News

The Troubled Families scheme run by the Department for Communities and Local Government will be given an additional £200m for 2015-16 in the Spending Review, the DCLG announced last week.

The coalition’s Green Investment Bank has been tasked with boosting private investment in the green economy – a high-potential sector constrained by limited finance. Winnie Agbonlahor meets chief executive Shaun Kingsbury.

Outgunned on salaries by the private sector, the civil service often struggles to recruit and retain world-class talent. Stuart Watson attends a CSW round table on how to bring top employees into Whitehall – and keep them there.

Battered departmental administration budgets received a further pounding in today’s 2015-16 spending round, with the Home Office (HO), Cabinet Office (CO) and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) seeing punishing settlements that will accelerate civil service cuts as we approach the end of the Parliament.

So much has been said about Iraq in the 10 years since war was declared that it feels as if there’s nothing this new documentary from the BBC could possibly tell us. But its sober re-examination of the lead-up to the invasion and the subsequent attempt to rebuild the Iraqi state astonishes with the depth of its access, and in its detail rescues the Iraq War from the political and cultural mythos.

I like a restaurant to be lively, but I want it to run efficiently.  And when I visited the Beehive pub-restaurant it was brightly lit, welcoming, and packed with cheery drinkers and diners – first box ticked. Unfortunately, in contrast the waiting staff were rather dim, slightly off-putting and a little vacant, leaving my efficiency box disappointingly empty.

Permanent secretaries should set “clear targets for advancing diversity in their departments”, head of the civil service Sir Bob Kerslake said in a House of Commons lecture on Monday. Part of being a stronger civil service, he said, “will be being more diverse at all levels, fully harnessing the talent available to us”.

Permanent secretaries should be appointed by the Prime Minister (PM) on fixed-term four-year contracts, according to a report commissioned by the Cabinet Office and published today.

The Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP’s) major projects portfolio contains both a higher proportion of projects where success is “highly likely” than any other department of state, and the highest proportion where successful delivery is “in doubt”, according to the Major Projects Authority’s (MPA) annual report.

The Treasury’s commercial secretary has called for much more continuity in project management, with managers kept in place overseeing projects “until the end”.

Very few jobs these days can be undertaken without any qualifications or tuition – but if you’re running the country, you may not even receive an induction. Joshua Chambers reports on the prospects for ministerial training.

Paul Maltby, government’s director of transparency, and Helen Stephenson, director of programmes in the Office for Civil Society, have been appointed as joint directors of the Cabinet Office’s Government Innovation Group. They replace Gareth Davies, who’s leaving to take a private sector role in Asia.Paul Maltby, government’s director of transparency, and Helen Stephenson, director of programmes in the Office for Civil Society, have been appointed as joint directors of the Cabinet Office’s Government Innovation Group. They replace Gareth Davies, who’s leaving to take a private sector role in Asia.

A failure to submit enough nominations for last year’s Civil Service Awards was “a fatal flaw” that prevented some departments from celebrating success, Bronwyn Hill, permanent secretary of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), said at the launch of the 2013 Awards.

The government is likely to implement a further set of civil service reforms soon, the head of the civil service Sir Bob Kerslake has told CSW, as it pursues “unfinished business” that didn’t make it into last year’s Civil Service Reform Plan (CSRP).

Former culture secretary Dame Tessa Jowell has attacked as “spiteful” an anonymous press briefing against Jonathan Stephens, permanent secretary of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), and called on the culture secretary to disavow it.

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is not intended to continue working in its current form forever and will eventually step back from working on department's transaction services, Liam Maxwell, the government’s chief technology officer, has told Civil Service World.

Over the last year the chairman of Standard Life, Gerry Grimstone, has been visiting Ministry of Defence offices to meet and speak with civil servants from across the department. It's not a very personal bid for defence civil servants to reconsider their savings choices, but part of his role as the department's lead non-executive director. Grimstone, in common with many other departmental non-executive directors, wants to improve communications between boards and civil servants.

The Labour party would consider merging “management and bureaucracy” across government departments, agencies and other public services as part of a “zero based spending review” if it wins power at the next election, shadow chancellor Ed Balls said yesterday.

The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) spent years engulfed in painful criticism. Mark Grimshaw, who came in as chief executive two years ago determined to turn things around, tells Winnie Agbonlahor how he’s smartened up its act

Shadow cabinet minister Jon Trickett has said that it “cannot be right” that “the highest levels of the civil service are drawn almost exclusively from a narrow social elite”, and pledged that Labour would tackle the “existence of elitism, whether it be through structural, process, or embedded sub-conscious prejudice” if the party wins power in 2015.

Dave Hartnett, the former second permanent secretary of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), has been accused by Margaret Hodge MP of having “no shame” after taking a job as an adviser to accountancy giants Deloitte.

Plans requiring senior civil servants at the Department of Health (DH) to spend 20 working days a year on the frontline are “absurd”, Bernard Jenkin, chair of the Public Administration Select Committee, said on Monday.