What does John Manzoni's departure mean for civil service skills reforms?

John Manzoni, chief executive of the civil service since 2014, will leave the post in the coming months. Taking on a role in government after a career in the private sector, Manzoni drove much-needed reforms to the civil service and improved specialist skills in finance, digital, project delivery and commercial.

His impending departure means this agenda is at a crossroads. While No.10 – and in particular the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings – appears determined to reform the way government works, it also needs to ensure that Manzoni’s successor has the status and ministerial support necessary to lead change in the civil service.

Having the right skills and capabilities is crucial to delivering government’s priorities

Manzoni’s reforms were designed to get “the right expertise in the right place at the right time". While successive governments have recognised the need for the civil service to have the right skills and capabilities to carry out its priorities, acquiring those skills has been undermined by a lack of focus. This has resulted in several notable failures, including the cancellation of the InterCity West Coast franchise competition in 2012.

In 2013, the civil service stepped up efforts to strengthen 10 (now 14) ‘functions’ designed to ensure that the activities they oversee – such as finance, commercial or project delivery – are effectively managed and delivered in a consistent fashion across government. These functions, which tend to be run from the centre of government, deliver services to departments and to the civil service as a whole by giving expert advice; “setting cross-government strategies… developing capabilities... setting and assuring standards”; and creating career paths.

A lack of publicly available information makes it difficult to fully assess the impact of these reforms, but the response to the collapse of Carillion highlighted how the finance, IT and HR functions collaborated to minimise disruption to public services. As Manzoni later said, this “would simply not have been possible” without functions.

His reforms have also given those in government with specialist skills a clearer sense of how to develop their career, with a number of functions and professions – such as project delivery – developing career frameworks that identify the skills, competencies, behaviours and qualifications required for each role.

The civil service skills reforms require more improvement

But there is room for improvement. Learning and development opportunities are currently available for the most junior staff (who enter the civil service through apprenticeships or the Fast Stream) and the most senior, through structures such as the Major Projects Leadership Academy. The heads of project delivery and policy recognised the need to reach staff who are in the middle of their careers; this is likely to apply to other parts of the civil service.

Funding is also an issue, with no stable funding in place for some of the central teams working on improvement programmes within each function. This risks undermining the medium-to-long-term success of the reforms (a potential barrier the Institute flagged three years ago).

There is also scope for the civil service to set out in more detail how the functions operate, the concrete benefits they have achieved and how they interact with civil service professions – groupings of staff with common professional skills and competency frameworks.

Manzoni's reforms will continue to need strong leadership – at a civil service and ministerial level

While Dominic Cummings's blogposts suggest No.10 is focused on improving civil service efficiency, these reforms will require political oversight and support. This usually comes from the minister for the Cabinet Office, but 18 ministers have held this role since 1997 – few ministerial posts have experienced as much turnover during this period. Only Francis Maude stayed long enough – five years – to see his reforms put into practice, but ministerial interest in civil service reform appears to have waned since Maude’s departure.

Efforts to boost the civil service’s key ‘functions’ are now closely associated with the chief executive of the civil service, but if a key individual moves on, or if political will is lacking, then the momentum for reform can fade. Without strong leadership and key structures embedded throughout departments – such as heads of professions or core teams co-ordinating improvement across government – the reforms may not even survive. 

Manzoni’s departure will reveal whether the government really is committed to making a success of his reforms. If it is, then his successor must be given the authority to drive change across the civil service.