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Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) officials believe the department will be criticised by Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into the Iraq War over the poor state of its record-keeping, according to its 2012-13 departmental improvement plan published last month.

Any reforms to the permanent secretary appointments process should meet three tests, first civil service commissioner Sir David Normington has said today in an article published in CSW.

Appointing permanent secretaries for four-year periods could increase continuity in the senior civil service, the minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude has claimed.

A third of civil servants fear taking a secondment outside government could damage their career and promotion prospects, according to a survey carried out by CSW and cyber security specialists McAfee.

The government is risking an “exodus” of talent because of its decision to squeeze civil service pay, pensions and benefits, according to a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) published today.

Permanent secretaries should set “clear targets for advancing diversity in their departments”, head of the civil service Sir Bob Kerslake said in a House of Commons lecture on Monday. Part of being a stronger civil service, he said, “will be being more diverse at all levels, fully harnessing the talent available to us”.

The government is likely to implement a further set of civil service reforms soon, the head of the civil service Sir Bob Kerslake has told CSW, as it pursues “unfinished business” that didn’t make it into last year’s Civil Service Reform Plan (CSRP).

Reforms overseen by the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG) have generated £10bn savings in the last financial year, ministers have today announced.

Nearly two thirds (64 per cent) of jobseekers registered on totaljobs.com said they would prefer to work for a public sector organisation in the same role as their current or last job.

The government will actively recruit civil servants and consultants who will be paid more than the prime minister in order to plug talent shortages, despite the current pay and consultancy restrictions, Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the civil service, told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) last week.

All government departments will be required to deliver the goals outlined in the civil service Capabilities Plan released last week, Bob Kerslake, head of the civil service, has told CSW.

Civil Service Learning is struggling to reverse a terrible trend.

The Cabinet Office has backed down over plans to reform the terms and conditions (T&Cs) of all civil servants, CSW has learned. In a letter sent this month to all civil servants, civil service head Sir Bob Kerslake and Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said: “The proposed changes will apply to new entrants and, potentially, staff on promotion.”

The civil service pay cap will continue for an extra year, and the government will also reform automatic pay rises for all civil servants, chancellor George Osborne announced in his budget today.

Civil servants across the Department of Health (DH) will be sent on regular work placements at hospitals, care homes and charities, in a bid to give them frontline experience of the NHS.

Hilary Reynolds will step down as programme director for Universal Credit, after it emerged that new UC chief executive David Pitchford will take on her duties. She will move to another role in the department.

Former cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell used the second part of his Radio 4 documentary on Tuesday, In Defence of Bureaucracy, to call for the retention of an impartial civil service, and to argue that the “occasionally intemperate tone” taken by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has “not helped” the “unusually strained” relationship between ministers and civil servants.

The PCS union has called a three-month programme of industrial action, starting with a one-day strike on Budget day: 20 March.

Whitehall experts have backed former cabinet secretary Lord Butler in calling for all departments to appoint historical advisers, CSW can reveal.

Ministers & officials must also put those lessons into practice.

The Cabinet Office has published a new competency framework which will apply to all civil servants from 1 April. The framework lists a set of attributes and behaviours which all 420,000 civil servants should aspire to, and breaks down how these could be demonstrated at every grade across the service.

The government has signed an agreement with private-sector partner arvato to manage an independently-run shared service centre, which will run back-office transactions to government departments. The move is intended to create savings of up to £600m a year over seven years.

Former cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell is to present two programmes on Radio 4 in a bid to defend the work of the civil service.