Operational Delivery

This week’s interviewee is a biomedical technician looking after ward-based medical equipment in an urban area hospital.

Challenge must be encouraged, no matter what the project.

The government must improve “basic housekeeping” of its published data to ensure that the public can assess its overall effectiveness, a report by the Institute for Government (IfG) says today.

The civil service suffers from a shortage of delivery skills and a culture that venerates policymaking over organisational improvement, outgoing Home Office director-general Rob Whiteman has said in an interview with CSW.

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).

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) should retain its current structure because it responded swiftly and retained public trust after the discovery in January that horsemeat was appearing in frozen food products sold as beef, the organisation’s chief executive, Catherine Brown, has told Civil Service World.

HMRC’s customer services operations have improved from their low point of 2010 but still represent poor value for money to the taxpayer, a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) concluded yesterday.

Education secretary Michael Gove has attacked the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and the National Audit Office (NAO) as “forces of conservatism” that discourage risk-taking and innovation.

Five government departments will be required to provide clearer guidance and complaints procedures for staff keen to set up public service mutuals, under new proposals designed to maintain the momentum behind the government’s public service reform agenda.

Fraud is widespread at government contractors A4e and Working Links, their former head of audit, Eddie Hutchinson, has said.

The Department for International Development (DfID) has the greatest capability to meet its delivery challenges while the Department of Health (DH) is least well-equipped to do so, the latest round of capability reviews suggest.