Civil service

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In the UK, the term “civil service” describes those working for the central organs of government—an analogy in Russia would be Fe- deral Ministries, Committees and agencies. It includes 300,000 staff working in local and regional offices of those organizations, but ex- cludes, for example, local government workers, the health service, fire service, police, etc.

The UK Civil Service has a long tradition, dating back to the re- forms that followed from a devastating critique of Civil Service prac- tices published in 1854 .Since then, a number of guiding principles have remained unchanged (if not, perhaps, unchallenged) to this day. These include:

• fair and open competition for jobs on the basis of merit;

• a largely career-based, “permanent” civil service giving honest, impartial and non-political (i.e. non-partisan) advice to the Government of whatever party happens to be in power;

• high standards of probity and propriety in all professional ac- tivities.

Secondly, there are also some key features of the British State that have shaped the face of the Civil Service.

• The UK has long been a unitary state with power residing cen- trally in the Westminster Parliament. This remains true, al- though there is now some limited devolution to regional juris- dictions (the Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales and Northern Ireland Assembly).

• The “first past the post” electoral system means that two main parties dominate politics, with the party in government being usually able to develop and push through its own programs, including administrative reform.

• There is no codified, written constitution and a minimal fra- mework of administrative law — most of the (significant) transformation of the Civil Service in the 1980s was achieved without recourse to law, and by Ministers and civil servants acting within their existing powers.

• The UK has a strong civil society and private sector—This opened up the possibility of privatization of State resources in a way which is not always a valid or realistic option for coun- tries with less developed, non-State sectors.

For the first 30 years after World War II, the UK Civil Service grew considerably in numbers but changed little in culture. In its rath- er cozy and protected world, the service continued to be monolithic, with a prevailing ethos that—with the exception of some specialist services—all functions could be organized in more-or-less the same way. There was a general understanding about what the “rules” were, underpinned by an implicit assumption that civil servants, by defini- tion, acted in the public interest and not in their own private, per- sonal interests.

For most, the civil service offered a career for life. For the hard working and diligent, advancement came (eventually). The primary function of most senior grades was to provide policy advice to Minis- ters, and this was still seen as a civil service monopoly.

By the 1960s, however, there was widespread concern about Brit- ain’s changing place in the world and the uncompetitiveness of its economy. In 1968 the Fulton Report addressed this perceived skills deficit, seeking to replace the more intuitive judgments of the so- called “gifted amateur” with harder managerial and technical skills. The report called for:

• more professional Civil Service, challenging the role of the gifted amateur;

• modern a managerial skills;

• senior levels more open to talent from the lower ranks and from the outside.

Heralded as radical at the time, the Fulton Report ultimately failed to remodel the civil service in any significant way. It did, how- ever, disturb the status quo and left institutional landmarks in the shape of a new Civil Service Department to handle pay and improved personnel management, and the first incarnation of the Civil Service College.

The concept of “New Public Management” began to take shape. The impact on the Civil Service was stark. In the period from 1976 to 1999:

• The number of civil servants reduced by 40% — from 751,000 (working in monolithic departments, with their main focus on policy advice to Ministers) to 460,000. 78% of these worked in 138 new Executive Agencies and equivalents, managed by “con- tract” with their Departments and focusing on service delivery;

• The old uniform departmental hierarchies—with 15 general grades from permanent secretary (the highest) to clerical as- sistant (the lowest)—had been abandoned. A new Senior Civil Service was formed from the top 5 grades and career-managed from the centre. All other pay and grading was decentralized to Departments and agencies, and the central Civil Service Department had been abolished.

• Many services had been privatized altogether (for example IT).

In efficiency and cost reduction terms, the reforms were a success, but there were some critical weaknesses. In particular:

• Reforms concentrated on management issues but neglected policy advice.

• The strong focus on efficiency and targets for individual or- ganizations meant that “cross-cutting” policy issues were harder to tackle.

Since taking power in 1997, the New Labour government has built on the previous government’s management reforms, not aban- doned them. The new government’s policy for the future civil service was first set out in a policy “White Paper”—Modernizing Government (March 1999). The paper had three aims:

• Ensure policy making is more joined up and strategic. This has involved strengthening the strategic capability at the centre of government.

• Make public service users the focus, by matching services more closely to people’s lives. This has focused on arranging the de- livery of services in ways that make sense to the citizen, rather than being driven by the division of departmental responsibili- ties, and making full use of information technology advances.

• Deliver high quality and efficient public services. Departments now sign up to Public Service Agreements (PSAs). These 3-year, published agreements set out in detail the outcomes people can expect from departmental expenditure, and explicit per- formance and productivity targets for each program.

The Civil Service senior management board, led by the Cabinet Secretary, set out their own program of reform measures. This included stronger leadership; improved business planning; better performance management; new targets for increasing the number of women and ethnic minority staff in the Senior Civil Service; and more openness to people and ideas, with more senior posts being openly advertised, and more interchange between civil servants and other sectors. Since the re- election of the Labour Government in June 2001, modernization has moved up. The Prime Minister put improvement of public services at the top of the political agenda, and saw the election result as “an in- struction to deliver.” He set out 4 principles of public service reform:

• It is the Government’s job to set national standards designed to ensure that citizens have the right to high quality services wherever they live.

• These standards can only be delivered effectively by devolution and delegation to the front line, emphasizing local solutions to meet local needs.

• More flexibility is required to respond to customer aspirations. This means challenging restrictive practices and reducing red tape; more flexible incentives and rewards for good perform- ance; strong leadership and management; and high quality training and development.

• Public services need to offer expanding choice for the customer.

UK Civil Servants must be experts not only in the traditional skills of policy formulation and briefing, but also in managing successful implementation of those policies (project and program management are now core competencies for the Senior Civil Service), and in working with colleagues across government.

EXERCISES