and mechanisms for making sure departments comply with the Strategy are different from those in the past and have the potential to secure benefits. Thirty actions from the Strategy have been rationalized into 19 delivery areas with a more consistent plan about how the new approaches and standards and the common ICT infrastructure will be taken forward. However, there are also a number of areas where not enough progress has been made. The Cabinet Office has not yet developed a system for measuring the extent to which the Strategy is resulting in sustained change. Gaps in ICT skills in the public sector also remain a serious challenge.



Memorandum on the 2012 Civil Service Reform Plan

Author : Great Britain: National Audit Office

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 44 pages

File Size : 27,51 MB

Release : 2013-01-24

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 9780102980639

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Book Description

The government published its Civil Service Reform Plan (the Plan) in June 2012 (www.civilservice.gov.uk/reform). It followed the publication of the 2011 Open Public Services White Paper (Cm.8145, ISBN 9780101814522) which called for a smaller, more strategic civil service that does less centrally, and commissions more from outside. The Plan has many themes in common with previous initiatives that attempted to reform the civil service, and adapt it to the changing needs of governments and public service users, but is arguably the broadest such reform programme since 1968. This Memorandum is intended primarily to inform the Committee's discussions with the leadership of the civil service about the Plan. Given that the Plan is less than a year old, it is not an evaluation of the reforms in the Plan, the progress made against them, or the implementation arrangements in place. It is designed to support the Committee to engage with the breadth of the Plan, so that they can use their influence to help ensure that its implementation improves efficiency, reinforces Parliamentary accountability and protects value for taxpayers and citizens. The Civil Service, in its present form as of 2012, employs 459,000 people across 106 departments and other bodies. The annual spend on Civil Service pay is £16 billion. The projected cost reduction for the Civil Service, between 2010 to 2015 is £80 billion and the projected reduction in the number of full-time equivalent civil servants over the same period is 110,000 representing about 23% of total staff.



House of Commons - Public Administration Select Committee: Trith to Power: How Civil Service Reforem Can Succeed - HC 74

Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Public Administration Select Committee

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 364 pages

File Size : 20,89 MB

Release : 2013-09-06

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 9780215061751

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Book Description

The Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) has concluded a year-long inquiry into the future of the Civil Service with only one recommendation: that Parliament should establish a Joint Committee of both Houses to sit as a Commission on the future of the Civil Service. It should be constituted within the next few months and report before the end of the Parliament with a comprehensive change programme for Whitehall with a timetable to be implemented over the lifetime of the next Parliament. The Report considers the increased tensions between ministers and officials which have become widely reported, and places the problems in Whitehall in a wider context of a Civil Service built on the Northcote-Trevelyan settlement established in 1853 and the Haldane principles of ministerial accountability set out in 1919. The government's Civil Service Reform Plan lacks strategic coherence and clear leadership from a united team of ministers and officials. The Northcote-Trevelyan Civil Service remains the most effective way of supporting the democratically elected Government and future administrations in the UK. Divided leadership and confused accountabilities in Whitehall have led to problems: a low level of engagement amongst civil servants in some departments and agencies, and a general lack of trust and openness; the Civil Service exhibits the key characteristics of a failing organisation with the leadership are in denial about the scale of the challenge they face. There is a persistent lack of key skills and capabilities across Whitehall and an unacceptably high level of churn of lead officials, which is incompatible with good government.



How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't

Author : Ian Dunt

Publisher : Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Page : 321 pages

File Size : 31,57 MB

Release : 2023-04-13

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 1399602756

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Book Description

Why do some prime ministers manage to get things done, while others miserably fail? What is a 'special adviser' and how did they take over British political life? And why is the House of Lords more functional than most people think? Most of us have a sense that our political system doesn't seem to work, but struggle to articulate exactly why. And for good reason: our political and financial institutions are cloaked in secrecy, archaic terminology, ancient custom and impenetrable jargon. Now, expert political journalist Ian Dunt is lifting the lid on British politics to expose every aspect of the setup in a way that can be understood and challenged. From Downing Street to Whitehall, the Commons to the Lords, this book is an indispensable guide to our political system - and how we might begin to fix it.



Change in Government

Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Public Administration Select Committee

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 136 pages

File Size : 38,86 MB

Release : 2011-09-22

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 9780215561565

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Book Description

The Coalition Government has set a sizeable challenge for the Civil Service: to transfer power out of Whitehall and into communities and as a result fundamentally change the way it works. The Committee found that while the Government seeks to embrace change, they have failed to recognise the scale of reform required or to set out the change programme required to achieve this reform. The lack of coordination from the centre and strong political leadership will result in the failure of key policies like the 'Big Society' agenda. The Committee recommended a comprehensive change programme articulating clearly what the Government believes the Civil Services is for, how it must change and with a timetable of clear milestones. This change programme must also include proposals for the Civil Service to retain and develop the new skill sets required to meet the demands of the Big Society policy agenda, and address long-running concerns about the decline in specialist expertise in Whitehall, the failure to innovate and take risks, and the failure to work across departmental silos. The reflect the changing role of the Civil Service, the Committee has also recommended that the Government should consider the development of a new Haldane model of accountability or they must explain how the model remains relevant. The new realities of devolving power out of Whitehall to local government and elsewhere should be codified in the Civil Service governance structure.