About the Civil Service
Capability Reviews
Note to the Public Administration Select Committee
Sir Gus O’Donnell
11 October 2005
Departmental Capability Reviews
As Head of the Home Civil Service, one of my key personal priorities is to improve the capability of the civil service to meet today’s delivery objectives and to be ready for the challenges of tomorrow.
In order to do this, I am working with my Permanent Secretary colleagues to develop ‘Departmental Capability Reviews’ – reviews of Departmental capability that will both assess how well equipped Departments are to meet these delivery challenges and also provide targeted support to make any improvements required.
The reviews will be specifically targeted at underlying capability issues that impact on effective delivery, such as:
- Do Departments have the right strategic and leadership capabilities?
- Do they know how well they are performing, and do they have the tools to fix their problems when they underachieve?
- Do their people have the right skills to meet both current and future challenges?
- Do they engage effectively with their key stakeholders, partners and the public?
These are key issues for any organisation today, and particularly for Government Departments working to deliver challenging outcomes in a complex environment.
The review programme will be run by the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, building on their track record of offering rigorous challenge and effective support to departments. Each review team will include experienced people from outside Government who will bring external challenge and insight, as well as peer reviewers from other Departments to ensure that best practice within the service is shared. This will not be Whitehall reviewing itself.
The review teams will work closely with individual Departments’ Permanent Secretaries and their management boards, in order to add real value to the work they are already doing to improve their capability to deliver. Each review will generate an action plan agreed between me and the Department’s Permanent Secretary, who will then account to me for the Department’s progress against that plan. It will also be important that the Cabinet Office and Treasury provide each Department effective support in the delivery of these improvement plans.
The results of each review will be published.
The review process will highlight where good practice exists, and ensure that this is shared with other Departments facing similar challenges. This will help the civil service as a whole to perform better and make best use of its resources and experience.
PMDU are actively engaged in developing the review programme, drawing on best practice from the public, private and voluntary sectors, in full consultation with departments, the centre of Government and external experts. I have asked PMDU to be ready to start joint work with a Department on a pilot review from December. We will then learn from the lessons of this pilot as we look to roll the approach out across Whitehall in 2006 and 2007.
Ultimately, the outcome must be that the civil service as a whole does better at delivery - that it can deliver its existing targets, understand its future challenges and rise to meet them efficiently and effectively.