Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, has pledged that ministers will share accountability for increased risk-taking with civil servants.
Giving a speech yesterday focused on rewiring the state so it can “move fast and fix things”, Jones announced a series of reforms to the civil service. These include new “peacetime” taskforces which will be given the freedom to take bigger risks, and a new decision-making framework which will give civil servants “more freedom and autonomy in return for more accountability”.
In a Q&A section following the speech, FDA union boss Dave Penman asked Jones how he can convince civil servants that these freedoms won't mean getting more blame should those risks lead to failure.
Penman, whose union respresents senior civil servants, said the FDA's members have welcomed Jones’ comments that senior officials have too often have been scapegoated by politicians and the recognition that they are also frustrated by bureaucracy in the face of change.
"But you're talking about recognising that the sector and the public sector are different, and you want civil servants to innovate and that means potentially they will fail, but governments fail in public, not private," he said. "So how can you convince civil servants that mantras like 'fail fast' don't just mean you get blamed quickly?"
Jones said: "I think there's a really important question here which is: ministers in the past have said to civil servants, ‘you take more risk’. And then if it goes wrong, they say, 'what were you doing?'
“Civil servants need to know that when I or my other ministerial colleagues say, 'please take more risk', that we then say, 'we are with you in taking that risk, and I will be accountable to parliament and to the public if something goes wrong'.
“I am perfectly comfortable with risks being taken if it achieves a better, quicker outcome. Of course there will be points for failure, you're never going to get anything perfect the first time around, you would never expect that.
“That doesn't mean you should be reckless, but it does mean that when you're moving quickly, you should be willing to take higher risk than is currently the case.
“But the key point – and this is the key point on the taskforces – is not only do you have the support of me and the prime minister and the chancellor and the chief secretary of the Treasury, but you'll have a ministerial colleague from the Cabinet Office with you on the taskforce too, so we will own that risk together and we'll be accountable for it together.”