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 ...

Whitehall governance, and GDS's fantasy strategy

For some time now, the Government Digital Service (GDS) have made the meaning of their digital-by-default agenda clear – they want the UK to be like Estonia.

It is thanks to the fact that practically every service in Estonia is delivered over the web that, back in 2007, Russia was able to bring the country to its knees in a matter of days. If GDS succeed with their "modernisation" plans, there will be nothing to stop that happening here in the UK.

GDS are in awe of the financial success and popularity of Apple, Amazon, eBay/PayPal, Google and Facebook. With no experience of government behind them, the over-promoted software engineers at the head of GDS want to bring their heroes' tricks to the delivery of public services in the UK.

Sensible people will see Facebook et al as latter-day Pied Pipers of Hamelin – sensible people, including the tens of thousands of public servants who will be laid off and replaced by GDS's computers when government is, as they say, "transformed".

Many of these organisations are famous for avoiding tax on their UK profits and for using their near-monopolies to tyrannise their suppliers and to milk their customers. But GDS somehow maintain their naïve veneration and on 6 November 2012 they published their Government Digital Strategy.

This fantasy strategy is an elaboration of Martha Lane Fox's ideas, set out in her October 2010 letter to Francis Maude, Directgov 2010 and beyond: revolution not evolution. Ms Lane Fox is the Prime Minister's digital champion, she's a historian, and when she says "revolution" she means it.

Her revolutionary fervour is carried over into last week's GDS strategy, which Sir Bob Kerslake – head of the home civil service, permanent secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and previously the chief executive of first the London Borough of Hounslow and then Sheffield City Council – has greeted with a post on GDS's blog, Welcoming the Digital Strategy:

Our reform plan also made a clear commitment to improve the quality of the government’s digital services, and to do this by publishing a Government Digital Strategy setting out how we would support the transformation of digital services [how does publishing a wishlist improve the quality of public services?]. We fulfilled that commitment yesterday with the launch of the Government Digital Strategy, Digital Efficiency Report and Digital Landscape Report and I very much welcome their publication.

But why? Why does Sir Bob "welcome" this emmental cheese of a strategy? It's full of holes. Consider the governance of Whitehall for example.

In 1952 Professor GW Keeton published his book The Passing of Parliament. Keeton was Dean of the Faculty of Laws at University College, London, and according to him:

The relentless growth in size and functions of the Department of State and the relatively high level in calibre of those who staff them, coupled with the steady decline in importance of and function of MPs, has led to a gradual transfer of power and influence from the floor of the House of Commons to the private rooms of permanent civil servants.

60 years later, there are still Whitehall outsiders who believe that politicians make policy. Mainly political journalists, deeply conservative people with a love of tradition and an antique belief in the supremacy of parliament. No-one else believes it.

A few outsiders, unpleasant cynics, the awkward squad, are convinced that policy is made by the European Commission or big business or the trades unions or the US military or the Church of England. But the nice outsiders, the majority, have caught up with Keeton and Yes Minister and for them, policy is made by Sir/Dame Humphreys with a First in Greats.

Apparently the nice outsiders are wrong. Apparently the tail is wagging the dog and policy is made by GDS website designers, who also control the purse-strings and to whom the rest of Whitehall defers.

Back in October 2010 Martha Lane Fox wrote:

[GDS] 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 ... [GDS] 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 ... I recommend that all digital teams in the Cabinet Office - including Digital Delivery, Digital Engagement and [GDS] - 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 ...

Last week's Government Digital Strategy says:

Cabinet Office will help departments to recruit suitably skilled individuals. Newly appointed Service Managers will be supported by Cabinet Office through a specialist training programme run by the Government Digital Service. This will include the hands-on process of designing and prototyping a digital service ... Government digital services are inconsistent and often do not meet the standards that users expect. To ensure that users receive a consistently high-quality digital experience from government, Cabinet Office will develop a service standard for all digital services. No new or redesigned service will go live unless they meet this standard ... Cabinet Office will lead in the definition and delivery of a range of common cross-government technology platforms, in consultation with departments to ensure they meet business needs. These will underpin the new generation of digital services. Departments will be expected to use these for new and redesigned services, unless a specific case for exemption is agreed ... The guidance and tools supporting the [digital by default] standard will help service owners to design trusted, cost-effective government services that are embraced by users and meet their needs first time. Government Digital Service will ensure there is a common understanding across government of what outcomes are required to meet the standard. This understanding must be shared by everyone involved in the development and life of a new or redesigned digital service ... A new Digital Leaders Network was established in early 2012 to drive forward the digital agenda across government. The network is run by the Government Digital Service ...

Who, in GDS, as a matter of interest, is responsible for the nation's education policy? Or transport policy? What rank do GDS-trained "Digital Leaders" enjoy at the MoD?

Will we soon see GDS SWAT teams patrolling the Ministry of Justice and terrorising its denizens into standardisation? Will HM Treasury ring ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken and ask permission every time they want to spend a bob or two? Will the Department of Health really trust GDS to recruit staff for them? (No.) Will HMRC really hold up a web enhancement to their tax-farming implements because GDS tell them to?

The Home Office have a ruinously expensive contract with CSC to develop and maintain the nation's passport application website. What is GDS's locus there? How can they intervene? They don't have the contract – CSC do.

Suppose that GDS actually had all the power suggested by Martha Lane Fox and the Government Digital Strategy. Are they ready to accept the responsibility that comes with it? There are three references to accountability in the strategy document. But what do they amount to? Will anyone be fined? Or demoted? Or fired? Or is "accountability" just a word?

Whitehall departments were meant to co-operate with the Home Office on the ID cards scheme. They said they would co-operate. But according to BBC Radio 4's File on 4 programme on the subject, July/August 2007, when it came to it, either the departments sent someone too junior to the meetings or they sent no-one at all.

"Silo government" they call it in the BBC programme, and something similar put paid to the Cabinet Office's 2005 Transformational Government plan. Co-operation evaporated. GDS's digital-by-default agenda is Transformational Government MK 2 and the same outcome must be expected – co-operation will evaporate.

To us outsiders, Whitehall looks like a set of independent, powerful satrapies with no emperor in control in the centre. The engaging Sir Richard Mottram effectively said as much in his review of the handover from Sir-Gus-now-Lord O'Donnell to the new dispensation.

The repeated attempt to take control of the satraps has always failed, Sir Richard suggests. What reason is there to believe that the time has come now for the empire of the website designer?

Where there should be answers to these questions in the Government Digital Strategy there are just holes. Revolution is proposed with no justification. And yet Sir Bob, the head of the home civil service, welcomes this fantasy.

Whitehall governance, and GDS's fantasy strategy

For some time now, the Government Digital Service (GDS) have made the meaning of their digital-by-default agenda clear – they want the UK to be like Estonia.

It is thanks to the fact that practically every service in Estonia is delivered over the web that, back in 2007, Russia was able to bring the country to its knees in a matter of days. If GDS succeed with their "modernisation" plans, there will be nothing to stop that happening here in the UK.

GDS are in awe of the financial success and popularity of Apple, Amazon, eBay/PayPal, Google and Facebook. With no experience of government behind them, the over-promoted software engineers at the head of GDS want to bring their heroes' tricks to the delivery of public services in the UK.

Sensible people will see Facebook et al as latter-day Pied Pipers of Hamelin – sensible people, including the tens of thousands of public servants who will be laid off and replaced by GDS's computers when government is, as they say, "transformed".

Many of these organisations are famous for avoiding tax on their UK profits and for using their near-monopolies to tyrannise their suppliers and to milk their customers. But GDS somehow maintain their naïve veneration and on 6 November 2012 they published their Government Digital Strategy.

This fantasy strategy is an elaboration of Martha Lane Fox's ideas, set out in her October 2010 letter to Francis Maude, Directgov 2010 and beyond: revolution not evolution. Ms Lane Fox is the Prime Minister's digital champion, she's a historian, and when she says "revolution" she means it.

Her revolutionary fervour is carried over into last week's GDS strategy, which Sir Bob Kerslake – head of the home civil service, permanent secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and previously the chief executive of first the London Borough of Hounslow and then Sheffield City Council – has greeted with a post on GDS's blog, Welcoming the Digital Strategy:

Our reform plan also made a clear commitment to improve the quality of the government’s digital services, and to do this by publishing a Government Digital Strategy setting out how we would support the transformation of digital services [how does publishing a wishlist improve the quality of public services?]. We fulfilled that commitment yesterday with the launch of the Government Digital Strategy, Digital Efficiency Report and Digital Landscape Report and I very much welcome their publication.

But why? Why does Sir Bob "welcome" this emmental cheese of a strategy? It's full of holes. Consider the governance of Whitehall for example.

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".

Festschrift: Sir Gus O'Donnell 3

GOD retires at the end of the year and the eulogies have started. We should be grateful according to the Times:

Prime ministers’ spouses these days, he thinks, require more official help. “They have some support. I suspect it probably should be a bit bigger ... we need to recognise that the role is a broader, more public role these days. The media pay more attention to them, what they’re wearing.” So would he like a dress allowance for spouses for public events and more staff support? “It would be good to get the spouses together and it would be good for there to be cross-party agreement on this sort of thing.” He doesn’t want to prescribe whether they need a cook or hairdresser. “It’s one of those things you’d have to think quite carefully about. Different people might want to handle it in different ways.” And he doesn’t want their retinue to grow too large. “Keeping prime ministers grounded in the real world matters a lot.”

What a nice man. He thinks of everything. This new way of being generous with other people's money is his parting shot. A warm feeling to remember him by.

That's not how Sir Richard Mottram will remember Sir Gus. Sir Richard identifies seven problems which beset Whitehall:

1. how to improve the efficiency of the civil service and the wider public service
2. how the Cabinet Office can take charge of that improvement in efficiency
3. how the centre (i.e. the Cabinet Office? Number 10? Not clear) can keep control of its satrapies, the various departments of state
4. how the head of the home civil service can have any influence on the Prime Minister if he is not also Cabinet Secretary and permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office
5. how to ensure cabinet government as opposed to Blair-style sofa government
6. how to provide effective career planning/talent management for senior civil servants
7. how to provide leadership for the civil service

Six of those problems – all except No.4 – were there before Sir Gus's arrival. He hasn't solved them. They're still there.

But at least the idea has been floated at last that the prime minister's spouse should have a hairdresser  or a cook paid for by the taxpayer.

Festschrift: Sir Gus O'Donnell 3

GOD retires at the end of the year and the eulogies have started. We should be grateful according to the Times:

Prime ministers’ spouses these days, he thinks, require more official help. “They have some support. I suspect it probably should be a bit bigger ... we need to recognise that the role is a broader, more public role these days. The media pay more attention to them, what they’re wearing.” So would he like a dress allowance for spouses for public events and more staff support? “It would be good to get the spouses together and it would be good for there to be cross-party agreement on this sort of thing.” He doesn’t want to prescribe whether they need a cook or hairdresser. “It’s one of those things you’d have to think quite carefully about. Different people might want to handle it in different ways.” And he doesn’t want their retinue to grow too large. “Keeping prime ministers grounded in the real world matters a lot.”

What a nice man. He thinks of everything. This new way of being generous with other people's money is his parting shot. A warm feeling to remember him by.

That's not how Sir Richard Mottram will remember Sir Gus. Sir Richard identifies seven problems which beset Whitehall:

1. how to improve the efficiency of the civil service and the wider public service
2. how the Cabinet Office can take charge of that improvement in efficiency
3. how the centre (i.e. the Cabinet Office? Number 10? Not clear) can keep control of its satrapies, the various departments of state
4. how the head of the home civil service can have any influence on the Prime Minister if he is not also Cabinet Secretary and permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office
5. how to ensure cabinet government as opposed to Blair-style sofa government
6. how to provide effective career planning/talent management for senior civil servants
7. how to provide leadership for the civil service

Six of those problems – all except No.4 – were there before Sir Gus's arrival. He hasn't solved them. They're still there.

But at least the idea has been floated at last that the prime minister's spouse should have a hairdresser  or a cook paid for by the taxpayer.

PerishTheThought: the public interest 2

In view of the impending retirement of Sir Gus O'Donnell, Sir Richard Mottram conducted a review of Whitehall and identified seven abiding problems, problems which existed before the advent of Sir Gus and which persist still.

One of those problems is for the Cabinet Office to take control of the big departments of state, which currently operate as autonomous fiefdoms or over-powerful satrapies, way beyond the control of politicians and beyond the control even of Sir Gus:

... 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 ...

On 21 November 2011, Francis Maude, Cabinet Office minister, gave a speech on The Crown and suppliers: a new way of working. Mr Maude considers several ways in which Whitehall makes procurement too difficult. Among others, he lights on the use of management consultants:

... too often in the past we have defaulted into a comfort zone of hiring external consultants to run any kind of complex procurements. This has two effects. It reduces the need and ability for public officials to develop the necessary skills. And it can happen that consultants being paid on day rates have no incentive to get procurements finished speedily, nor to drive simplicity. Far too many procurements feature absurdly over-prescriptive requirements. We should be procuring on the basis of the outcomes and outputs we seek ...

This practice of hiring management consultants has been followed "too often" to be in the public interest. What's the minister going to do about it?

... we will ensure that in future we focus on outputs and outcomes. And we now forbid the use of consultants in central government procurements without my express agreement.

Forbid? Express agreement? Let's hope so. The minister is quite right. But will the other departments of state seek his permission to hire management consultants? And abide by his decision to forbid it? Can Maude make it stick?

Francis "Glendower" Maude: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Sir Humphrey (shame it's not Percy) "Hotspur" Appleby: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?

That is the question.

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Hat tips: Tony Collins, W Shakespeare

PerishTheThought: the public interest 2

In view of the impending retirement of Sir Gus O'Donnell, Sir Richard Mottram conducted a review of Whitehall and identified seven abiding problems, problems which existed before the advent of Sir Gus and which persist still.

Whitehall – SNAFU

Sir Richard Mottram will be famous in some people's minds as the Permanent Secretary at the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions when 9/11, Stephen Byers, Jo "It's now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors' expenses?" Moore and Martin Sixsmith all happened at the same time, leading Sir Richard to deliver himself of his numinous SitRep:

We're all fucked. I'm fucked. You're fucked. The whole department is fucked. It's the biggest cock-up ever. We're all completely fucked.

When Sir Gus O'Donnell retires at the end of the year, the three jobs he combined will be split between three successors – Jeremy Heywood, Ian Watmore and Bob Kerslake. That is a Whitehall shake-up.

Sir Richard published an article in Public Servant magazine on 16 November 2011, Whitehall shake-up – not all good news, in which he lists the perennial Whitehall problems:

• how to improve the efficiency of the civil service and the wider public service
• how the Cabinet Office can take charge of that improvement in efficiency
• how the centre (i.e. the Cabinet Office? Number 10? Not clear) can keep control of its satrapies, the various departments of state
• how the head of the home civil service can have any influence on the Prime Minister if he is not also Cabinet Secretary and permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office
• how to ensure cabinet government as opposed to Blair-style sofa government
• how to provide effective career planning/talent management for senior civil servants
• how to provide leadership for the civil service

Sir Richard believes that splitting Sir Gus's job across three people is "not all good news", it won't help to solve the problems listed above.

He does not confront the fact that the present arrangement, with Sir Gus in charge of everything, has not worked well. It hasn't. Whitehall are not spending £710 billion of public money – this year alone – wisely. Some change is in order. Not necessarily this particular change.

He makes no reference to Bob Kerslake. His article may have been written before the announcement of Sir Bob's appointment.

He does take time out to have what could be interpreted as a bit of a swipe at Jeremy Heywood:

So is this unalloyed good news? For me there are two big reservations. Jeremy Heywood has outstanding personal qualities and skills and unrivalled experience at the centre. Indeed that is precisely where he has always worked, principally in private office roles at every level. So what became of the emphasis on seeking more effective policy implementation by ensuring policy people and delivery people had wider experience?

And, arguably, a swipe at Ian Watmore, who is not a career civil servant, rather a businessman-turned-civil servant:

It is also said that, had the reorganisation included a full-time head of the civil service, ministers would have wanted the post to be filled by a businessman – so, for the civil service, be careful what you wish for.

What Sir Richard is trying to tell us is that we're still all in a bit of a pickle.

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Updated 16.7.14

971 days later:

With the removal of Sir Bob Kerslake, the reform of the Civil Service has gathered pace [or possibly slowed down] The announcement of the brutal restructuring at the very top of Whitehall has brought great sympathy for the able and well-liked Sir Bob, but also relief that Sir Jeremy Heywood is to combine his current job as Cabinet Secretary with being head of the Civil Service. The experiment of splitting the two jobs and of downgrading the latter by making it part time has failed – as many warned it would.

Whitehall – SNAFU

Sir Richard Mottram will be famous in some people's minds as the Permanent Secretary at the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions when 9/11, Stephen Byers, Jo "It's now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors' expenses?" Moore and Martin Sixsmith all happened at the same time, leading Sir Richard to deliver himself of his numinous SitRep:

We're all fucked. I'm fucked. You're fucked. The whole department is fucked. It's the biggest cock-up ever. We're all completely fucked.