Operational Delivery

“All we’re asking is for the Met Office to be able to allocate what it needs to fund staff by industry standards,” Prospect’s Gordon Hutchinson tells CSW, as hundreds of Met Office staff set up picket lines

Public Accounts Committee criticises lack of transparency over HM Revenue and Customs' £130m, ten-year tax deal with Google – but says department has taken "a step in the right direction" in pledging reform of penalty regime

Powerful Economic and Domestic Secretariat to get a new deputy director to help departments focus on longer-term trends and the impact of technology

Former Border Force head Tony Smith sets out scale of the challenge Brexit would pose to management of Britain's borders

IfG's deputy director Julian McCrae says long-awaited new plans are "little more than a laundry list of nice to haves"

Ministers say new, single documents bringing together spending totals and broad reform plans will "enable the public to see how government is delivering"

Leading health think-tank warns on state of NHS trust finances even after Treasury's Spending Review boost

Director for G-Cloud and the digital commercial programme at the Government Digital Service moving to become deputy director of the BIS digital service

As Home Office prepares to take on full responsibility for fire and rescue services from the Department for Communities and Local Government, MPs on the Public Accounts Committee say Whitehall must do more to understand the local implications of budget cuts

Public and Commercial Services union mulls industrial action over "unnecessary and inflammatory" compulsory redundancies – but HMRC says it has done "everything possible" to avert the situation

When good ideas emerge, the public sector should seize on them, give them money – and publicise the civil servants who have dreamed them up. 

Home Office's top official tells CSW his ongoing review of the core department will see its headquarters "delayered" and its "management structures simplified" in a bid to better to support the frontline and learn from other departments

Transport department has improved its ability to let rail franchises, MPs say, but still lacks the capability to manage them, and does not have a “coherent strategic vision” for the rail system

Rolling out text alerts, sorting out "crap" government IT, cleaning up data, and trying to recruit skilled people when the money's tight — there's plenty going on in the world of government digital, as Matt Foster found at the Government Digital Service's annual gathering

Report by the National Audit Office lays bare the problems facing flagship mutual - but Cabinet Office says it has taken steps to turn the situation around. Unions meanwhile welcomed the spending watchdog's findings

90% of business department's sites to close under BIS 2020 programme, says Sajid Javid, as Martin Donnelly calls decision to shut Sheffield office "one of the most difficult" of his career

Spending watchdog finds DfE has a "weak understanding" of the scale of local shortages and how to resolve them – but department says UK now has the "most highly qualified teaching workforce in history"

Prison performance will be subject to greater transparency, David Cameron set to say, while governors will be handed greater control over the education of inmates

Treasury consultation confirms plans for wide-ranging shake-up of exit terms – with the FDA union branding the proposals an "ideological attack on public servants"

Common Technology Services chief Andy Beale to become deputy CTO – as government prepares to unveil digital strategy for the next four years

Government hails major savings on government estate since 2010 and sets out plans to go further - but the PCS union warns "vital local services" will be undermined

Report by the Alliance for Useful Evidence and the Institute for Government finds officials held back by "structural and cultural barriers" between UK's various governments

Shadow Cabinet Office minister Louise Haigh says BIS showed "lack of empathy" in St Paul’s Place closure announcement

Whitehall tops this year's Times Guide to Higher and Degree Apprenticeships