HR

Sir David Normington eyes candidates with private sector experience as body overseeing civil service appointments seeks new commissioners

Richard Heaton to succeed Ursula Brennan as MoJ permanent secretary, while civil service chief executive John Manzoni given Heaton's Cabinet Office perm sec remit

Cabinet Office announces that Hill – Defra's perm sec since 2011 – will be succeeded by the DfT's Clare Moriarty

Channel 4’s new comedy pokes fun at Whitehall, but it’s more Skins than The Thick of It, says Sarah Aston

Report by the National Audit Office says centre of government must do more to ensure departments make better use of information about outsourced public services, including standardising data and improving Whitehall skills

DCMS permanent secretary Sue Owen will succeed Simon Fraser in role coordinating Whitehall's efforts to boost diversity, while the MoD's Jon Thompson handed remit to encourage people from lower-income backgrounds into the civil service

Future Reserves 2020 moves from "Amber/Red" to "Red" rating in Major Projects Authority's latest assessment, but Ministry of Defence says scheme "on schedule to realise its benefits"

Report by the National Audit Office says Cabinet Office’s Talent Action Plan on Whitehall diversity needs measures “to track progress and help sustain momentum”

Cabinet secretary says Civil Service Awards provide rare opportunity for “boasting” about achievements

Special report: Ministers made bold promises about the impact of mutualisation on civil service pensions. But as Matt Foster reports, administrator MyCSP has left some retired officials tearing their hair out

Permanent secretary Sir Simon Fraser tells CSW the FCO must have “a comparable offer” with other departments

BIS perm sec Martin Donnelly requests rare "letter of direction" from minister Sajid Javid after raising value-for-money concerns over plan to gift extra shares to Royal Mail staff

Study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies raises concern over private sector's ability to absorb public sector job losses

National Audit Office finds £3.2bn training programme will "not be running at full capacity until 2019"

Security review calls for “comprehensive and comprehensible new law” to govern security agencies’ surveillance powers

Report by the National Audit Office says the centre of government must do more to support departments struggling to manage the changing Whitehall workforce

Austin Mitchell reviews a new book examining the impact of decades of reform to central government 

Stereotyped as masters of the dark arts, what role do special advisers really play? As a new crop arrives in Whitehall, Sarah Aston asked some veteran spads to share their war stories

Former cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell calls on new Cabinet Office minister Matt Hancock to scrap a rule which means fast streamers must change jobs every six months

Official in charge of Scotland’s fair work agenda admits set-up of Scottish civil service keeps out applicants with criminal convictions

FDA and PCS unions sound the alarm over proposals to end "six figure" public sector redundancy pay

Professor Timothy Richard Dafforn – entrepreneur in residence for synthetic biology – is named as new chief scientific adviser for BIS at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills 

With longstanding public accounts committee chair Margaret Hodge announcing that she won't be seeking another five years at the helm of parliament's powerful cross-party spending watchdog, Civil Service World asked the three Labour MPs hoping to succeed her why they want the job, and whether they think the committee's treatment of officials needs to change

Civil service culture is perceived to be one of the biggest barriers to digital change, a survey carried out by techUK reveals