The civil service is scoping out its future minus 30%, while also delivering an ambitious public service reform agenda. Our Director of Research Julian McCrae talked about some of these challenges at the Public Administration Select Committee on 25 January, while our latest Whitehall Monitor is tracking progress in Whitehall. This month we analyse departmental staff surveys.
Outside Whitehall, the debate about ‘new localism’ and the Big Society is intensifying. The forthcoming referenda on elected mayors in the 12 major cities outside London is a focal point for the debate on decentralisation and empowering the cities and regions. Last month I kicked off my tour of cities that could have elected mayors, visiting Birmingham, Coventry and Bristol. I’m blogging as the tour progresses and reporting my findings to the Department for Communities and Local Government when I have visited all 12 cities.
It’s been a busy month for speaker events here at Carlton Gardens. We hosted Nick Clegg’s keynote speech on civil liberties, Commons Speaker John Bercow talked about effective scrutiny in the Commons, and Margaret Hodge told us how she wanted to make the Public Accounts Committee more effective at holding Whitehall to account.
One report that certainly did not go unnoticed was PASC’s highly critical report of the government’s quango cull. Our work in this area was heavily cited in their recommendations, and I’m pleased to say some of this is having an effect on Whitehall’s future plans. We hope our report in February on improving government IT will be equally helpful to PASC in its current inquiry into this long running debate.
