Whitehall needs a fundamental overhaul to help Britain govern smarter
Nick Herbert is Chairman of the Commission for Smart Government. This article was published in The Times on 7 August 2020.
Whitehall reform used to be a minority preoccupation. Almost no-one bothered about it. Average politicians didn’t realise there was a problem. Better ministers thought nothing was wrong that couldn’t be righted through their brilliance. The civil service reassured itself that it was world class. All was well on the ship of state.
Covid changed all that. On the one hand, deficiencies in the government machine have been laid bare. On the other, change has been delivered with unusual speed. Nightingale hospitals sprang up in weeks, powered by a fusion of public, private and military expertise.
How, then, to capture the best performance and ditch the worst? Today a new Commission for Smart Government launches to consider how to make government more effective.
Problems are too often characterised as the fault of civil servants when they are in fact systemic, and when politicians are equally responsible for failure. Nor is the solution simply to increase private sector delivery, as poorly delivered and expensive outsourcing has demonstrated.
Government departments and agencies are multibillion-pound enterprises, dwarfing most in the private sector. Officials need the skills, capabilities and incentives to design policy, operate at pace, and manage complex processes more successfully.
Ministers need to work better, too. Siloed departments, a muddled centre exercising weak financial management, and unaccountable agencies need a fundamental overhaul.
Successful organisations learn from mistakes and improve. Governments just repeat them. Big projects have been the most glaring failures. Crossrail, once lauded by a former cabinet secretary as the exemplar of delivery, is overbudget and still undelivered.
Day-to-day sclerosis is more insidious. Decisions are grindingly slow, digital technology is barely tapped and billions are wasted. Yet central government clings to power, denying devolution to the local agencies which could innovate and deliver.
If anyone thinks a Whitehall shake-up is merely the folly of advisers they’re making a big mistake. One of the most significant changes in today’s political landscape is that reforming the machinery of government is increasingly seen as essential to delivery and political success.
As the chairman of the National Audit Office — a former permanent secretary — said, “we have become a nation which is good on ideas, ambitions and aspirations but weak on achievement”. Britain can’t afford that any more.
Every organisation in the country is urgently considering how to adapt and survive in the harsh new world which the virus is shaping. Government can’t be exempt. Ministerial red boxes stuffed with printed papers are the visible relics of antiquated administration, unequal to contemporary challenges.
Acute fiscal pressures and the next wave of technological change will require government to be smarter: more efficient, more capable and more accountable.
Nick Herbert is a former minister and chairman of The Commission for Smart Government