News

The civil service needs to “raise its game” and improve its understanding of Parliament and parliamentary process if it’s to give ministers the right level of support, the clerk of the House of Commons, Sir Robert Rogers, has warned.

The UK has long had a strong space industry but, until recently, government support for it was small-scale and fragmented. David Parker, UK Space Agency chief executive, tells Joshua Chambers how things have changed.

The worst thing about this documentary was its almost complete lack of insight into its billed subject matter.

The health and business departments are behind a big push to help Britain’s life sciences sector realise its economic potential. Joshua Chambers examines the treatments given, and the progress of the patient so far.

The Ministry of Defence is to sell off the Old War Office, built on Whitehall in 1902, it was announced today.

Sometimes, a struggle persists from one generation to the next. Picking through newly-released National Archives files dating back 30 years, Winnie Agbonlahor finds that many of Thatcher’s battles still hold resonance today.

Staff in job centres working on the Department for Work and Pensions’ flagship Universal Credit system are writing jobseekers’ personal information down on paper because their IT systems are so “clunky and cumbersome”, Dame Anne Begg (pictured), chair of the Commons’ Work and Pensions Committee, has told CSW.

In 2012-13 10.5% of central government expenditure, £4,577m, went to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), according to Cabinet Office figures released last week – up from 6.5% in 2009-10.

The annual report of the Interception of Communications Commissioner reveals that law enforcement agencies substantially increased the amount of data they gathered in 2012, compared with the previous year. 

The National Audit Office has criticised the Cabinet Office for weaknesses in the way it monitors performance against its policy aims.

Civil servants believe their employers failed to manage talent effectively during their redundancy programmes, a CSW survey has found, with the result that many talented and highly-skilled individuals left the civil service whilst poor performers were allowed to remain.

The Department of Health (DH) needs to ensure more is done to protect vulnerable patients who rely on mental health services, according to a report published today.

A law firm has prompted a retreat by the Home Office on its ‘go home’ immigration vans, which have been driving round London in a pilot.

Britain is not ready to cope with its ageing society – and government should say more on the subject, argues Lord Geoffrey Filkin, chairman of the Lords Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change.

In a rare public appearance at Civil Service Live earlier this month a GCHQ official warned civil servants about IT security. Joshua Chambers listened in

The one thing which Churchill’s Secret Cabinet doesn’t tell us – as it builds gradually up towards its examination of 43 previously-unheard recordings of Winston Churchill, found recently in an old record cabinet – is how the staff at the Churchill Archive managed to overlook these gems for nearly two decades. Perhaps the researcher charged with looking through the cabinet when the archive first received it 20 years ago was distracted by an offer of lunch as they sifted through the Gilbert & Sullivan. 

Sir Andrew Witty, lead non-executive director of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), has announced that he will step down from his government role in December.

Jane Platt is chief executive of NS&I, Britain’s venerable state-owned savings bank. She talks to Joshua Chambers about keeping rival financial institutions sweet, diversity in the City, and the future for arm’s-length bodies.

The civil service’s separation of policy and delivery professionals is “artificial” and “crackers”, the government’s digital director Mike Bracken told an audience at Civil Service Live earlier this month, and IT policies should be produced by “multi-disciplinary teams” bringing together the two sets of specialists.

The current system for applying for carer’s allowance is “atrocious” and provides “a really poor service”, the man in charge of digital services at the Department for Work and Pensions has said.

The Department of Health has launched a new digital toolkit for policymakers.

PASC chair Bernard Jenkin is highly critical of aspects of the civil service – but he’s sympathetic to civil servants themselves, and earlier this month an audience of officials gave his arguments a warm reception. Matt Ross reports.

Officials leading major projects can now benefit from a ‘pivotal role allowance’ (PRA) introduced to encourage senior responsible owners (SROs) to stay in their job for the full length of a project, Sir Bob Kerslake, the head of the civil service, told Civil Service Live last week.