Leadership

The proportion of women taking new public appointments is “not good enough”, public appointments commissioner Sir David Normington has said.

“Not until I came to Whitehall did I learn that the country was run by two men, neither of whom I had ever heard of”, said Lord Victor Rothschild of his 1970 meeting with Sir Burke Trend and Sir William Armstrong, secretary to the cabinet and head of the home civil service respectively. But increasingly lurid attention from The Daily Telegraph, The Times and the Daily Mail, along with their Sunday siblings, is making sure that latter day grandees will have no such ignorance as to the name and power of the cabinet secretary since January this year, Sir Jeremy Heywood.

It’s been a “challenging and difficult year for the civil service,” cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood said last month at an event held to celebrate the publication of the 200th issue of CSW – and the paper has been helpful as “by far the most effective way... to put out a single message that gets to all civil servants.”

Stephen Kelly, the government’s new chief operating officer, is in charge of streamlining processes and pursuing efficiency on Whitehall. Joshua Chambers meets the man bringing business practice to the public sector

Matt Mercer, who edited Whitehall & Westminster World from 2004 to 2008, recalls its launch and sketches out the paper’s development from a niche Whitehall periodical to an influential, UK-wide publication

A set of interviewees who went on to greater things

Scouring the 5,000,000 words in 200 issues of CSW and its predecessor Whitehall & Westminster World, we’ve picked out the stories that made the news, set the agenda, offered an insight – and revealed something fascinating.

Last year the cabinet secretary’s job was split up, creating three vacancies; and now the third job – that of Cabinet Office permanent secretary – has been filled. Joshua Chambers interviews Richard Heaton

The Ministry of Defence’s new permanent secretary, Jon Thompson, tells Matt Ross how he intends to turn this most complex of Whitehall departments into a more professional operation – and dig it out of its financial hole

The MOD must store institutional knowledge in its armoury

Progress reports on strategic capability submitted by every department show a lack of strategic thinking, the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) has said.