Civil Service Live
Service transformation
Cleveland urges staff ‘to keep raising the bar’
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Civil servants should aim high in their attempts to transform the way government delivers its services to citizens, Alexis Cleveland said on Tuesday.
Cleveland, the director general of Transformational Government and head of Cabinet Office management, was talking on the first day of Civil Service Live, the three day event for the civil service.
Cleveland, who previously was chief executive of The Pension Service, told her audience of civil servants that service transformation comes down to changing the services government delivers for citizens, customers and users to ensure that people get the service and products that they wish for.
“We have to do this efficiently and effectively to get the best return for the taxpayer,” she added.
She went on to cite the Service Transformation Agreement, launched last year alongside cross-cutting public service agreements, as a key catalyst for further progress.
“Every department has one and we are looking to utilise projects and programmes within service transformation which will help facilitate and enable the delivery of the PSA's,” she said.
“We will be holding permanent secretaries to account and one thing I've always found is that if a permanent secretary is being held to account then those objectives ripple through the department pretty quickly to make sure those things get delivered.”
Alexis Cleveland
Although she and her team are based in the Cabinet Office, Cleveland operates across Whitehall and she expressed her frustration that more needs to be done to break down departmental barriers.
“Service transformation goes across government – it's not something that any one department can deliver on its own,” she said.
“We've got a huge amount of knowledge in the public sector but we don't always capture it. There are some pockets of good practice but we keep re-inventing the wheel.”
But she was keen to highlight positive developments, particularly those around electronic delivery.
“This is to do with driving up usage,” she said. “Things like the tax disc online we are driving take up on that.
“And on call centres, many are operating as best in class and are comparable with the private sector but others we need to improve.”
Looking to the future, Cleveland pinpointed an increase in pace as a major priority.
“One of the things we need is a lot more pace,” she said. “We've been on a slow burn building up our capabilities but we've demonstrated that we can do this and we can do this in many different customer groups and can do it across boundaries.
“Another target is to take out a large number of unnecessary calls which go into contact centres. This is driving a lot of error and waste out of the system.
“We're also looking at setting up a number of one-stop-shops in many cities. Many local authorities are beginning to take these forward but central government has been a bit slow to participate.”
Funding cross-cutting initiatives, she continued, is also high on her radar, particularly if benefits may go into another department. “There have been some helpful changes but there is a lot more to do,” she said. “We want the money to follow the customer, rather than follow the organisational structure.”
To keep making progress, Cleveland is intent on ensuring that all staff get involved.
“We have to make sure we have senior leadership in departments tied into this,“ she said. “But engagement starts at all levels. From my experience some of the best solutions come from staff who are dealing with customers face to face and can see some of the problems first hand. I think they are often the best people to work on some of the design of all of this.”
In conclusion she returned to her theme that cross-Whitehall work often holds the key to further progress.
“We need to do more on sharing our learning between departments,” she observed. “I suspect we've all cracked just about every problem once somewhere in government but don't actually know it.
“No department is special. When you actually go into a delivery agency or a delivery department then many of the issues are exactly the same. We are more joined together by our similarities than our differences.”
Every person and organisation has a role to play in transformation, she added. “We have to keep delivering the day job - change is a lot easier to happen if this is the case.
“And we've got to keep raising the bar. Keep your sights high and be innovative in the solutions you look for.”