Whitehall needs to change, but more technology isn\u2019t enough. Opening routes to leadership would bring skills that are too often overlookedThe cabinet secretary, Antonia Romeo, called for an overhaul of a \u201creactive and risk-averse\u201d civil service in\u00a0her speech last Tuesday. Ministers planned a \u201cradical shift\u201d of powers, resources and accountability\u00a0to regional and local government, which she said would leave Whitehall \u201cleaner and more strategic\u201d. As 80% of civil servants already work outside London, devolution promises to alter what central government does, not simply where it operates.<\/p>\n
Reinvention is in the civil service\u2019s blood \u2013 ever since it was founded as a permanent, impartial institution in 1854. Even departmental boundaries, Dame Antonia said, are on notice, asking\u00a0do they \u201cremain optimal in an era of\u00a0cross\u2011cutting delivery?\u201dThis must be set against the civil service\u2019s relative decline: it is ranked joint sixth internationally on one measure of public administration. To improve, Dame Antonia says the civil service must embrace AI. The efficacy of public service, she claimed, no longer has to be constrained by the limits of \u201chuman bandwidth\u201d.<\/p>\n
That is an extraordinary claim. Technology can help speed up identifying someone at risk of homelessness \u2013 but it does not supply a home. Better administration and adequate resources need each other. Continue reading…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Whitehall needs to change, but more technology isn\u2019t enough. Opening routes to leadership would bring skills that are too often overlookedThe cabinet secretary, Antonia Romeo, called for an overhaul of a \u201creactive and risk-averse\u201d civil\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}