The National Archives have today shed more light on the UK’s sometimes murky intelligence history with the release of further files from the FCO’s Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department (PUSD) and from the files of the Cabinet Secretary. The latest releases include juicy stories on the bugging of Edward VIII, an excellent account of a drunken...
One of the themes that emerged during our first workshop at the IfG was the tension between ‘soft outcomes’ and the needs of funders. While colleagues from the Civil Service can appreciate the needs of service users are hard to measure, they do need the reassurance that they are spending public money appropriately. This...
Property moves seeing smaller departments leave their current homes and squeeze into the buildings of bigger departments have already been widely publicised, including DCMS having moved in with HM Revenue and Customs and DCLG preparing to join the Home Office. What is largely unreported however is the effect of such moves on the morale...
However, before that work gets underway, I wanted to focus on one of the themes from the first meeting of Connecting Policy and Practice programme – that of policy becoming increasingly underpinned by economic and business models. Language matters My course-mate, Pat Russell correctly reminded me that there are ten* types of people •...
Across the world, systems of government are increasingly under strain, caught in a rut towards obsolescence – that’s my claim, at least. Whenever I declare my position many are surprised. ‘But you are from Finland! Surely you are not talking about Finland too?’ Well, yes I am. Within the European context, Finland has the...
So why am I doing this? A life-long civil servant, I have had many roles in the Department for Work and Pensions – from frontline operations to policy delivery and strategy development. I have seen excellent service delivery – and bad! I have seen policy developed with great thought and insight and I have...