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Samera Owusu Tutu hears the DPM advocate vocational routes into the civil service.

The new chief executive of the civil service will only have “sufficient authority” if he/she reports directly to the prime minister, rather than Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, John Healey, co-founder of new think-tank GovernUp, has said.

On 27 March, Lucy Powell MP asked 21 departments to explain: what proportion of civil servants, of each sex and grade, work part-time.

John Hirst, chief executive of the Met Office, is leaving the civil service in September after seven years in the role.

Passport workers are on a 24-hour strike today over a pay dispute and staff shortages, with the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) claiming these workers earn as much as £3,000 less than other Home Office staff doing similar roles.

Border Force director general Sir Charles Montgomery rejected suggestions by Home Affairs Select Committee chair Keith Vaz (pictured) that 250 border guards are suing the organisation over its new “itchy” uniforms.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) “should urgently invest in its operational, technical and commercial skills,” a report by the National Audit Office has found.

The majority  (88%) of civil servants believe their department needs more training in order to be able to take advantage of cloud computing, according to a survey carried out by Civil Service World and cloud services provider Eduserv.

Marks & Spencer chair Robert Swannell (pictured) has been made chair of the Advisory Board of the Shareholder Executive. Swannell has been a non-executive director there since January 2014, and will take up the new role in September.

More than two thirds (70%) of civil service managers are coming under pressure to designate 10% of their staff as poorly performing under the new performance management system, according to a survey carried out by Civil Service World.

New figures given to parliament suggest that women, ethnic minorities and disabled staff are winning a smaller proportion of promotions than was the case in 2009. Suzannah Brecknell examines the data to find out more

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has become the first public sector organisation to achieve Gold Status on the industry-judged Disability Standard.

The High Speed 2 company needs to be given greater freedoms from Treasury restrictions so that it can attract the best project managers and construction workers, Alison Munro, chief executive of the project, has told Civil Service World.

Victoria MacCallum (pictured) is the new head of Cabinet Office communications. She has had the job on an interim basis for some time, but it was made permanent in April. Her predecessor in the role, Emily Tofield, has now returned from maternity leave to a new job as cross-government head of media relations.

Departments need more flexibility on pay so that civil service organisations don’t feel the need for “bureaucratic reorganisations” designed to escape pay controls and enable them to recruit skilled staff, the Public Accounts Committee has said.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is to open a second digital academy for its civil servants working in the North of England

The civil service’s “old-fashioned” structures, procedures, budgetary processes and spending controls are constraining the Highways Agency’s ability to focus on the long-term and attract highly-skilled staff, the agency’s chief executive Graham Dalton has told Civil Service World.

The civil service has launched a new range of qualifications for people in the Operations profession.

More than 100 civil servants in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have got their boots muddy in a series of farm visits aimed at improving their understanding of farming.

The Ministry of Defence’s Defence, Equipment and Support (DE&S) division was this month turned into an arm’s-length body and given an exemption from Treasury salary controls and civil service-wide promotion criteria.

Dr Vanessa Lawrence (pictured) has stepped down as director-general of Ordnance Survey after 14 years in the role.

The Civil Service Commission won’t reform the appointment process for permanent secretaries without the backing of the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC), first civil service commissioner Sir David Normington has told CSW.

The civil service’s record on improving the ethnic diversity of the senior civil service is “disgraceful”, the outgoing permanent secretary diversity champion has said, and he deeply regrets the fact that this month’s deadline to put in place “a clear, strategic approach” to diversity across Whitehall will be missed.

The Labour Party has criticised the Department for Education (DfE) for employing “party ideologues” as senior officials.