DfID permanent secretary calls for confidence

The civil service should be more confident in its ability to deal with the challenges facing it, Department for International Development permanent secretary Mark Lowcock has said in an article for CSW.


By Civil Service World

30 May 2012

Media coverage of the civil service based on “silly stereotypes” risks distracting people from the real tasks ahead, he writes. But he argues that “just as we have transformed ourselves in the past, we can do so again”.

Lowcock says that today’s “drivers of change” require civil service reform that is “painful and difficult, not least becomes it comes against the backdrop of years of pay restraint and pension changes... We did not cause the problems we now face – but we have a key role in solving them.”

While civil servants should “counsel against change that would undermine our fundamental strengths and values”, he argues, they should seize the “real opportunity” presented by the forthcoming civil service reform plan.

The permanent secretary argues that civil servants must ignore distracting criticisms in the media – which are “not corroborated by serious analysis” – and focus on “how to make the civil service better in the future than it is now”.

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