Policy

Parliament and government should agree a Code of Legislative Standards to improve the quality of laws produced at Westminster, according to a report published yesterday by the Political and Constitutional Reform committee.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change is set to become the second Whitehall body to buy in policy development work from outside government, its permanent secretary Stephen Lovegrove has revealed in an interview with CSW.

Let’s hope ministers don’t put it to their blind eye

The Cabinet Office has established a new structure, chaired by cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, to improve government’s long term planning, Civil Service World can reveal.

Private offices should be boosted by letting secretaries of state recruit experienced policy and implementation advisers, says Akash Paun

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.

On February 21, a seminar was held in the Foreign Office to mark the publication of a book by the head of the FCO Historical Section, Gill Bennett, called ‘Six Moments of Crisis’. The book discusses six major foreign policy decisions taken since the Second World War. These were the decision to send British troops to Korea in 1950; the Suez invasion; the first application to join the European Economic Community; the withdrawal of British forces from East of Suez; the expulsion of 109 Soviet diplomats; and the sending of the Task Force to recover the Falklands.

All civil servants should be trained in design principles such as using prototypes and involving users to create solutions, according to a report published today by the Design Commission, an industry-led group that investigates how design could address public policy problems.

A new network of research centres providing independent evidence to inform decision making in key policy areas will help to improve policy making in the civil service, according to Will Cavendish, executive director of the Cabinet Office's implementation unit.

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”.

Andrew Dilnot, chair of the UK Statistics Authority, told the Public Administration Select Committee last week that he has written “six or seven” letters to departments complaining about the distortion of official statistics.

Government needs to set formal standards for making policy and drafting legislation, the Better Government Initiative (BGI) argues in a report published today.

Never mind the NAO; ministers too hate a risk gone wrong

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.

The Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team, or ‘nudge unit’, has secured its first overseas contract.

Civil servants should be prepared to see further significant changes to their accountability arrangements, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude told CSW yesterday after he announced plans to publish permanent secretaries’ objectives online.

Civil servants should not be experts in any particular fields, but instead should be generalist administrators, Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin said in a speech at the Institute for Government on Monday.

The think tank contracted by the Cabinet Office to provide external policy advice on the future of civil service accountability has published research setting out its conclusions on the topic, CSW can reveal.

Civil servants are split over whether outsourcing policymaking is a good idea in principle, but a clear majority have concerns about implementation, exclusive research by CSW has revealed. The greatest concern is that ministers will commission policy work from favoured institutions, creating “unchallenged bias” in the policymaking process.

More than half – 56 per cent – of all senior civil servants and grade six and seven officials believe that the Freedom of Information Act sometimes prevents open and honest policy discussions, exclusive research by CSW has found.

The Justice Select Committee’s review of the Freedom of Information Act is “an opportunity missed to create more certainty around policy advice”, former cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell has told CSW.

Exploitation of the vast quantities of subjective data from social media sites and internet forums offers Whitehall decision-makers new opportunities to fine-tune policy based on public opinion, experts told a civil service seminar yesterday.

Good ideas on policymaking meet risky ones on accountability