GDS, the NAO, the BBC, parliament and DWP – five questions

The National Audit Office (NAO) have released a new report, Digital Britain 2: Putting users at the heart of government’s digital services, examining the Government Digital Service (GDS) plans for digital-by-default. The report's conclusions concentrate on the problems faced by people who can't or won't use on-line public services.

The same problem was examined the day before yesterday by Mark Easton, the BBC's home affairs editor.

And 52 members of parliament have put their name to an early day motion to debate the problem.

Meanwhile the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), who were depending on digital-by-default for the introduction of Universal Credit, have published not one but two documents confirming that benefits will continue to rely on face-to-face meetings, telephone calls and letters in the post – the very opposite of digital-by-default – please see Local Support Services Framework and Universal Credit – Your claim journey.

GDS have responded to the NAO report with a post on their blog today:

Overall, this report is a really positive sign we’re moving in the right direction. But it’s also a helpful reminder of the work we still need to do to support those who are less able to use online services.

The NAO report has some ("really positive"?) comments to make on the putative savings we can look forward to from digital-by-default:

1.5 The GDS has also highlighted the possible savings from switching to digital channels. As the strategy states, central government provides more than 650 public services – which cost between £6 billion and £9 billion in 2011-12, according to GDS. The GDS has estimated total potential annual savings of £1.7 billion to £1.8 billion if all these services were operated through digital channels. More than 300 of these services have no digital channel. The savings estimate does not include the costs that may be required to create or redesign digital services. However, it also does not take into account the government’s new approach to becoming digital, set out in its strategy, which could lead to greater savings being achieved more quickly. The GDS states that the average cost of a central government digital transaction can be almost 20 times lower than by phone and 50 times lower than face-to-face. 1.6 We have not audited the estimated savings in the Government Digital Strategy, nor have we audited how government will redesign and develop its new digital services. Our future audits will evaluate the value for money of digital services as the GDS and departments work together to move more than 650 services online.

The report also mentions (without being "really positive") the need for identity assurance. Someone posted a comment on the GDS blog:
28/03/2013

dmossesq # Please Note: Your comment is awaiting moderation. The NAO report is available at http://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/10123-001-Digital-Britain-2-Book.pdf Under the heading “Trust”, the report includes the following: QUOTE 4.9 To use online public services people need to be able to trust the government with the information they provide online. The Government Digital Strategy recognises that users of public services often find it hard to register for online services, and that it needs to offer a more straightforward, secure way to allow users to identify themselves online while preserving their privacy. Therefore there is an Identity Assurance Programme [IDAP] under way in GDS and we were told that this is to develop a framework to enable federated identity assurance to be adopted across government services. 4.10 The government also told us that this will involve creating a simple, trusted and secure new way for people and businesses to access government services, which will provide assurance to government that the right person is accessing their own personal information. UNQUOTE Without IDAP, there is no digital-by-default. DWP were led to believe that IDAP would be “fully operational” for up to 21 million claimants of Universal Credit “from March 2013″, https://online.contractsfinder.businesslink.gov.uk/Common/View%20Notice.aspx?NoticeId=797279 Here we are in March 2013. And the question the NAO almost ask is, where is IDAP? 28/03/2013

That comment has now been moderated. Has it been published? No. It's been deleted.

Tomorrow should see the publication of ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken's video diary, This week at GDS.

He's the executive director of GDS and the senior responsible officer owner for the pan-government identity assurance programme. Will he comment on:

1. the NAO report?
2. the BBC report?
3. the early day motion in parliament?
4. DWP being stranded without IDAP?
5. the deliberations of the permanent secretaries who met at GDS's offices yesterday to consider digital-by-default?

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Added 16:48:

Following publication of the post above, DMossEsq brought it to the attention of GDS. The comment which had previously been deleted from their blog has now been published by GDS. Also, this week's edition of This week at GDS has been published, a day early, perhaps because of the bank holiday. No response to questions 2., 3. and 4. above. A passing mention of 5. and a promise to consider 1. in next week's edition.

GDS, the NAO, the BBC, parliament and DWP – five questions

The National Audit Office (NAO) have released a new report, Digital Britain 2: Putting users at the heart of government’s digital services, examining the Government Digital Service (GDS) plans for digital-by-default. The report's conclusions concentrate on the problems faced by people who can't or won't use on-line public services.

The same problem was examined the day before yesterday by Mark Easton, the BBC's home affairs editor.

And 52 members of parliament have put their name to an early day motion to debate the problem.

Meanwhile the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), who were depending on digital-by-default for the introduction of Universal Credit, have published not one but two documents confirming that benefits will continue to rely on face-to-face meetings, telephone calls and letters in the post – the very opposite of digital-by-default – please see Local Support Services Framework and Universal Credit – Your claim journey.

GDS have responded to the NAO report with a post on their blog today:

Overall, this report is a really positive sign we’re moving in the right direction. But it’s also a helpful reminder of the work we still need to do to support those who are less able to use online services.

OBITUARY: Whitehall 1947-2012

Some emperors driven mad by absolute power appoint their horse a senator.

While others create ERG.

This time last year Sir-Gus-now-Lord O'Donnell was still Cabinet Secretary, permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office and head of the home civil service. He stood down on 31 December 2011.

The month before, Sir Richard Mottram had published an article in Public Servant magazine, Whitehall shake-up – not all good news.

Sir Richard mentioned a number of the abiding problems faced by Whitehall, problems which existed when Sir Gus took over and which had still not been solved six years later. Among others, how do you govern Whitehall? The big central government departments look like independent satrapies. Silo government. Who, if anyone, is in charge? According to Sir Richard:

... the coalition government has given increasing priority to improving the efficiency of the civil service and the wider public service under a Cabinet Office group ...

The "Cabinet Office group" in question is the Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG):

Efficiency, Reform and Growth (ERG), established in 2010 as the Efficiency and Reform Group, is part of the Cabinet Office, which works in partnership with HM Treasury to form the corporate centre for UK Government. Its objectives are to reform the way government works and to support the transformation of government services by both driving cost savings and focusing on growth to build a platform to enhance public services.

Take a step back.

Professor GW Keeton was Dean of the Faculty of Laws at University College, London. In 1952 he published his book The Passing of Parliament, in which he expressed his amazement that the UK had an army of a million public servants. 60 years later the army has swollen to nearer six million. Power has been wrested by Whitehall from parliament. That was easy. Whitehall exists in a state of "administrative lawlessness" as Keeton called it. And money has been wrested from the people – Whitehall now commands a budget of about £700 billion p.a. It is a mercy that Prof Keeton didn't live to see that statistic. And that he never saw the craven media who today regard that as the minimum ante you have to put up to get into the government game.

Whitehall's success – six million staff and an annual income of £700 billion – bespeaks a ruthlessly rapacious cuckoo in the nest of the State. We are used to hearing about property bubbles and stock market bubbles and credit bubbles. But look at public expenditure. In 2000-01 total managed expenditure stood at £443.7 billion. By 2009-10 it had risen to £705.6 billion. Up 59% in real terms in 10 years with no commensurate improvement in outcomes. We're living in the midst of a public administration bubble along with all the other bubbles and like all the other bubbles it's got to burst.

How will it end?

No need to guess. Just open your eyes and look. Circumspice, as the Romans would say.

Some emperors driven mad by absolute power appoint their horse a senator. While others create ERG.

It's a very modern organisation, ERG, boasting the advantages of the very latest in management theory. ERG doesn't have departments or offices or desks or even units. It has clusters. Five of them. It comprises Corporate, Efficiency, Transformation, Growth and Projects clusters.

The Transformation cluster is headed by ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, the Executive Director of Digital, and ex-Rothschild man Ed Welsh, the Executive Director of Commercial Models. You couldn't make it up, you might think. But someone did.

In the decadent and degenerate hands of the Transformation cluster, "government" means making all public services digital by default. Which means making them all available on the web, and only on the web. The fact that about 10 million members of the public have never used the web and will become excluded by default doesn't deter the Transformation cluster. Those members of the public are just people. Whereas transformational government deals only with neatly governable electronic IDs. Neither is the Transformation cluster deterred by the fact that the web is a very dangerous place to be – it's the web which is important, not the people. The UK is, incidentally, according to the police, losing the war on cyber crime.

Judging by his published thoughts, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, regardless of the facts, in defiance of the facts, is impelled by a peculiar cluster of objectives: a weakness for whizzy graphics applications; admiration for NSTIC, the US National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace; devotion to Google; an obsession with making the UK more like Estonia; and a mystical belief in the redemptive properties of the web – "GOV.UK is not Government on the Internet", he says inscrutably, "but of the Internet".

Martha 'digital by default' Lane Fox CBE, 14 October 2010:

Revolution not Evolution

Make Directgov [= the Transformation cluster/GOV.UK] the government front end for all departments' transactional online services to citizens and businesses, with the teeth to mandate cross government solutions, set standards and force departments to improve citizens' experience of key transactions.

Change the model of government online publishing, by putting a new central team in Cabinet Office in absolute control of the overall user experience across all digital channels ...

Appoint a new CEO for Digital in the Cabinet Office with absolute authority over the user experience across all government online services (websites and APls) and the power to direct all government online spending.

I strongly suggest that the core Directgov team concentrates on service quality and that it should be the "citizens' champion with sharp teeth" for transactional service delivery.

Directgov should own the citizen experience of digital public services and be tasked with driving a 'service culture' across government which could, for example, challenge any policy and practice that undermines good service design.

It seems to me that the time is now to use the Internet to shift the lead in the design of services from the policy and legal teams to the end users.

Directgov SWAT teams ... should be given a remit to support and challenge departments and agencies ... We must give these SWAT teams the necessary support to challenge any policy and legal barriers which stop services being designed around user needs.

A new central commissioning team should take responsibility for the overall user experience on the government web estate, and should commission content from departmental experts. This content should then be published to a single Government website with a consistently excellent user experience.

Ultimately, departments should stop publishing to their own websites, and instead produce only content commissioned by this central commissioning team.

Ultimately it makes sense to the user for all Government digital services to reside under a single brand ...

... leadership on the digital communications and services agenda in the centre is too fragmented. I recommend that all digital teams in the Cabinet Office - including Digital Delivery, Digital Engagement and Directgov - are brought together under a new CEO for Digital.

This person should have the controls and powers to gain absolute authority over the user experience across all government online services ... and the power to direct all government online spend.

The CEO for Digital should also have the controls and powers to direct set and enforce standards across government departments ...

In order to make public services digital by default ERG must equip everyone with an electronic ID. Their Identity Assurance Programme is doomed to failure. That failure guarantees the failure of digital-by-default in general and it guarantees the failure of DWP's Universal Credit in particular.

DWP is one of our most powerful satrapies. The Department for Work and Pensions is the biggest-spending department in Whitehall.

Nevertheless, in the enervated sickness of the public administration bubble, the mighty DWP has ceded power to ERG.

DWP aren't alone. Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken's GOV.UK (of which, more later) is sometimes criticised as a mere re-branding of Whitehall. Every central government department of state is supposed to give up its own website. Each departmental website is to be subsumed by a single government domain, https://www.gov.uk. This process of enfeeblement is endorsed by Sir Gus's successors, Sir Jeremy Heywood and Sir Bob Kerslake, of whom you may have heard, and Richard Heaton, of whom you won't (apart, perhaps, from his re-Tweeting mistake).

The criticism couldn't be wronger. This is de-branding or dis-branding or un-branding. The identities of the separate satrapies are being erased and replaced by a single, amorphous, anonymous, Whitehall cloud without personality or attachment or allegiance or mission – no corp for there to be an esprit de.

Our very own Pravda Izvestia, the Transformation cluster will be the only publisher of all government news.

It is also to have the right of veto over policy – no policy which impairs the "user experience" of GOV.UK will be countenanced.

"Our design and creative teams will ensure a simple, consistent and beautiful experience for all users", trills ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken. But what is a "user experience"? It's not clear. The term is undefined – a serious omission given that the user experience whatever it is, is the touchstone of the Transformation cluster's work. But whatever it is, if the Executive Director of Digital (see above) determines by whatever means that the user experience is in danger, then he is duty-bound to ignore any fuddy-duddy old policy-makers who get in his way.

Similarly, if any dusty old laws, e.g. the laws governing data-sharing between departments, prove obstructive, they are to be ignored or changed. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, considers these laws to be muddled myths that need to be "busted".

These powers and others are all granted to the Transformation cluster by Martha Lane Fox CBE who designed the new Constitution and who remains chairman of the advisory board.

GOV.UK. Is it a bubble? Is it a cloud?

Never mind which. It is insubstantial and will burst or blow away leaving nothing behind it. It is bursting and blowing away before your very eyes. Now. With not even a body left behind to rest in peace.

Not all good news, Sir Richard?

Look again at his article. The governance of Whitehall is only one of the issues he raises.

Sir Richard is also concerned to ensure that we have cabinet government as opposed to Tony Blair's sofa government. And he asks how the home civil service can have any influence over the Prime Minister if its head is not also the Cabinet Secretary. Most central government departments (HMRC, the UK's tax farmer, is a big exception) are headed by a secretary of state who is in turn a member of the Cabinet. The influence of the departments on their secretaries of state and, through them, on the Cabinet and the Prime Minister is presumably, in Sir Richard's eyes, insufficient.

One might equally ask how the Prime Minister can have any influence on Whitehall. That seems to be a question which exercises him, witness his description of Whitehall officials as the "enemies of enterprise".

The other major issue Sir Richard raises is effective career planning for senior civil servants.

That looks like one of those problems which will not be solved but will simply go away.

Why would anyone join the civil service now if policy is to be determined by the website designers in the Transformation cluster? Why would anyone join the civil service now if ERG encourages the service to ignore the law by stigmatising it as no more than a collection of muddled myths? They won't, and the career development of senior civil servants in that case is the least of our worries.

Undignified and irremediably inane, ERG spells the end of Whitehall. What happens next?

OBITUARY: Whitehall 1947-2012

Some emperors driven mad by absolute power appoint their horse a senator.

While others create ERG.

This time last year Sir-Gus-now-Lord O'Donnell was still Cabinet Secretary, permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office and head of the home civil service. He stood down on 31 December 2011.

The month before, Sir Richard Mottram had published an article in Public Servant magazine, Whitehall shake-up – not all good news.

Sir Richard mentioned a number of the abiding problems faced by Whitehall, problems which existed when Sir Gus took over and which had still not been solved six years later. Among others, how do you govern Whitehall? The big central government departments look like independent satrapies. Silo government. Who, if anyone, is in charge? According to Sir Richard:

... the coalition government has given increasing priority to improving the efficiency of the civil service and the wider public service under a Cabinet Office group ...

Universal Credit, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken and Sir Jeremy Heywood

At last the technical problems with Universal Credit (UC) are beginning to be reported in the national press:

Universal Credit is due to replace scores of individual benefits from next year, simplifying claims and allowing claimants to keep more of their benefits when they take paid work. The regime will be internet-based, with ministers intending that most claimants apply and report a change in circumstances online. Appearing before a Commons inquiry into the reform, Lord Freud, the welfare reform minister, was asked what was the biggest risk to the programme. “I’ll say what the challenges are, what we need to get right: to get the security system working properly,” he said. Private security companies will be commissioned to develop a system of “identity assurance” to check that only real claimants can get benefits. “That’s one of the biggest challenges,” said Lord Freud.

Who's in charge of identity assurance? The Cabinet Office. More specifically, the Government Digital Service (GDS). Why is identity assurance one of Lord Freud's "biggest challenges"? Because there is no identity assurance available to UC or any other public service. Lots of talk. Lots of blogging. No identity assurance.

Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken is the executive director of government digital services and Senior Responsible Officer Owner of the identity assurance programme. He flew Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office Minister, out to California to see the future:

Andrew Nash, Google’s Director of Identity, ran us through the current issues facing identity.He explained how Google aim to grow and be part of an ecosystem of identify providers, and encouraged the UK Government to play its part in a federated system. The UK ID Assurance team and Google agreed to work more closely to define our strategy – so look out for future announcements. Andrew also took the opportunity to walk the Minister through the Identity ecosystem.

He may have walked through the "Identity ecosystem" but ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken hasn't produced an identity assurance system that DWP can use for UC.

That job has been left to Vince Cable's Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS). The idea is to incubate a whole new market of trusted companies whose business it is to maintain Personal Data Stores (PDSs). We will each have a number of PDSs, according to BIS, and these will allow us to transact with government. PDSs will allow us to register for UC, for example, and for benefits to be paid computer-to-computer, with no messy human intervention adding "friction" to the system.

What companies? Who is going to maintain all these PDSs? BIS don't say. They don't say who and they don't say when. How long does it take to grow a mature identity assurance ecosystem from scratch? How long can UC wait?

UC faces any number of political problems. They may or may not be solved. Even if they are, UC will still be snookered by an unworkable IT system design. That design must have been agreed by Iain Duncan Smith's officials at DWP. They must have agreed to implement GDS's infantile science fiction ideas. And BIS must bravely have agreed to try to create a PDS industry overnight.

Obviously Iain Duncan Smith will get the blame for the failure of UC. And that failure will be a tragedy. The opportunity for people to escape the poverty trap will have been lost. If work can't be made to pay, says Frank Field, then the resulting state of dependency will rot people's souls.

But the failure is Whitehall's. N [please see comments below] And according to the Spectator, that failure is countenanced and even encouraged right from the top, by Sir Jeremy Heywood, Cabinet Secretary:

Sir Jeremy Heywood, the civil servant effectively running Britain, is letting it be known that he is ‘sceptical’ about Duncan Smith’s mission. This, in Whitehall, is the equivalent of a go-slow order. Civil servants will not waste time or personal capital on anything likely to join the identity cards and the NHS supercomputer in the graveyard of ministerial follies. ... [David Cameron] should throw his weight behind Duncan Smith rather than seeking to remove him. He ought to remind Sir Jeremy that, as head of the civil service, he is paid not to be ‘sceptical’ about government policy but to implement it. Welfare reform is the thorniest problem in government, which is why so many ministers have ignored it. It is far safer, politically, to leave the poor to rot.

Universal Credit, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken and Sir Jeremy Heywood

At last the technical problems with Universal Credit (UC) are beginning to be reported in the national press:

Universal Credit is due to replace scores of individual benefits from next year, simplifying claims and allowing claimants to keep more of their benefits when they take paid work. The regime will be internet-based, with ministers intending that most claimants apply and report a change in circumstances online. Appearing before a Commons inquiry into the reform, Lord Freud, the welfare reform minister, was asked what was the biggest risk to the programme. “I’ll say what the challenges are, what we need to get right: to get the security system working properly,” he said. Private security companies will be commissioned to develop a system of “identity assurance” to check that only real claimants can get benefits. “That’s one of the biggest challenges,” said Lord Freud.

Who's in charge of identity assurance? The Cabinet Office. More specifically, the Government Digital Service (GDS). Why is identity assurance one of Lord Freud's "biggest challenges"? Because there is no identity assurance available to UC or any other public service. Lots of talk. Lots of blogging. No identity assurance.

Cloud computing – we hold these truths to be self-evident ... and we're plumb wrong

Much of government IT is a mess.

That's the problem.

And cloud computing is the solution. What the UK Constitution needs is a government cloud, a G-Cloud.

Is that true? You know it is – it's a no-brainer.

Cloud computing is cheaper than the alternative and it always will be. You know that. It's more flexible – you can spin up new capacity whenever volumes rise, just like that, and switch it off at no cost the minute it's not needed. You don't need to worry, the level of security is higher than could be achieved in-house, someone else does the backups for you and keeps all the applications you have licences for up to date.

That's the sales pitch of the big suppliers of cloud computing services – Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, ... And coincidentally it's the UK government's IT strategy. There can be no doubt.

Now consider this 6 August 2012 article in Wired magazine by Mat Honan:

In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed. First my Google account was taken over, then deleted. Next my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages. And worst of all, my AppleID account was broken into, and my hackers used it to remotely erase all of the data on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook. In many ways, this was all my fault. My accounts were daisy-chained together. Getting into Amazon let my hackers get into my Apple ID account, which helped them get into Gmail, which gave them access to Twitter. Had I used two-factor authentication for my Google account, it’s possible that none of this would have happened, because their ultimate goal was always to take over my Twitter account and wreak havoc. Lulz. Had I been regularly backing up the data on my MacBook, I wouldn’t have had to worry about losing more than a year’s worth of photos, covering the entire lifespan of my daughter, or documents and e-mails that I had stored in no other location. Those security lapses are my fault, and I deeply, deeply regret them. But what happened to me exposes vital security flaws in several customer service systems, most notably Apple’s and Amazon’s ...

Where was Apple's security? And Amazon's? Where were their backups? Why can't they just go to their backups and retrieve Mr Honan's digital life?

Still. Don't let this dent your confidence in G-Cloud.

Cloud computing – we hold these truths to be self-evident ... and we're plumb wrong

Much of government IT is a mess.

That's the problem.

And cloud computing is the solution. What the UK Constitution needs is a government cloud, a G-Cloud.

Is that true? You know it is – it's a no-brainer.

Cloud computing is cheaper than the alternative and it always will be. You know that. It's more flexible – you can spin up new capacity whenever volumes rise, just like that, and switch it off at no cost the minute it's not needed. You don't need to worry, the level of security is higher than could be achieved in-house, someone else does the backups for you and keeps all the applications you have licences for up to date.

That's the sales pitch of the big suppliers of cloud computing services – Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, ... And coincidentally it's the UK government's IT strategy. There can be no doubt.

Now consider this 6 August 2012 article in Wired magazine by Mat Honan:

Home Office soon to be Ghoshless

Home Office press release, 13 August 2012:

Dame Helen Ghosh to leave civil service Dame Helen Ghosh DCB is to step down as Permanent Secretary of the Home Office to take up the role of Director General of the National Trust, she announced today. Dame Helen will leave the department in September after a 33 year career in the civil service ... Head of the Civil Service Sir Bob Kerslake said: 'As Permanent Secretary at Defra and the Home Office, Helen has delivered extraordinary change including departmental reform, the independent UK Border Force and support for the successful London Olympics. 'She has been an inspiring leader, who has made a very strong corporate contribution, both via the Civil Service Board, leading the capability strand of our Civil Service Reform Programme and as a vibrant role model and champion of talent and diversity. I wish her every success in her new leadership role at the National Trust.' Helen Kilpatrick, Director General of the Financial and Commercial Group, will stand in as interim Permanent Secretary until a replacement for Helen Ghosh is appointed.

National Trust press release, 13 August 2012:

Dame Helen Ghosh DCB will be the next Director-General of the National Trust ... She will take over from Fiona Reynolds who has been at the helm for nearly 12 years ... Fiona Reynolds ... moves on to become Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 2013 ...

Emmanuel College past events, 6 March 2012:

London Drinks Café Koha in London’s Leicester Square once again played host to informal drinks on the evening of Tuesday 6th March ... The timing of the event meant that members were able to mark the sad passing of Lord St. John of Fawsley (which meant a wealth of affectionate anecdotes about his time as Master) and also celebrate the news from earlier in the day of the appointment of Dame Fiona Reynolds as our next Master.

Emmanuel can give six months notice of the Master's successor. The National Trust can give six weeks notice of the Director-General's successor. That is orderly and proper. The Home Office can't tell us who Dame Helen's successor will be, six weeks or so before she leaves. That looks messy – lessons there for Sir Bob from Emma and the NT.

Dame Helen's move could hardly be announced before the Olympics were over. They didn't exactly wait for long after the closing ceremony, though, did they.

The Sunday Times told us on 15 July 2012:

Originally, it was decided that 10,000 guards, including any military contingent, would be required on peak days. By December, that figure was revised up to 23,700 with G4S providing 13,700 trained guards, including 3,300 students. Dame Helen Ghosh, the Home Office permanent secretary, admitted last December that the initial estimate had been a “finger in the air” estimate, based on information from the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester and the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin.

That finger in the air was Sir David Normington's, Dame Helen's slippery predecessor. He left her a mess. She didn't sort it out and the army had to be called in at undignified short notice.

The independent UK Border Force, for the creation of which Sir Bob praises Dame Helen, was the clumsy response to an absolute fiasco – the Brodie Clark affair.

Dame Helen will find it very different working with the great Simon Jenkins at the National Trust after decades of more or less biddable ministers.

Who called the shots in what looks like Dame Helen's ejection? Ministers? Maybe. Sir Bob Kerslake? Sir Jeremy Heywood? Maybe. Considerable power lies with the suppliers these days, IBM, CapGemini, HP, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Fujitsu, CSC, Atos and suchlike. Did they want her out? Was she standing up to them? Will we miss her as a result? None of us on the outside has a clue what's going on. We are left making convoluted surmises like this because so much of Whitehall is cloaked in secrecy. That is not, in the end, did they but know it, to the advantage of senior civil servants.

And for us, the public? Dame Helen's successor? We'll see. Let's hope for one who is more open with the Home Affairs Committee and, indeed, the public.

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BBC Radio 4, Profile: Dame Helen Ghosh

Home Office soon to be Ghoshless

Home Office press release, 13 August 2012:

Dame Helen Ghosh to leave civil service Dame Helen Ghosh DCB is to step down as Permanent Secretary of the Home Office to take up the role of Director General of the National Trust, she announced today. Dame Helen will leave the department in September after a 33 year career in the civil service ... Head of the Civil Service Sir Bob Kerslake said: 'As Permanent Secretary at Defra and the Home Office, Helen has delivered extraordinary change including departmental reform, the independent UK Border Force and support for the successful London Olympics. 'She has been an inspiring leader, who has made a very strong corporate contribution, both via the Civil Service Board, leading the capability strand of our Civil Service Reform Programme and as a vibrant role model and champion of talent and diversity. I wish her every success in her new leadership role at the National Trust.' Helen Kilpatrick, Director General of the Financial and Commercial Group, will stand in as interim Permanent Secretary until a replacement for Helen Ghosh is appointed.

National Trust press release, 13 August 2012:

The whiff of cordite in Whitehall 2

They spend about £700 billion of our money every year, much of it wasted. Whitehall's mandarins exercise the prerogatives previously reserved to Stuart kings. Their harlot power is jealously guarded, while all responsibility is taken by more or less hapless ministers. Challenges come and go. They're usually seen off, the politicians give up and we the public carry on paying.

You may as well know that the whiff is back, there is once again cordite in Whitehall. Francis Maude thinks that if ministers are to take responsibility, then they really ought to have some say in which officials manage the political initiatives and the associated budgets. The Guardian has the story – Ministers to be given say in civil service appraisals. So does Public Servant magazine – Ministers are to manage the Civil Service:

Maude's preference now is that ministers be involved in Civil Service appraisals and be given powers to hire and fire staff. And expert advice on how to ensure maximum efficiency should be sought from beyond Britain's shores if necessary.

Francis Maude v. the massed ranks of the senior civil service?

Good luck, Mr Maude.

The whiff of cordite in Whitehall 2

They spend about £700 billion of our money every year, much of it wasted. Whitehall's mandarins exercise the prerogatives previously reserved to Stuart kings. Their harlot power is jealously guarded, while all responsibility is taken by more or less hapless ministers. Challenges come and go. They're usually seen off, the politicians give up and we the public carry on paying.

You may as well know that the whiff is back, there is once again cordite in Whitehall. Francis Maude thinks that if ministers are to take responsibility, then they really ought to have some say in which officials manage the political initiatives and the associated budgets. The Guardian has the story – Ministers to be given say in civil service appraisals. So does Public Servant magazine – Ministers are to manage the Civil Service:

Maude's preference now is that ministers be involved in Civil Service appraisals and be given powers to hire and fire staff. And expert advice on how to ensure maximum efficiency should be sought from beyond Britain's shores if necessary.

Francis Maude v. the massed ranks of the senior civil service?

Good luck, Mr Maude.

Whither the accountability of civil servants?

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster was Cabinet Secretary between 1979 and 1987. He's the one who came up with the phrase "economical with the actualité" in connection with the Peter Wright/Spycatcher business.

Great wordsmith that he is, he's done it again – here's his vintage encapsulation of Whitehall wisdom, a gem, one to treasure, quoted in yesterday's Times, Mandarins’ warning over Civil Service ‘politicisation’:

Lord Armstrong insisted that calling civil servants before committees to blame them for the failure of major projects would not accord with the principles of “natural justice”.

Turns out the House of Lords Constitution Committee is taking evidence on these upstart select committees being disobliging to Whitehall officials.

Margaret Hodge at the Public Accounts Committee seems to have particularly upset their Eminences, also Bernard Jenkin at the Public Administration Select Committee. They can't be too pleased with Keith Vaz and his Home Affairs Committee either, forever moaning about having information withheld from them, and recently Andrew Tyrie's Treasury Select Committee ditto.

The Chairman of the Lords Committee is Baroness Jay and what she's finding is that when you poke a stick in the wasps' nest, out come furious buzzing issues like responsibility and accountability and politicisation and openness and policy and delivery and management and budgeting and contractors and consultants and SpAds and NDPBs and ALBs and public service and, don't forget, natural justice. It's fearful.

You can read all about it in the written evidence, Rt Hon Peter Riddell's contribution (pp.19-22) highly recommended.

And you can watch the General Secretary of the First Division Association give evidence to the Committee, followed by four of his lowliest members – Lord Armstrong (see above), Lord Wilson, Lord Turnbull and Sir-Gus-now-Lord O'Donnell – on two hours of the most peculiar-but-fascinating TV.

Lord Turnbull gives it as his opinion that no-one will ever find out who was responsible for failure, so there's no point these idiotic select committees asking.

And the combative O'Donnell wants to know about the accountability of the select committees, who are they responsible to and what are their objectives?

Baroness Jay is in for a fine old time, trying to write up her findings but, in summary, the gist seems to be this – accountability and responsibility need to be distinguished but they can't be defined, no-one's responsible for anything, whatever "responsible" means, and the select committees don't need any new powers to do their job, whatever that is and anyway it's probably unconstitutional, because the present rules work perfectly well and much better than the Americans'.

It's an almost immaculate defence of the status quo and apparently we have testimony from Sir David "Shifty" Normington to look forward to in the final report. But there is just the tiniest Hodge-shaped chink detectable in the armour.

What their lordships seem to be saying is that when we taxpayers hand over our £700 billion to Whitehall for their safekeeping every year, there is absolutely no way of knowing how it will be spent or wasted because no-one is in charge, no-one has a clue what's going on, not even our highly esteemed senior civil servants who are scarcely paid a bean for labouring away at the coalface of public service, it would be a breach of natural justice to expect them to and it's no-one's fault except possibly ministers, who are clueless, and would someone please rid us of Margaret Hodge, PDQ.

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Updated 16 February 2015

"... would someone please rid us of Margaret Hodge, PDQ". That was 2½ years ago. Now the magnificent Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee is standing down after five years and she has delivered a valedictory speech recording Whitehall's attempt to get the PAC closed down.

She likens Whitehall to a collection of Freemasons and accuses it of standing in the way of the high quality public services we want, need, deserve and pay for.

Long sections of her speech are published by the excellent Tony Collins – please read.

Whither the accountability of civil servants?

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster was Cabinet Secretary between 1979 and 1987. He's the one who came up with the phrase "economical with the actualité" in connection with the Peter Wright/Spycatcher business.

Great wordsmith that he is, he's done it again – here's his vintage encapsulation of Whitehall wisdom, a gem, one to treasure, quoted in yesterday's Times, Mandarins’ warning over Civil Service ‘politicisation’:

Lord Armstrong insisted that calling civil servants before committees to blame them for the failure of major projects would not accord with the principles of “natural justice”.

The Home Office – what do they do all day?

5 July 2005 – the UK wins the right to host the 2012 Olympics©®™. 12 July 2012, 2,564 days later, Olympic security contractor G4S told ministers only yesterday it could not fulfil brief:

On Monday, the Home Secretary assured the House of Commons that she was "confident" that the private company would be able to deliver out its commitments in full. Labour accused the Home Office of presiding over a "shambles," after it emerged that 3,500 additional troops would now be needed to fill in for a shortfall in the number of security guards that G4S had been able to recruit.

We have had five Home Secretaries in the past seven years and they have a huge retinue of officials whose job it is to manage the arrangements for the Olympics including security.

Officials must have had the odd progress meeting with G4S. What else can they have done for the past 2,564 days? What did they discuss at these meetings? "Are the security arrangements all in place?" seems like one of the more obvious topics to broach. But no, if the headline above is to be believed, the Home Office only discovered the day before yesterday that there is a problem.

"The disgraceful state of public administration in the UK" – where have we seen that phrase before?

The Home Office – what do they do all day?

5 July 2005 – the UK wins the right to host the 2012 Olympics©®™. 12 July 2012, 2,564 days later, Olympic security contractor G4S told ministers only yesterday it could not fulfil brief:

On Monday, the Home Secretary assured the House of Commons that she was "confident" that the private company would be able to deliver out its commitments in full. Labour accused the Home Office of presiding over a "shambles," after it emerged that 3,500 additional troops would now be needed to fill in for a shortfall in the number of security guards that G4S had been able to recruit.

We have had five Home Secretaries in the past seven years and they have a huge retinue of officials whose job it is to manage the arrangements for the Olympics including security.

Officials must have had the odd progress meeting with G4S. What else can they have done for the past 2,564 days? What did they discuss at these meetings? "Are the security arrangements all in place?" seems like one of the more obvious topics to broach. But no, if the headline above is to be believed, the Home Office only discovered the day before yesterday that there is a problem.

"The disgraceful state of public administration in the UK" – where have we seen that phrase before?

Whitehall's power without responsibility

On 12 June 2012, the Institute for Government hosted a seminar on leadership which consisted of a conversation between Sir-Gus-now-Lord O'Donnell (GOD) and his oppo in Australia, Terry Moran. They were due to discuss "the role of leadership in reform, the challenges of making change happen in public service and leading through crises".

Hat tip: Tony Collins, Timetable for HMRC’s work on Universal Credit is “challenging” says NAO:

Sadly it is no surprise that the NAO has found substantial problems with the HMRC’s accounts. This year has seen a litany of tax errors and scandals come to light with mistakes made at the most senior level from the Permanent Secretary for Tax downwards. The sheer scale of waste and mismanagement at HMRC never ceases to shock me. Without even mentioning the tax gap, in 2011-12 the Department wrote off a staggering £5.2 billion of tax owed, overpaid nearly £2.5 billion in tax credits due to fraud and error and underpaid around £290 million. In some areas the Department is moving in the right direction and has made progress to implement improvement plans. But the Department is still plagued by IT problems; limiting, for example, its ability to link together the debts owed by tax payers across different tax streams. With its long history of large scale IT failures, the Department needs to get a grip before it introduces its new real time PAYE information systems and begins the high-risk move from tax credits to the Universal Credit.

That was Margaret Hodge, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, commenting on the National Audit Office report on HMRC's 2011-12 accounts.

("Challenging", of course, means impossible.)

The event was reported next day by Sue Cameron in the Telegraph, Whitehall’s knights joust over public service reform:

"Private sector people who come into Whitehall get a big shiny star," remarked Gus O’Donnell, Britain’s former top civil servant this week, adding: "Ministers think they’re wonderful." He said it with a rueful smile. Lord O’Donnell reckons that private sector executives are not always as good as they are cracked up to be by some ministers. "I tried to bring in more people from outside and on the whole they did slightly worse than other civil servants," he told a seminar on leadership at the Institute for Government (IfG) in London. "Often they took very big pay cuts to come in. You’d see some of them and you’d think… what was all that about?"

GOD was in charge of Whitehall from 2005 to 2011. How well did He do? Take a look at Margaret Hodge's verdict alongside, "substantial problems ... litany of tax errors and scandals ... mistakes made at the most senior level ... sheer scale of waste and mismanagement ... wrote off a staggering ... overpaid ... underpaid ... plagued by IT problems ... long history of large scale IT failures ...".

She's talking about HMRC, just one of GOD's satrapies. Just one of His satrapies where perhaps He failed to show leadership in reform, where the challenges of making change happen seem to have been too much even for Him and the public are left to pay for the crises.

Smile ruefully. And next time someone alludes to His ability to walk on water, just ask them, what was all that about?

According to Ms Cameron, it's all about the plans to reform the civil service and particularly, the plans to outsource more policy-making to the private sector. Clearly GOD disapproves.

The reform plan is said to be the work of Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude and Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the home civil service. Sir Jeremy Heywood, the feline Cabinet Secretary, is quoted as saying of Sir Bob that he is "doing his best at a new level".

Who knows how the relationship between the knights will develop over the next few years? For the moment, "doing his best at a new level" looks more like scratch-your-eyes-out than jousting.

No doubt about the relationship between GOD and Bernard Jenkin. Having looked forward to an enjoyable assault on the capabilities of private sector executives, GOD's heart must have sunk when he saw Jenkin in the IfG audience:

At the IfG, Lord O’Donnell was asked by Bernard Jenkin, Tory chairman of the Commons public administration select committee, about the billions wasted on public sector projects, with nobody resigning or taking the blame and ministers and civil servants sheltering behind each other.

In Sue Cameron's account, by way of a response GOD started by raving about scope creep:

Lord O’Donnell said there was a “straightforward” way to cope with this. The reason major projects went off track was because ministers wanted changes.

Complete nonsense. Lazy thinking. There's nothing wrong with scope creep, it's the sign of a healthy and useful system in its prime, it just needs managing. GOD must know that. His normally smoothly functioning circuits must have been shorted by the languid Mr Jenkin's question.

That's where the jousting was taking place – between GOD and Jenkin, and GOD was unhorsed.

"Straightforward"? In the Whitehall temple to deviousness it's hard to imagine a greater insult for a permanent secretary, let alone a Cabinet Secretary.

The first thing any senior civil servant will tell you is that the minister wants what the permanent secretary tells him he wants (the masculine includes the feminine). And if the minister insists on wanting something else, then that will be sabotaged. Completely. While leaving no incriminating traces.

It's in the Sue Cameron article as well but the extent to which GOD was wrong-footed by Jenkin's question is clearer in PublicService.co.uk's article about the same encounter, "Only accountable if you're responsible":

The former Cabinet Secretary told an Institute for Government event on leadership and reform that he is not opposed to the idea of senior civil servants being held to account by select committees ... He said: "I would like to have the situation where we have public servants appearing in front of select committees for things that they are really responsible for, but to be really responsible you have got to have the power ..."

The only way this argument of GOD's works is if He believes that senior civil servants are not currently responsible. That their job is not a responsible job. That senior civil servants should not currently be called to account by Parliament because they are doing only a menial factotum's job.

He can't believe that. It's not true. And it's the opposite of what He would normally be expected to argue, viz. that the country is lucky to enjoy such a capable Executive branch of government, dominated by Whitehall. And that, in turn, means that the senior civil service must be accountable.

A bad day's work for Him, that IfG seminar was another nail in the coffin of GOD's chances of being the next Governor of the Bank of England.

That's His problem.

The public's problem, clearly and repeatedly identified by Margaret Hodge and Patrick Jenkin, is that our senior civil service wastes billions of pounds of our money. Whitehall's misfeasance in public office has already survived 30 years of outsourcing to the private sector and of recruiting private sector people and methodologies. More private sector involvement isn't going to solve the problem.

Neither is moving to cloud computing or using so-called "agile" software engineering methods or making public services digital by default.

That's all flannel. Whitehall has demonstrated for decades that it is quite agile enough to waste public money digitally, by default, in a cloud or anywhere else. The infantile fascination with technology offers no salvation, only automated misfeasance.

The solution, also clearly and repeatedly identified by Margaret Hodge and Patrick Jenkin, lies in accountability. More openness, earlier in the life of Government initiatives. Whitehall must acknowledge the supremacy of Parliament. They must be open with Parliament.

GOD must know that and like an old-style union baron he obtusely refuses to accept it. But He's gone now. He's retired, even if He doesn't realise it.

It's up to Sir Jeremy and Sir Bob. They're the leaders now. We don't want them jousting. Or hissing at each other. We want them to make Whitehall obey the Constitution. That will be good for Whitehall as well as the public. Sir Jeremy and Sir Bob must make Whitehall accountable. That is their duty.

Whitehall's power without responsibility

On 12 June 2012, the Institute for Government hosted a seminar on leadership which consisted of a conversation between Sir-Gus-now-Lord O'Donnell (GOD) and his oppo in Australia, Terry Moran. They were due to discuss "the role of leadership in reform, the challenges of making change happen in public service and leading through crises".

Heywood's Whitehall – no longer economical with the actualité

What?

Top civil servant: Britain faces decade of cuts?

That's what it says in the Times:

The most senior civil servant in the country has warned of a decade of spending cuts. Sir Jeremy Heywood said the Government was only a quarter of the way through its austerity programme, the BBC reported. Speaking to civil servants at Westminster, Sir Jeremy warned that spending restraint could last “seven, eight, maybe ten years”. The Cabinet Secretary’s prediction echoes warnings by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) earlier this year that the Coalition’s austerity programme would be insufficient to bring the deficit down to “prudent” levels.

Prudent levels? Ten years of cuts?

Has Sir Jeremy gone native?

Has he forgotten the fine example of Sir-Gus-now-Lord O'Donnell who quite unmistakably told us that boom and bust had been abolished in the UK and that opportunities for all are available as a result? Now how is the unfortunate St Augustine supposed to lay his healing hands on the Governorship of the Bank of England?

There are entire countries currently voting against austerity – and presumably in favour of water running uphill – and Sir Jeremy chooses this moment, of all moments, to make it clear that if you get in the shower you're going to get wet?

Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are trying to build an opposition policy based on the idea that austerity is counter-productive and unnecessary. If Sir Jeremy insists that austerity is, quite simply, reality, what are the poor Eds to do?

How can they face François Hollande when he nips over to buy a flat in South Ken with his paramour Mme Rottweiler?

What do they say when Barack rings up for a spot of advice on the Presidential election campaign?

And most tragic of all, how are the Guardian supposed to fill their op-ed pages? Even 1,000 more Jimmy Carrs repenting would only raise a crummy billion pounds in extra revenue – a drop in the ocean, barely one-fiftieth of the annual interest bill on our national debt of a trillion pounds.

It wouldn't even help all that much if the Guardian themselves forswore their tax avoidance arrangements with Apax Partners and started paying their fair share.

Sir Jeremy – it's very brave of you, of course, very brave indeed, but what were you thinking of?

(Moody's poised to downgrade UK's banks – truth-telling becomes fashionable.)

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Cribsheet:
Just to remind the younger readers how successful Gus was, running the economy with his glove-puppets Brown and Balls, the Times article says:

Despite the deficit-reduction programme, the European Commission predicts Britain’s deficit will reach 6.5 per cent of GDP in 2013, higher than any other EU state bar Greece with 8.4 per cent and Ireland at 7.5 per cent.

Not the ideal CV, surely, for the supplicant would-be next Governor of the Bank of England.

Heywood's Whitehall – no longer economical with the actualité

What?

Top civil servant: Britain faces decade of cuts?

That's what it says in the Times:

The most senior civil servant in the country has warned of a decade of spending cuts. Sir Jeremy Heywood said the Government was only a quarter of the way through its austerity programme, the BBC reported. Speaking to civil servants at Westminster, Sir Jeremy warned that spending restraint could last “seven, eight, maybe ten years”. The Cabinet Secretary’s prediction echoes warnings by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) earlier this year that the Coalition’s austerity programme would be insufficient to bring the deficit down to “prudent” levels.

Prudent levels? Ten years of cuts?

Has Sir Jeremy gone native?

Has he forgotten the fine example of Sir-Gus-now-Lord O'Donnell who quite unmistakably told us that boom and bust had been abolished in the UK and that opportunities for all are available as a result? Now how is the unfortunate St Augustine supposed to lay his healing hands on the Governorship of the Bank of England?