The ThunderDragon: Civil Service

Showing posts with label Civil Service. Show all posts

02 April 2008

Busy doing nothing:

The number of Government ministers should be slashed by a quarter because too many are "busy doing nothing", a former aide to Tony Blair said.
Matthew Taylor, who was the head of the Number 10 policy unit, said that senior politicians were being paid for "detail" work that should be carried out by officials...
"I would more specifically devolve authority to officials and make officials more accountable to MPs and the public so that politicians don't feel they have to get involved in the fine details." (The Telegraph)

Government is just wasting our money and just throwing it all down in the laps of MPs. We don't need such a large number of government ministers, or even such a large number of civil servants. Just a smaller government.

10 March 2008

The Death Of Civil Service Blogging

Civil Service blogging is dead. The Civil Serf blog has closed down, presumably either because her identity was discovered and it was the choice of the blog or the job, or she thought that her was likely to be discovered. Maybe the guess that she worked in Department for Work and Pensions was too close for comfort. But now, in a blatant knee-jerk reaction:

The government is planning to issue guidelines on how civil servants use social networking sites and blogs...
The Cabinet Office is drawing up guidelines for using blogs and social networking sites in response to an independent report last year called The Power of Information.
These are expected to cover how civil servants should respond when they feel inaccurate information has been posted, for instance, on social networking sites. (BBC)

And yet, apparently, this no "not a reaction" to Civil Serf. Yes, and I'm a one-legged, wheelchair-bound Lithuanian lesbian called George.

Despite the apparently benign reference to "guidance" and "guidelines", this almost certainly translates to "written in stone" and "don't you dare" behind closed doors. This "guidance" will almost certainly result in no other potential Civil Service blogger dare rear their head over the parapet and tell us, the people who pay their wages, exactly how the inner workings of government actually work - or rather, don't work.

There is a big difference between a private business doing this and the Civil Service/government doing so. A private business earns their own money. They have profits and losses and reputations - and whilst they, too, employ marketing to persuade us to back them rather than their competitors, we can withdraw our money and support from them whenever we like, rather than just every four or five years when they choose to let us.

03 June 2007

"Move to Wales or the North? No thanks!" say civil servants who are resigning rather than be relocated in the governments plan to move 10% of civil servants from London and the southeast to the provinces:

"New figures show that nearly three years into the Government's relocation programme, five big departments have failed to move even half of the staff proposed.
The Treasury and HM Revenue & Customs have moved only about 1,200 of more than 5,000 planned. The Cabinet Office has moved only 41 of 250 posts. Just 123 of 450 Foreign and Commonwealth Office jobs have been transferred. The Department for Trade and Industry was given a target of 685 - so far 302 have moved...
About 11,000 public jobs have been moved, with most going to Newcastle, Newport, Sheffield, Catterick and the Welsh village of St Athan." (The Telegraph)

It is fair enough that civil servants who don't want to move don't have to. We don't live in a 'socialist paradise', however much some may wish it, after all. The whole problem with the idea of relocating civil servant jobs is that most will have attachments where they are already - partners, friends, relatives, etc. - and so not want to move.

The problem that this causes is that since so few experienced staff are moving, there will be a drop in the quality of the civil servants. The best candidates can get jobs in the private sector in London, and will do if they are otherwise expected to live somewhere they don't want to.

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