Civil Service Reform

Live: Rolling coverage of the Comprehensive Spending Review and Autumn Statement provided by CSW's sister title PoliticsHome

CSW rounds up the big Spending Review stories and analysis ahead of the chancellor's statement to the Commons at 12:30pm

How smart is your team? Bruce Mann, executive director of the Government Property Unit, on the importance of smart working and how the civil service is celebrating and supporting teams who want to adopt it

After years of shrinking departmental budgets, how can civil servants rise to the further challenge of the 2015 Spending Review? Jess Wilkins reports from a CSW round table which sought to address that very question

No employer in the private sector would see a five year pay freeze – followed by a 1% cap – as the route to success, argues the deputy general secretary of the Prospect union

As the Spending Review looms, Stian Westlake of Nesta argues that reducing the influence of the Treasury could replace the essay-crisis drama of Budgets and Autumn Statements with a more thoughtful budgetary process

Latest Whitehall Monitor from the Institute for Government says government must not take quality of open data for granted – and says new chief data officer will need "sufficient political and institutional clout" to make the issue a priority

The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills may be facing a tough Spending Review settlement, but permanent secretary Martin Donnelly tells Matt Foster that the “honest and open” culture at BIS will endure – whatever the chancellor decides

Exclusive: Business department's top official Martin Donnelly tells CSW he will have "failed" if diversity agenda falls by the wayside – and sheds light on what the BIS 2020 review means for the organisation's regional presence

Cyber security apprentices from government to join apprentices from BT at networking and training event later this month

DWP, Decc, HMRC and Cabinet Office among those agreeing to George Osborne's cuts call

Find out which civil servants won awards at Thursday night's prestigious Buckingham Palace bash

Insitute for Government report says there is "insufficient recognition" that "less money will often mean doing less" – and urges clear statements of intent from new single departmental plans

Ahead of tonight's Civil Service Awards ceremony at Buckingham Palace, the Cabinet secretary hails the "passion, imagination and ingenuity" of officials across government

Geoffrey Spence to step aside as Infrastructure UK merged with major projects watchdog

Crown Commercial Service's director of complex transactions to temporarily serve as chief commercial officer

HM Revenue and Customs chief executive says low staff morale is not damaging productivity – but acknowledges more work to do to make officials feel engaged with wider department

Matt Hancock says new team will bring together officials and ministers to focus on digital reform

Cross-government SDSR to be unveiled two days before the Spending Review

Combined central and local government outsourcing spend highest since early 2012, according to new research

Garry Graham – taking over from Leslie Manasseh at the union for specialists and managers – calls for "cool appraisal" of performance management by ministers

Decentralisation will not be a "panacea" for improved public services, think tank warns

When Army 2020 was announced in 2012, it represented one of the biggest structural reforms to the British Army in decades. A key plank of the scheme – itself part of the larger Future Force 2020 programme – has been to cut the number of regulars from 102,000 to 82,000 by 2018, and to make up the shortfall with reservists. The programme’s recruitment problems have been well publicised in the past, but, in 2015, is it any closer to ‘mission accomplished’? Colin Marrs reports

Tech industry group says some initiatives designed to open up markets are poorly understood, but Crown Commercial Service chief Sally Collier insists Whitehall is "changing the way it does business" with smaller firms