The planned refresh of the civil service code should target a high performance culture, a new report argues.
The cabinet secretary, Dame Antonia Romeo, recently published her objectives for this year, which included refreshing the civil service code to ensure it is “up to date, well understood, and adhered to across the civil service”.
A new report from think tank Re:State, published today, sets out a vision of what the new code should look like, suggesting it should “set the standard for a dynamic, bold, agile, resilient, curious, capable, and innovative institution”.
The current code was written in 2005 and revised in 2015. The Re:State report says it is “entirely focused on the civil service’s constitutional position as impartial and objective and reads as a list of what civil servants can’t do rather than a list of what kinds of values the government wants them to role model”.
The think tank says many current and former civil servants believe that the limitations of the existing code's core values – integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality – mean “the importance of achieving public good through high-performance, pace, innovation and agility are not just lost, but in some sense counteracted”.
Re:State’s “oven-ready” redrafted code contains five core values – integrity, excellence, ownership, courage, openness – combining the current four core values into one (integrity) and adding four new core values.
These new pillars “can act as a building block for embedding…a ‘can do’ culture”, the report says.
The think tank also suggests civil servants should be asked to sign the refreshed code to show they agree to it. And it says individual performance management should be linked to "demonstrating performance against the code’s values".
The five core values proposed in Re:State’s ‘oven-ready’ redrafted code
- Integrity is serving the government of the day and the public with honesty and impartiality.
- Excellence is performing to the highest standards and expecting the same of others.
- Ownership is taking responsibility for driving changes that lead to public good, and demonstrating accountability for your individual contributions to delivery.
- Courage is embracing the need to innovate, be bold, ambitious, and question the status quo.
- Openness is embracing new people, new ideas and working across teams, departments and sectors.
Charlotte Pickles, chief executive of Re:State and co-author of the report, said: “The civil service code isn’t a technical document, it’s setting the foundational values for the people responsible for the day-to-day running of the state – and it’s completely inadequate.
“The new cabinet secretary has rightly committed to refreshing it. We heard repeatedly from frustrated civil servants that too often it’s used as an excuse for inaction and passivity.
“A rewired state demands a bolder, more agile, more open Whitehall – driven to deliver and with individual civil servants held to account for their performance. Our new draft code establishes a set of values that would underpin a new, high-performing era of government.”