🐢 The civil service is slow for a reason: it cannot fail

There is a reason the civil service works the way it does

People see the civil service as slow, unwieldy and indecisive. Most often it's not slow, you just don't understand the scale of what it needs to do yet. It's unlike almost all other entities; it does utterly important things and as such has to coordinate with a big group of other departments and interest groups so that everyone is joined up—otherwise things go wrong or appear incoherent.

Failure is unacceptable

Contrary to some political narratives, failure is unacceptable within the UK Government. As a result, senior civil servants often see their roles as being risk managers, rather than ‘have-a-goers’. A civil servant delivering consistent, unremarkable things may do well, but someone who delivers three big successes and then has a failure will likely slip into obscurity–which is partly the reason failures remain orphans (as various Select Committees will attest). I’m not sure this low appetite for ‘delivery attrition’ is consistent with the ‘move fast and break things’ ethos we hear at the political level.

That's because some things just cannot break

There are certain functions that government undertakes which you can’t risk breaking. For example, the Home Office has various essential, legacy IT systems, some of which are 45 years old or more. The incentive for each person responsible is always to say ‘if I try to change it, it might go wrong–so I'll pass on to the next person.’ Ministers say we need to learn from the private sector, and they're right, but one of the trade-offs of doing things quicker is making mistakes. Are we willing, for example, to take that risk with some essential component of the immigration system? I suspect not.

The Treasury prevents optimism bias

Given most governments rise and fall on the state of the economy, and that there is a direct correlation between the strength of finance ministries in other countries and how effectively public finances are managed, I think it's right that the Treasury is a strong department. If the Treasury is weak and just says 'yes' you end up with optimism… optimism and poor results. Is the Treasury too powerful? Yes. We need a slightly more equal system with a larger prime ministerial office or stronger Cabinet Office, so that policy arguments are based on more contested, evidence-based views of the world.

Rigorous evidence is essential for influence

Well-thought through, rigorous, independent evidence is crucial to influencing policy. Ideally good academic work, something that has been funded independently. You can find one paper for most things. The test is whether you can find a body of evidence, or someone who is particularly well respected who will bring together evidence and make a case for something. Civil servants can see where people have really understood the problem and tested claims, versus empty advocacy.

Junior-level engagement is important

It's very important that there is agreement on the problem and on the best approach to tackling it. The less agreement there is, the more important it is to engage at a junior and official level. That's because you want to be shaping the policy proposals going to ministers, so that when ministers think about the problem, you've already influenced the options on the page for them. In the Treasury for example, people with two years experience will often draft a submission which may make its way to the Chancellor without a huge amount of editing. Don't underestimate the importance of junior people in the policy forming process.

If you really want to be useful…

The average civil service policy person's job is to get stuck into solving a problem, work out the trade-offs, how to communicate it to bring people with them, and then implement it. If an external government affairs team can demonstrate that their organisation understands the policy objectives and can show unintended consequences of a proposed policy, or something new, then that's a really valuable part of the process. Obviously, in an ideal world civil servants would like people to agree with them, though!

"Bill managers" are crucial

A "bill manager" is the official with responsibility for the logistics of preparing primary legislation, and navigating it through parliament. It's a unique, high-profile, demanding role and it's often seen as a career accelerator. It's one of the few jobs that sits at the juncture between officials in the department, ministers and parliament.

You've got to build those sectoral coalitions

The Schools Bill under the last Conservative government aimed to deliver some really important changes, but the education sector wasn't on board so the Bill didn't progress. Many of the measures are now being progressed, but the delay has meant a delay in some children having a balanced education or being appropriately safeguarded. It's a good example of where the sector wasn’t brought along, and so the legislation didn’t move forward.

Thank you to the 49 subscribers who have referred colleagues to this newsletter. If you know someone who would benefit from this newsletter, send them your custom referral link by clicking ‘Click to Share’ below and copy/paste your link into an email/ WhatsApp/ Teams message.