News

Robert Chote, chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, has backed proposals that could see his body scrutinise spending commitments made by parties in the run-up to elections. However, PAC chair Margaret Hodge has questioned the OBR’s independence.

Our sun warms the planet and gives us life, but it also threatens to blitz our IT, communications and power systems. Joshua Chambers investigates the danger of solar storms, and talks to the officials working to counter the risks

Government’s “default setting” should be to “publish the evidence and the data on which policy is based,” according to Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude – but departments should not be “limited” to introducing policies with a strong evidence base.

The civil service’s finance specialists should be overseen by a head of profession based in the Treasury, whilst permanent secretaries should have stronger powers and the “constitutional protection” to push back against poor spending decisions, the new chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) writes in today’s CSW.

The Treasury must prevent the pre-release of any Budget information, the Treasury select committee said in a report published today, as this practice allows the government to “manage the message of Budgets and Autumn Statements to an unacceptable degree”.

The government must not water down the UK’s long-term climate change targets in next year’s review of the EU carbon budget covering 2023-2027, the Commons’ Environmental Audit Committee has warned.

Like every government department, the MoD must enact widespread job cuts – but its task is made uniquely difficult by the political sensitivities around armed forces redundancies. Winnie Agbonlahor investigates

There will be no further cuts to the civil service at the Ministry of Defence (MoD), but the Army could suffer more redundancies, according to Jon Thompson, the ministry’s permanent secretary.

By Damian McBride

Biteback Publishing, £20

The former prime ministerial press secretaries Bernard Ingham and Alastair Campbell weren’t strangers to the dark political arts, but Damian McBride – Gordon Brown’s press secretary – has perhaps more opprobrium than any of his predecessors. His memoir, Power Trip, has just been released, and provides some of the reasons why.

Senior managers should make time to meet apprentices who have joined the civil service under a new Apprenticeship Fast Track scheme, the head of the civil service has said.

Mark Bowman has been appointed the new director general of international finance at the Treasury. He re-joins the department from the Department for International Development and will replace Michael Ellam, who announced his decision to leave the Civil Service in July 2013.

Chris Last has become the full-time head of government HR, reporting directly to the head of the civil service as he leads work to strengthen cross-government HR management and services.

The National Audit Office (NAO) has called on the Treasury to improve its guidance on the use of confidentiality clauses and special severance payments, and to increase transparency and oversight.

Minister for civil society Nick Hurd told a Conservative conference fringe event that the business department’s attitude to social enterprise is “a source of constant frustration for me”, and that he’s “not overwhelmed by its enthusiasm for the social economy”, the magazine Third Sector reported last week.

Four human rights groups have filed papers with the European Court of Human Right alleging that cyber-security agency GCHQ has illegally intruded on the privacy of British and European citizens.

Civil Service FC lost 2-1 to Polytechnic FC in a match held this week at Buckingham Palace.

The annual Civil Service People Survey has been launched. However, the PCS trade union has called on its members to boycott it.

Civil Service World interviews a social care commissioner about the effects of funding cuts - and it's not all bad.

While James Bond relies on Q for his gadgets, Britain’s armed forces use the MoD’s Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory. Its chief executive Jonathan Lyle talks to Joshua Chambers about DSTL’s work

A  project to provide low-cost toilets to poor urban communities in Ghana is among the shortlisted entries for the this year's Civil Service Awards , held in association with Ernst & Young and Huawei.

Government’s Major Projects Portfolio is regularly assessed to look for warning signs that indicate a programme is going awry. CSW has researched key projects in four departments to gauge the performance of civil service project managers.

In a Special Report published in CSW on 25 September, we examined 12 major projects: three each from the defence, transport, health, and work & pensions departments. We chose projects of a range of types, and covering the ‘traffic light’ risk spectrum from green to red. The text below covers one of the four departments: click here to read our introduction and methodology.

The Department for International Development (DfID) has won an international procurement award for a purchasing scheme that underpins an aid programme preventing unintended pregnancies in developing countries.

Employees at organisations across the public sector could be allowed to use their own mobile phones and tablets to access government data, under new guidelines issued by CESG, the information security arm of GCHQ.