Leadership

Prime minister David Cameron has called on civil servants to “talk truth to power and tell it like it is” in order to improve policy.

David Thomas (pictured), commerical director at HMRC and a crown representative, will leave government in mid-December. He resigned his post in September.

Cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood has intervened in a bid to end the political briefings against work and pensions permanent secretary Robert Devereux.

The civil service must “significantly” improve its ability to understand company accounts if it is to make effective use of open-book contracts, according to government chief operating officer Stephen Kelly and chief procurement officer Bill Crothers.

The new Home Office permanent secretary, Mark Sedwill, arrived in Marsham Street soon after having worked in Afghanistan. He tells Joshua Chambers how he’s using his experience to turn the embattled department around.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has created a new director general-level role, in an effort to rebalance the department’s workload.

Sharon White, currently director general for public services, has been appointed as the second permanent secretary at HM Treasury.

There is a "shortage of project management skills" in the Department for Transport (DfT), according to Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

A group of King’s College academics have launched a draft code of practice for the appointment and management of government ‘tsars’, arguing that the lack of an existing framework leads to failed appointments and wasted public funds.

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.

Senior civil servants can no longer expect to remain out of the public eye, according to NHS England chief executive Sir David Nicholson, who has faced attacks from newspapers and patient groups over his involvement in the crisis at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust.

Sir Bob Kerslake, the head of the civil service, has rejected claims that structures within Whitehall are preventing open debates about government policy, and emphasised the need for senior leaders to encourage an “open culture in their department where people feel able to raise issues and concerns about progress”.