A new draft of the Civil Service Code aimed at improving performance culture has been put forward to replace the current code, which has been called “unfit for purpose”.
Think tank Re:State has published A new Civil Service Code to outline a series of desirable cultural values and behaviours which would ensure a consistently high standard of efficiency and professionalism within the service, and rebuild the “strained” relationship between ministers and officials.
This comes after the new Cabinet Secretary Antonia Romeo expressed her intention to revise the code in a list of objectives published earlier this month.
Charlotte Pickles, Chief Executive of Re:State and co-author of the publication, said that it would be a mistake to think of the Civil Service Code as no more than a technical document, arguing that its importance lies in that it sets “the foundational values for the people responsible for the day-to-day running of the State”.
She said: “The new Cabinet Secretary has rightly committed to refreshing [the code]. We heard repeatedly from frustrated civil servants that too often it’s used as an excuse for inaction and passivity.
“A rewired State demands a bolder, more agile, more open Whitehall – driven to deliver and with individual civil servants held to account their performance. Our new draft Code establishes a set of values that would underpin a new, high-performing era of government.”
The draft code groups the current four pillars of integrity, honesty, objectivity, and impartiality under the umbrella term of integrity, and also adds four new imperatives: excellence, openness, ownership, and courage.
‘Integrity’ would involve “serving the government of the day and the public with honesty and impartiality”, while excellence would concern a need to “always focused on how you can deliver the greatest public benefit”, and openness to be “open to considering new ideas, even if they are radically different to the status quo”.
Similarly, it calls for civil servants to “take ownership of [their] personal contribution to delivering the outcomes and objectives set by the government and expected by the public” and to “have the courage to be ambitious in order to maximise the public good”, as well as to recognise the key role that “constructive debate and disagreement” play in ensuring a good quality of delivery.
The current Code, which was created in 2006 with a minor update in 2015, is centered around negative rather than positive imperatives; telling civil servants what they can’t do rather than the positive and ambitious values they should be expected to embody, Re:State says.
Re:State has argued for all current and future civil servants to sign a new code, and for individual performance management to be measured against the code’s values.