Foreign Affairs

For Foreign Office chief Simon Fraser, his relationships around Whitehall are as crucial as those with Washington. His main mission is to increase trade, he tells Matt Ross, and that means working with a host of other departments

A senior Foreign Office official has warned that the UK’s economic standing in the world could be damaged if the British public ever voted to leave the European Union.

In an increasingly open society, even MI6 has to change the way it operates – and at Civil Service Live, the Secret Intelligence Service’s head Sir John Sawers made a rare public appearance. Joshua Chambers reports

Parliamentary efforts to hold government more closely to account include reforming how British intelligence agencies are overseen. Joshua Chambers reports on a committee walking the line between light and shade

The former chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Sir Richard Mottram, has come out against the idea that the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) could hold public hearings with the heads of Britain’s intelligence agencies.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) failed to plan out the skills it will need in the long term before cutting its civilian and military workforces, according a report published by the Public Accounts Committee on Friday.

The papers have been full of frothy stories and silly stereotypes about the civil service, says Mark Lowcock. This risks distracting us from the real – and very important – challenge of adapting to the tasks at hand

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.

Andrew Manley, chief executive of the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, looks after the MoD’s £23bn estate – and he’s pushing through one of the most ambitious reform programmes in government. Matt Ross meets him

The chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee has been impressed by the FCO’s work, and applauds many of the coalition’s foreign policies. But he tells Joshua Chambers that the cuts risk damaging our overseas capabilities

The MoD reforms make sense; the carrier cuts do not

The Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) is in competition with ministers’ special advisers, friends, think tanks and other groups, NICS permanent secretary Malcolm McKibbin has said, and must demonstrate to politicians that its advice is the highest quality if ministers “are to properly value our information and our service.”

The Department for International Development (DfID) has the greatest capability to meet its delivery challenges while the Department of Health (DH) is least well-equipped to do so, the latest round of capability reviews suggest.

The FCO’s target to double trade with developing countries, including Turkey and Brazil, looks as though it has been worked out on the “back of a fag packet,” Richard Ottaway, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, has told CSW.

The Ministry of Defence’s land and property management arm, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), is working on a plan to radically shrink its estate through land sales, its chief executive Andrew Manley has said in an interview with CSW. Manley is also close to tendering for a commercial partner for DIO, in a move that will bring in estates development and sales skills to help the ministry get the best possible price for its asse

The aircraft carrier replacement programme has been dogged by indecision, delays and rising costs – and now a U-turn looms. Becky Slack examines one of Britain’s biggest and most dysfunctional public procurements.

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Computer hackers have threatened to repeatedly attack government websites, following cyber-attacks that caused the Home Office website to crash last weekend.

The Independent Commission for Aid Impact has raised concerns about the financial management of DfID’s aid projects in Afghanistan, which are worth up to £178m in 2011-12.

Despite a change of approach in Whitehall, civil servants in Northern Ireland will continue to pursue ‘spend to save’, Dr Malcolm McKibbin, head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS), has told CSW.

As head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, Dr Malcolm McKibbin has a very challenging job. However, as he tells Joshua Chambers, the main challenge has evolved from ending the Troubles to stimulating business growth

After nearly 22 months, the Commons select committees’ first elected chairs have had plenty of time to size up their Whitehall counterparts. Joshua Chambers asked them how the departments they watch have been performing

Departmental select committee chairs have provided mixed reviews of the departments they scrutinise for a Civil Service World Special Report, which has found that 40 per cent of them are dissatisfied with departments’ responses to their reports.