Why Sir Suma Chakrabarti endorses the Four Steps to Smarter Government

To coincide with the launch of our policy report Strategic, Capable, Innovative, Accountable: Four Steps to Smarter Government, Sir Suma Chakrabarti, who sits on the Commission, explains in a video message why he is endorsing the proposals.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Suma Chakrabarti, I’m a former permanent secretary at the Department for International Development and then the Ministry of Justice, and then went on to become the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for eight years.

I’ve really enjoyed being part of this Commission for Smart Government. I think the report is a radical set of proposals which I fully endorse. I’d particularly like to focus on the need, in my view, for any government to be more effective, to strengthen the centre of government, and how it does its business. I think for too long we’ve divided work in the centre between parties like the Treasury, the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister’s Office, and not really brought them together properly to really focus on what are the strategic challenges facing the country and those challenges increasingly are not departmental. They are cross-cutting and outcome-based, like levelling up, like net zero, and they can’t really be delivered by a single department nor actually by central government alone. So you do need a whole-of-government approach which involves local government and also of course other public services.

But what does this mean for the centre? I think it means, as the report says, really a much stronger Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet which would actually look at strategy, define the key objectives that the government is trying to face, so its cross-cutting objectives as I say, and then trying to put plans, a plan for government, if you like, into action that would actually measure outcomes, challenge the basis on which we’re proceeding, measures progress, work hard to get things on track when they go off track and also would allocate resources much more in a cross-cutting way, than is currently the system.

I think that will make for a far stronger effort, and it’s not about strengthening a particular prime minister, it’s about strengthening the whole of government. The whole of government would gain from this, because the centre would be actually firing on all cylinders to support the whole of government, who deliver public service outside central government as well, to deliver these goals. That’s why I’m very strongly behind that proposal and it really comes, I should say, based on a lot of experience having worked both at the centre - the Treasury and the Cabinet Office in my case, as well as in departments as well, spending departments.

But I think you can’t really do that sort of structural change without making other consequential change. I think the whole way we do financial planning for government, the way we actually construct what would be a plan for government would need a stronger centre, the Office of Public Effectiveness, that we have talked about public service effectiveness, a strong Secretary of State in that system, in that structure, to really animate the structure properly, and it would require really much more investment in financial planning skills, budgeting skills. It would also require, I think will work across government which then the centre would lead on, on actually defining what is the plan for government? We have manifestos of course in our system, political manifestos, but actually a plan for government requires us to go beyond those manifesto commitments and think about how you would actually get to the goals that are in manifestos, how you put together the right public services, the right teams, the right departments, and how you hold those public services to account across the piece.

So that is why is why I’m also strongly behind that proposal as well, to create a plan for government, to focus on financial planning, modern financial planning, to deliver that as well.

All of this I think of course means that what we require from ministers, from civil servants, permanent secretaries in particular, but civil servants generally, will have to change, and there’s a lot in the report which I strongly endorse on what we’re looking for in terms of ministers. We want to widen the pool from which ministers are chosen, to make sure we get the right expertise. We want to give ministers also better training along with other public servants, not just ministers on their own but civil servants, wider public services, so there’s great emphasis you will see in the report on actually investing in the training capability of all public servants, ministers and civil servants and public servants included. But I think coming down to my own experience as a former permanent secretary it does require the permanent secretary role to evolve.

Now some permanent secretaries have already done this, but we need this to be more consistent across all the permanent secretaries and it becomes much more of a chief executive role which is why some people may think is a gimmick, I actually think it’s a better prescription of what the world now is really about, or should be about, it is about defining strategy, helping to define strategy. It is about trying to execute that strategy and it’s not about doing this on your own. It’s about doing this in teams, with others, because the outcomes they’re going to have to deliver, these permanent secretaries, cannot be delivered by their department alone.

And so operational effectiveness also becomes a third leg if you like of a modern permanent secretary, a modern chief executive’s, role, really focusing on that. I think it’s fantastic that we’re also pushing again for the proposal that we should really have these assessments of organisations, these - if you like - the old capability reviews on steroids, much more focused on capabilities in departments and whether they really have the operational nous and ability and capability to deliver on those great outcomes that any government should be pursuing.

So I think it’s a very rounded package as a whole, if I can put it that way, I there’s something about structural change but with a purpose, not just because it sounds good, and there’s something about really thinking about how do you make that, animate that structure to work with the financial planning, the plan for government, and there’s something about what sort of skills you need. What sort of leadership and managerial skills do you need at the top of the Civil Service, amongst ministers, to really make this a success. So I really recommend this report to all of you.