THE CIVIL SERVICE WHITE PAPER: A JOB HALF FINISHED
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1994.tb00810.x |
| Author | PETER KEMP |
| Published date | 01 December 1994 |
| Date | 01 December 1994 |
PUBLIC MANAGEMENT---
THE CIVIL SERVICE WHITE PAPER: A JOB HALF
FINISHED
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PETER
KEMP
What on earth is the civil servicefor? Acres of paper and considerable air time
is
spent discussing
it
these days. The Treasury and Civil Service Committee’s
(TCSC)
current enquiry
(HC
57,1993/4),
the
Scott
enquiry, and failings both real
and apparent in the way government is performing all fuel these discussions.
And now we have the government’s view, with green edges attached, in the
recent White Paper
Continuity and Change
(Cm
2627,1994).
And the discussion is often less than constructive. This is because those who
know
-
active practitioners
-
cannot or will not talk or write frankly; while
those who do talk or write, and they do
a
lot of it
-
former civil servants,
academics, ministers, and
so
on are often out of date.
So
the first problem is how
to blast
a
hole in
this
no-go area or more generally how to blast our way into the
shut-in complacency and claustrophobia of the system; and crucially, how to get
the necessary changes made.
So
it ought to be
good
news that we have this White Paper. Of course, there
are white papers and white papers. There are those published to ensure nothing
happens, simply to reinforce the status quo. But there are also those which
propose useful and necessary change, which lead to action; the present White
Paper tends to the first of these. But its very appearance is a sign that people
in
the bunker have at long last noticed what is happening
in
the outside world.
They have heard the gunfire and they reckon they have got to do something
about it.
We are not talking here about the
red
civil service; the half million men and
women who are actually out there doing the management and executive jobs.
Delivering social security benefits, collecting taxes, helping to get people back
to work,
running
defence support activities; all services now much better as a
result
of
the Next Steps reforms, the Citizen’s Charter, market testing and
Sir Peter Kemp was, up
to
1992, Second Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office and Project
Manager for the Next Steps Programme. He
is
a member
of
the Audit Commission and Author
of
the booklet
Beyond
Next
Steps;
a
Civil
Servicefor
the
2lst
Century
published in 1993 by the Social Market
Foundation.
Public Administration
Vol.
72 Winter 1994 (591-598)
0
Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford
0x4
~JF,
UK
and 238 Main
Street,
Cambridge,
MA
02142,
USA.
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