Civil Service Live
Keynote speech – Sir Gus O'Donnell
This content is provided by Whitehall and Westminster World
Officials with ideas about how the Civil Service should change in order that they can do their jobs better have been told to send them to the Cabinet Office.
Cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell issued the call for inspiration during a candid speech to hundreds of Civil Servants at the final day of Civil Service Live.
“We'd really like to get your ideas“, he said, telling delegates that there were ideas postcards for them to fill in and post to him.
“This is your opportunity really to make a huge difference. I feel that in my career as a Civil Servant I've actually managed to make the world a somewhat better place and I think everybody in this room should feel really proud about contributing to that.
Sir Gus O'Donnell“The Civil Service is unique in that sense. We may not pay as well as the private sector but actually, when you go home at night you can say: 'We are collectively making this world a more secure, a safer, a healthier, a better place to bring up children.
“You should be very proud of that,“ he added.
During his talk he outlined how public expectations of what public services should provide were increasing - in areas such as climate change and obesity - at the same time as tax receipts were continuing to shrink.
Those challenges would only be successfully addressed by efforts at all levels - local, national and international - and if Civil Servants worked with partners, ranging from the private and third sectors, to other government departments.
“The reason why I brought together people from all grades and all different departments in this conference is precisely because we are going to solve all those challenges.“
He continued: “It is because you will work better together and you will share your ideas, you will learn from each other.“
Sir Gus spent much of the speech in dialogue with the Civil Servants who had come to hear what he had to say - asking them why they had chosen a life of public service, what they were proud of and what hindered them in their job.
One Benefits Agency official complained about the 'lip service' paid to the idea of joined-up government.
Describing the situation he and his colleagues faced with tax credits as a 'nightmare', he explained that they were unable to pay income support to some customers because they had tax credits leaving them 'trapped between two departments'.
The tax credits initiative had been a big expansion of the government's role: “If you're going to have a huge expansion of the state in that way you really need to get right.“
Sir Gus said he had “thought long and hard“, during the customs and revenue merger, about whether benefits should be placed with tax credits. But, “it is an issue for ministers“, he said.
Another Civil Servant brought up the contentious issue of cuts.
“In a lot of departments we are taking a lot of cuts, personnel cuts, on a yearly basis. It becomes quite difficult to motivate staff when each year they face another round of cuts.
“Particularly in my department, the Ministry of Defence, we lost a third of our workforce two years ago, we face further cuts and we know we face further cuts in the future.“
Sir Gus said the issue was a “very real“ one and “not something we should duck“.
“I'd be lying if I said the future of the Civil Service will be that we be growing“, he said. “We will be not radically different, but will certainly be going down in size, be smaller, more and more professional, higher paid actually on average than we have been.“
He added: “That's something were going to actually tackle - find ways to really motivate those people who will remain.“
But a health official told Sir Gus that, while staff understood the argument for headcount reductions, these were not being matched by a reduction in workload.
It was “not to be workshy“, she said, “but to be realistic about what can be achieved with a reduced workforce“.
Sir Gus “absolutely“ agreed: “You ask ministers 'okay you've asked this department to live with say minus-five real in their budget so what do you want them to stop doing?' It is very difficult to get an answer to that.“
But, he added: “All of us individually need to take some responsible for answering that question. we are going to have to be ruthless“.