FROM THE EDITOR

Civil service reform plans are like buses. You wait for a decade for one and then two come along almost at once.

Ok, so this isn’t quite true (changes to government are never that far from a PM’s to-do list, and I’ve lived in places where it feels like you have to wait longer than a decade for a bus). But the publication by the prime minister and the cabinet secretary of the Declaration on Government Reform, followed by the report from the independent Commission for Smart Government within a month, feels like a watershed moment.

We now have, for the first time since Francis Maude’s Cabinet Office tenure in the early years of the last decade, a clear statement from the top of government about how it wants to change – to respond to both issues revealed by the coronavirus pandemic and longer-standing concerns. And in the commission’s report

– the development of which was helped by two former perm secs and a host of other Whitehall big hitters, including Baroness Simone Finn before she was named No.10 deputy chief of staff in March – there are proposals that could form the basis of how to get there.

The two were clearly written with half an eye on the other (Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove launched the declaration at the commission and returned to speak when it launched its own report), so it is worth those with an interest in the civil service keeping abreast of both.

So that is what we do in this summer double issue of CSW. We take an in-depth look at the declaration, and how it matches up with the man with whom this particular reform drive will always be synonymous: Dominic Cummings. The former top No.10 adviser came into government with long-standing – and well-documented – criticisms of the civil service. The detail of the plan, it turns out, has a lot in common with Cummings’s critique, including that it comes after a shock like the coronavirus pandemic. Cummings once argued change would come to Whitehall because of what he called at the time a “beneficial crisis”.

We also have reflections on the roadmap – and what it is missing – from Ciaran Martin and Colin Talbot, while Dave Penman looks at the commission’s proposals and finds a clear action plan – even if he disagrees with some of the prescriptions.

But reform will be difficult. As Penman notes, this government has showed time and again that, politically, it can be bold, but civil service reform requires strong and consistent action. Not because, as some would posit, the civil service is uniquely institutionally allergic to reform, but because changing any organisation of the size and scope of the civil service – all while delivering vital and increasingly complex services – is something that takes dedication, pragmatism and clear and considerate leadership.

Few people over the years have shown themselves to be capable of it, but there is clearly a willingness from the top of government, at both political and official level, to try. With many issues that civil servants themselves would like to see addressed, one can only wish them well. But as Cummings has recently highlighted, this is not a prime minister famed for his intellectual consistency and project management nous. Perhaps we can only hope that the path from here doesn’t distract too much from the vital work of delivering public services to those who need them. Like improved bus services, for one.

This is the July-August edition of CSW. The next edition will be published on 16 September.