Labour unveils plan for Civil Service reform – including ‘crack team’ of problem solvers
Labour has announced a series of plans to change the Civil Service.
The overhaul to the state’s central bureaucracy comes after Sir Keir Starmer accused “too many people in Whitehall” of being “comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”.
Both Labour and the Conservatives have said the system needs changing.
Pat McFadden, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, is giving a speech later today going into further details.
But we do know a little bit of what is going to be in the plans.
£100m for changes
The government says it will put £100m into its changes to the Civil Service as part of an “innovation fund”.
This will help with so-called “test and learn teams”, that Mr McFadden says will make the government act “a bit more like a start-up”.
The “crack” teams of “problem solvers” will be sent to improve public services and help the new government achieve its goals.
They are set to consist of experts in the policy area, along with civil servants and seconded staff with operational experience.
Pilots will be run in Liverpool and Essex on temporary accommodation, and Manchester and Sheffield on supporting families.
Mr McFadden will say: “Test it. Fix the problems. Change the design. Test it again. Tweak it again. And so on, and so on, for as long as you provide the service.
“Suddenly, the most important question isn’t, ‘How do we get this right the first time?’. It’s ‘How do we make this better by next Friday?'”
Tours of duty
Another innovation that the government is trumpeting is the concept of “tours of duty”.
The idea here seems is that people with experience in the private sector in areas like startups or tech companies will come into government for up to a year to help “tackle big challenges”.
These include criminal justice or health reform.
Another idea is for “front line” workers like prison officers or social workers and send them to “central government” to help make sure policy can actually match reality.
“They have taken the frustrations home with them each week,” Mr McFadden will say.
“Now we want them to be part of the solution.”
Changes to recruitment
Mr McFadden also wants to make recruitment to the Civil Service easier – saying the process is currently “mind bogglingly bureaucratic and off-putting”.
The minister will say: “Applications can take days to fill in, and if you don’t understand the Civil Service process, good external candidates can find it near impossible to jump through the hoops.
“We need to go further and faster. And so I will be asking departments across government to roll out simpler processes in their recruitment, using what we know works.”