The reshuffle will show whether the government is serious about shaking up the civil service

A ministerial reshuffle, and perhaps a reorganisation of government departments, is looming. For the last couple of months, Westminster-watchers have been earnestly decoding signals from a single extended blog by the prime minister’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings. They have been trying to work out what he and Michael Gove, both known to be preoccupied with reforming the way that government works, might want.

Boris Johnson’s choice of new ministers this week will tell us something about his priorities and whether his government has the staying power to “level up” the country and make radical change to the state – or whether pronouncements to date have been bluster.

He would do well to send a clear signal that equipping government officials with the right skills, properly incentivising them to stay in their jobs for long enough to get good at them, and moving more civil servants outside London are near top of his civil service reform agenda.

If Michael Gove leads civil service reform, will he have enough time to do it well?

The reshuffle will turn on whether Michael Gove will remain as de facto deputy prime minister in the Cabinet Office. If he does, and is asked to lead civil service reform, he will need to devote enough time to it among many other priorities. Leading the domestic implementation of Brexit is a big job for any secretary of state. Add in Cabinet Office responsibilities for the UK Union, the constitution, and perhaps climate change, and even the most talented of ministers would struggle. It will be important that government reform sits sufficiently near the top of Gove’s stuffed inbox.  

Whether it happens this week or not, we should look out as well for the choice of civil servants who are charged with making reform plans happen. For changes to really get embedded across departments, officials in the Cabinet Office must have a clear mandate and real authority. Heavy-hitting civil servants and ministers will be needed in senior positions – and the prime minister will need to send an unambiguous signal that his authority sits behind reforms. It is the PM, after all, who is the minister for the civil service. Harold Wilson took on the job in 1968 as part of his reforms to give Number 10 more control over the government. Boris Johnson’s personal appetite for this subject is, at best, untested.

The government should be in it for the long haul…

Recruiting new people to Number 10 is easy and every prime minister brings in his or her own team. Making real and lasting changes to the machinery of the state is a different matter: hierarchies are persistent, breaking down departmental fiefdoms to join up government better is hard, and culture takes time to embed.

And while radical quick changes of direction work in some areas, the continuity of service is too important for anything other than careful and incremental reform. The process of rolling out Universal Credit is a warning.

… and ministers need to prioritise

So what should the prime minister, Michael Gove (if it is him) and Dominic Cummings prioritise? Here are three areas:

1. Identify and use the skills that are available. There are – in the nicest possible way – already plenty of “misfits and weirdos”, to use Cummings’ now-famous phrase, among the 400,000 or so civil servants. Our research shows that there are 11,000 digital, data and technology specialists, 11,500 science and engineering professionals and 14,000 project delivery experts. These people should be in, or moved to, the right priority areas.
2. Do something practical to stop the job-hopping. Don’t increase civil service pay by bringing back old automatic salary uplifts; recognise strong performers who stay in the same job and take projects through to completion with bonuses or pay increases on conclusion of major pieces of work. And build on existing plans to give experts and policy specialists a real career path that allows them to make progress within their field rather than giving them an incentive to leave it.
3. Think about how to move people out of London in a way that benefits civil servants and the towns and cities they will move to. Most of the functions that are straightforward to relocate have already been moved from the capital – so to make further inroads, it is policy teams advising ministers who will need to be transferred to new areas. It is worth taking the time to work out those teams that will benefit from a new perspective, and how to maintain their capacity through any move.

Other questions also need addressing: really developing the skills and careers of people throughout government, and not just of the top talent; working out how to keep improving the quality of policy advice; and clarifying lines of accountability between ministers, central government officials and delivery bodies in the public and private sector. The IfG will look at all of these over the coming months.

To reform the government machine, ministers need to work out what they want to achieve, appoint the right ministers and officials to lead the changes, build support within the system, prioritise ruthlessly, and most importantly remain committed for the long term.