IfG in the news

2nd February 2012

Government Needs To Make 'Fundamental Changes' To Meet Spending Challenge, Says NAO

Government departments need to make "fundamental changes" to successfully cut spending by 2015, spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) has warned.

Source: The Huffington Post

23rd January 2012

Will LSE's growth commission make a difference?

Former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers and current OBR (and ex-MPC) member Steve Nickell have given evidence

Source: The Guardian Economics Blog

9th January 2012

Carry on policy-making: the case for change in Whitehall

Successful policies will need greater change in Whitehall: David Walker urges the Institute for Government to keep stacking up the ammunition

Source: The Guardian

9th January 2012

Learning lessons from history proves to be the best policy

History is littered with the failures of cherished government policies...The failures make media headlines. Lessons are drawn from them by academics and by the National Audit Office...Far less attention is paid to the successes. But they do exist.

Source: FT.com (subscription required)

20th December 2011

Who is taking the biggest hit from grim public sector job stats?

The latest employment figures from the Office of National Statistics make grim reading for all those working in and with the public sector...But which sections of the public sector are facing the worst of the cuts?

Source: The Guardian

Learning from large scale organisational change

The Institute is investigating major organisational change projects in central government and its agencies in order to:

Generate an up-to-date overview of government's organisational change projects and the ways in which they are handled by departments and agencies;
Identify the main issues affecting organisational change projects in government and how they could be addressed;
Improve the ways in which public sector leaders identify and resolve the wide range of choices involved with initiating and implementing organizational change.

Background

The public sector must deal with a range of pressures that result in significant changes to the structure, processes, culture, and size of public sector organisations

There have been various claims that the frequency and extent of such changes have increased in recent years, with talk of "change fatigue" developing in some sectors. Despite these sector-wide issues, it is clear that the type and scale of change varies greatly across departments and agencies. The activities may be termed "business change", "transformation", or simply be presented as a new strategic plan; they may be grouped into a structured programme or portfolio, or they may be supported in a less apparent and more organic way.

Method

A programme of semi-structured interviews with civil servants responsible for organisational change in central government departments and agencies;
A review of the extensive literature around organisational change and change management;
Quantitative data will be supplied by online survey of chief executives of top-tier local authorities in the UK.

Outcomes

The Institute will bring together those involved in change management to create an ongoing action learning set, building on existing networks. Based on our research, we will create a report that sets out the range of choices facing those who initiate and lead organisational changes.

Research team:
Michael Hallsworth, Senior Researcher.
michael.hallsworth@instituteforgovernment.org.uk

Our work