3.1: Innovative Government
Equipping the Civil service to meet future challenges by reshaping structures, strengthening performance management and putting
innovation at the heart of government
Other Information:
Actions: reshaping the Civil Service -- We will modernise Civil Service structures to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and management
layers, increase staff empowerment and reduce the cost of the senior Civil service, saving £100 million annually within three
years. this review of organisational design, supported by the Cabinet office, will build on the Capability review reforms
and draw on the insights of current and next generation Civil service leaders who will be responsible for successfully delivering
these reforms. We will then apply a similar organisational design reform to middle management (grade 6/7) level to ensure
consistent modernisation across the Civil service. to improve productivity and encourage delivery of significant savings in
the Civil service, we will allow managers new flexibilities in order to achieve them. We will also put in place radical reforms
to senior pay across the public sector, including tougher scrutiny for senior appointments, and comprehensive transparency
and accountability arrangements. in addition, the Prime Minister is writing to Bill Cockburn as chair of the senior salaries
Pay review Body to commission a review of senior pay looking across the whole of the public sector, reporting to the government
in time for Budget 2010. Actions: strengthening performance management and benchmarking -- We will improve transparency of
Civil Service performance by publishing departmental performance scorecards in the next round of annual reports in spring
2010. these will set out departments’ progress across a range of key performance indicators, including progress on service
delivery, efficiency, cost and corporate priorities. We will deliver a package of performance management improvements across
the Civil service. this means we will: • Set out Permanent Secretary remuneration, performance-related pay and pay awards
in all forthcoming annual reports, alongside new performance scorecards, with processes that ensure the two are clearly linked
• Ensure value for money objectives are reflected in the objectives and appraisals of all Civil Servants responsible for the
management and delivery of programmes • Improve sickness absence management, including a commitment to match the best performance
in comparable private sector companies departments, by Budget 2010. the Cabinet office will coordinate an approach to ensure
that these processes identify poor performance, and will establish fair and fast procedures to deal with it. We will enable
the UK to be one of the top performing administrations in the world by 2012. By Budget 2010, we will benchmark the Civil service
against the best administrations in areas where we have most to learn from other countries. to do this, we will: • Work with
the OECD and other international partners, and with eu and Commonwealth countries with comparable systems of government, to
benchmark the performance of individual departments and ministries • Arrange an international conference on smarter government
during 2010 to share public service expertise from country to country, and to work towards the creation of a virtual centre
for excellence on value for money delivery in the oeCD. Actions: putting innovation at the heart of government -- We will
drive innovation across government, with the Department for Business, innovation and skills rolling out a package of support
to all departments before Budget 2010. this package will include adapting a tool from the nhs national innovation Centre to
provide a cross-government showcase of the best innovations and a number of practical interventions such as innovation capability
building exercises to support departments in tackling key challenges. We will commission the National School of Government
to develop a new corporate learning programme which will form part of a new approach to Civil service skills and training
which we will publish by Budget 2010. Alongside this work we will also review the value for money of Civil service training
by the national school of government and other providers. We will launch a Social Venture Capital Fund to support third party
organisations to generate innovative new ideas for using government data to create useful tools for the public.
Indicator(s):
|
