No need for full time goverments

[ska invita]

I wonder what the limits of entryism into the civil service (lol) are! They're obviously weary of it! Same thing at the BBC supposedly

 

[yield]

I wonder what the limits of entryism into the civil service (lol) are! They're obviously weary of it! Same thing at the BBC supposedly

Weary or wary? The Intelligence Services too I'd imagine though who watches the watchmen?

Doubt many if any of those on the blacklists subverted a thing.

 

[ska invita]

Weary or wary? The Intelligence Services too I'd imagine though who watches the watchmen?

Doubt many if any of those on the blacklists subverted a thing.

Ah yes, Wary probably. Its an interesting hypohtetical into understanding the machine though i think.

 

[Riklet]

Putting the gov on zero-hour contracts would def ensure they are got rid of very quickly...

 

[Spandex]

Im interested in the politics of the civil service ... all ive got to go on is Yes Minister. How much of a barrier to change is the civil service...how much unaccountable power does the service really have?
Pointers to reading on this would be welcome.

You’ve got The Thick of It to be going on too.

By accident, I found myself a Civil Servant for a few years at the end of the 90s/beginning of the 00s. That means my knowledge of the Civil Service is getting on for 20 years out of date, but I suspect the main change in that time has been cuts and ‘efficiency savings’ (which is, of course, another name for cuts), leading to a stressed out, overworked Civil Service, as with the rest of the public sector.

At the lower levels it’s just like any other public sector office job. Anyone capable of working in an office could get an admin job as a Civil Servant. Those who are vaguely competent could get promoted to team leader level. But to get into management level or higher you’d need to be The Right Sort of Person. That tended to mean white, middle class, small c conservative and having internalised the Civil Service culture.

Each government department has it’s own culture. While they all live by the Civil Service ethos, the Home Office, Foreign Office or Department for Health all have their own character. They’re like any other big public sector organisation, except the chief executive is a Minister, appointed by the Prime Minister. And the Minister can make a difference to the running of the department, or not, depending on how they engage with their job.

Some Ministers have no interest in their role except to further their political career and make no difference to the running of their department. Others come with Big Ideas. This is where problems with the Civil Service can happen.

If left to their own devices a Department will carry on doing what they’re doing – running the country. There’s a world of different things the Civil Service does that most people don’t even notice or are aware of. I remember the bloke at the DTI (as it then was) who was in charge of the national tyre recycling strategy, something it had never occurred to me existed before I met him. Or the bloke at DCMS who was responsible for monitoring historic shipwrecks in British national waters. There’s thousands of different jobs like that across the Civil Service that keep the country running smoothly.

Like any big organisations Government Departments are resistant to change. And when Ministers get appointed who want to change things that’s where the trouble starts. If the Department doesn’t like what the Minister is doing it can drag it’s feet, throw up bureaucratic obstacles and slow the change down until the Minister gives up or has been replaced – they rarely last for more than a few years, while Civil Servants can have jobs for life. Sometimes the Department will get in a Minister’s way for a fair enough reason – the minister has a stupid fucking idea which has no chance of working, or has been tried before and failed miserably. But it also might be that they can’t be arsed with the bother of changing their procedures or it flies in the face of the Senior Civil Servants’ way of thinking – which, as I’ve already said, tends to be middle class and small c conservative.

Yes Minister and The Thick of It, which are both accurate portrayals of Civil Service life in their own ways, show the two poles of how Ministers can deal with their Departments. They can either engage in a battle of wits with their department, which the Civil Servants will usually win, or can shout, intimidate, bully and force their Civil Servants to do what they’re ordered. It’s the second of these that’s more effective.

So, besides a revolution that brushes away the current Civil Service, a radical government of forceful Ministers with a clear idea of what they want to achieve is the only way to change anything. Otherwise things will plod on as they are for ever.

 

[ska invita]

You’ve got The Thick of It to be going on too.

By accident, I found myself a Civil Servant for a few years at the end of the 90s/beginning of the 00s. That means my knowledge of the Civil Service is getting on for 20 years out of date, but I suspect the main change in that time has been cuts and ‘efficiency savings’ (which is, of course, another name for cuts), leading to a stressed out, overworked Civil Service, as with the rest of the public sector.

At the lower levels it’s just like any other public sector office job. Anyone capable of working in an office could get an admin job as a Civil Servant. Those who are vaguely competent could get promoted to team leader level. But to get into management level or higher you’d need to be The Right Sort of Person. That tended to mean white, middle class, small c conservative and having internalised the Civil Service culture.

Each government department has it’s own culture. While they all live by the Civil Service ethos, the Home Office, Foreign Office or Department for Health all have their own character. They’re like any other big public sector organisation, except the chief executive is a Minister, appointed by the Prime Minister. And the Minister can make a difference to the running of the department, or not, depending on how they engage with their job.

Some Ministers have no interest in their role except to further their political career and make no difference to the running of their department. Others come with Big Ideas. This is where problems with the Civil Service can happen.

If left to their own devices a Department will carry on doing what they’re doing – running the country. There’s a world of different things the Civil Service does that most people don’t even notice or are aware of. I remember the bloke at the DTI (as it then was) who was in charge of the national tyre recycling strategy, something it had never occurred to me existed before I met him. Or the bloke at DCMS who was responsible for monitoring historic shipwrecks in British national waters. There’s thousands of different jobs like that across the Civil Service that keep the country running smoothly.

Like any big organisations Government Departments are resistant to change. And when Ministers get appointed who want to change things that’s where the trouble starts. If the Department doesn’t like what the Minister is doing it can drag it’s feet, throw up bureaucratic obstacles and slow the change down until the Minister gives up or has been replaced – they rarely last for more than a few years, while Civil Servants can have jobs for life. Sometimes the Department will get in a Minister’s way for a fair enough reason – the minister has a stupid fucking idea which has no chance of working, or has been tried before and failed miserably. But it also might be that they can’t be arsed with the bother of changing their procedures or it flies in the face of the Senior Civil Servants’ way of thinking – which, as I’ve already said, tends to be middle class and small c conservative.

Yes Minister and The Thick of It, which are both accurate portrayals of Civil Service life in their own ways, show the two poles of how Ministers can deal with their Departments. They can either engage in a battle of wits with their department, which the Civil Servants will usually win, or can shout, intimidate, bully and force their Civil Servants to do what they’re ordered. It’s the second of these that’s more effective.

So, besides a revolution that brushes away the current Civil Service, a radical government of forceful Ministers with a clear idea of what they want to achieve is the only way to change anything. Otherwise things will plod on as they are for ever.

Hypothetically, if rather than the RIght Sort of Person the Wrong Sort of Blacklisted Person got a management position how much scope is there to make meaningful change though? Im happy for a small c conservative person to be in charge of tyre recycling, but possibly less so on the benefit system. Or maybe it doesnt really make any difference?
That the civil service puts the breaks on change can both be a good an a bad thing depending what the change is that is being proposed. Considering we've had decades of right-reforming governments maybe its not such a bad thing?
But I would expect the top civil servant bosses are down with the programme of outsourcing, asset stripping and running down.

 

[Spandex]

Hypothetically, if rather than the RIght Sort of Person the Wrong Sort of Blacklisted Person got a management position how much scope is there to make meaningful change though?

One person is a small cog in a big machine. It's a systematic issue rather than an individual one.

Anything meaningful would still have to be cleared by their manager and signed off by the minister. If they went completely off piste their high flying career would be short lived, but then they wouldnt get to be a civil service manager without mastering the fine art of diplomacy. All one person could achieve is a slight nudge in the right direction in their small corner of the department: putting a different spin on the briefings they write, gently raising difficult issues in the right way at the right time, focusing attention on one thing rather than another. They'd still have to play by the rules of the game.

But I would expect the top civil servant bosses are down with the programme of outsourcing, asset stripping and running down.

I guess views would vary. Many top civil servants will have seen their own fiefdoms outsourced, asset stripped and run down. That's down to budget cuts from the treasury. I suspect not everyone will be happy about it.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

...half a dozen wise men gather and decide on the local representive's things...

*ahem* Men?!?!?

 

[High Voltage]

Don't you go worrying your pretty young head about such complex matters, m'dear

 

[Kaka Tim]

Considering there were only three in Jesus' time, that's a 100% increase over 2000 years

QI type interjection - the number of wise men is not actually stated in the gospel - its just says "wise men from the east" - so number of wise men could actually have decreased.

 

[likesfish]

The MoD are a very "special" case a maker of sniper rifles spent a very long time on their presentation for their bid for the New Army sniper rifle and the MoD sent somebody who was a sonar expert and a diversity expert to see it.
from the people who thought they could write better helicopter software than Boeing who actually make helicopters.
The rather cynical response to the old hippy t-shirt about the military should have to fundraise for their weapons " we might get something that actually works."

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

Don't you go worrying your pretty young head about such complex matters, m'dear

I don't know whether to be insulted or take it as a compliment to be referred to as 'pretty' and 'young'.

 

[iamwithnail]

You’ve got The Thick of It to be going on too.

By accident, I found myself a Civil Servant for a few years at the end of the 90s/beginning of the 00s. That means my knowledge of the Civil Service is getting on for 20 years out of date, but I suspect the main change in that time has been cuts and ‘efficiency savings’ (which is, of course, another name for cuts), leading to a stressed out, overworked Civil Service, as with the rest of the public sector.
...
So, besides a revolution that brushes away the current Civil Service, a radical government of forceful Ministers with a clear idea of what they want to achieve is the only way to change anything. Otherwise things will plod on as they are for ever.

This is fairly accurate, for both good and bad points, ime. I was a civil servant for ~15 years, ending up running a policy division in DWP. I left because it was increasingly obvious that IDS and Stroud were playing an excellent game of 'gather all the evidence and ignore it anyway', and the department, already under a lot of strain was rapidly heading towards 'we don't give a fuck about anyone'. I know that a lot of people's experience is that this was the case beforehand, and I fully believe them, but people were at least trying to make things better from the centre, until early 2011. A lot of people who would stand up to SpAds and ministers got sidelined because they were 'difficult to work with', and got replaced by other SpAds or dubious appointments from people who'd been involved with the Centre for Social Justice and all its bullshit misuse of stats.