HR

Government must be prepared to pay higher salaries and consider more effective systems of performance related pay if it is to attract top talent from the private and wider public sectors, first civil service commissioner Sir David Normington told the Public Administration Select Committee today.

Even without ‘impact assessments’, impacts need assessing.

The government's outgoing equalities chief has expressed his disappointment at the Cabinet Office’s work to improve diversity in public appointments, and called for the publication of a new diversity strategy to reinvigorate efforts to increase the number of women, disabled people and ethnic minorities in top civil service jobs.

Commissioners from across the public sector can now apply to join a virtual Commissioning Academy, launched last week.

It is the duty of civil servants to challenge weak policy ideas, the director general of civil service reform, Katherine Kerswell, has told Civil Service World – even if officials risk being seen as “obstructive”.

Senior civil servants have become even more dissatisfied with their pay arrangements, are more inclined to leave the civil service, and less inclined to work extra hours than they were a year ago, according to a survey carried out by the FDA and Prospect trade unions.

Stephen Lovegrove, chief executive at the Shareholder Executive since 2007, has been appointed permanent secretary at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. He will take up his new post on 4 February. The role was originally set to be taken by David Kennedy, the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, but prime minister David Cameron vetoed Kennedy’s appointment last year.

Most Whitehall departments will have to move their transaction services – meaning HR, payroll, and accounts processes – into a shared service project by 2014, according to the Cabinet Office’s shared services strategy, published in December.