Examination of witnesses (Questions 768-779)
WEDNESDAY 10 JANUARY 2001
PROFESSOR RON
AMANN, MR
ROBERT GREEN
and MR EWART
WOOLDRIDGE
Chairman
768. Can I welcome our witnesses, on behalf
of the Committee, all from the Centre for Management and Policy
Studies: Professor Amann, Director General, Robert Green, Director,
Corporate Development and Training, and Ewart Wooldridge, Director,
Civil Service College Directorate. You are here, gentlemen, because
of our inquiry into the Modernising Government programme, Civil
Service reform issues, and we would like to explore aspects of
your role in the scheme of things with you. We are very grateful
for the very concise memorandum that you have let us have. Perhaps
you and I ought to confess that we knew each other in a different
life. Perhaps I ought to tell the Committee that you are also
a Kremlinologist, are you not?
PROFESSOR RON
AMANN, MR
ROBERT GREEN
AND MR
EWART WOOLDRIDGE
(Professor Amann) I was, Chairman, yes.
769. And maybe therefore ideally equipped to
sort out Whitehall. Do you have an opening statement that you
would like to give us?
(Professor Amann) Yes; thank you, Chairman. We are
delighted to be here and tell you something about CMPS. If I may,
I would just like to pick out a few points from the memorandum,
perhaps to set the scene, as it were, for our discussion. CMPS
is, as you will know, a new organisation, it has existed for just
over 18 months; it is a complicated organisation, which has been
created at the heart of Government, and, as you are aware, we
have a number of key responsibilities within the Modernising Government
White Paper, contributing to culture change through developing
new approaches to policy-making, and developing the skills of
the Civil Service so that they can meet these new challenges.
CMPS incorporates the Civil Service College, which ceased to be
an Agency on 1 April of last year and is now a Directorate of
CMPS, within the Cabinet Office. During the last 18 months, to
cut a long story short, we have moved from constructing a vision
of the organisation, actually creating the organisation in all
its various parts, it is now complete, and delivering the first
range of products; some of them are original, and I think interesting.
I will not go through all of them but there are just one or two
that I would like to pick out. First of all, the development of
the new programme for Ministers and for senior civil servants;
as far as we are aware, there is no other country in the world
that has yet developed a programme of this kind. We have developed
a programme of peer reviews of the different departments, we have
carried out five of those reviews already; and that really is
the beginning of the Civil Service opening itself up more and
becoming more of a learning organisation. We have reviewed all
our corporate programmes, the corporate programmes include things
like the Top Management Programme, and we have developed new programmes
for the Senior Civil Service in areas like handling information
technology and a version of our Top Management Programme which
brings together civil servants from the UK and Europe, called
Insight Europe, and that has been very well received throughout
Europe. We have redesigned the entire training portfolio of the
Civil Service College to bring it in line with the priorities
of Modernising Government; in fact, I have brought with me—it
is literally hot off the press, we have not even shown our staff
this yet—the new CMPS Portfolio, which contains all our
training. If I may, I will leave that with you. And, finally,
we are developing new approaches to policy-making, based on the
latest developments in knowledge management, and that is one of
the most original things that we are doing to try to make policy
more joined-up and evidence-based through the use of information
technology. So I think it is reasonable to ask the hard question,
"You had a Civil Service College before, so what is new about
CMPS?" and I have been asked that question many times. And
my answer to it is, firstly, that the span of CMPS is much wider
than any pre-existing organisation, we cover the whole range of
training, right up to the ministerial level. Secondly, we are
directly intervening to create best practice in policy-making,
not simply to collect it and disseminate it but actually to develop
new approaches and create it. And, thirdly, and I hope I am not
putting this too grandly, CMPS, in a sense, represents, or could
represent, the final achievement of the original Fulton vision
of using research and amassing intellectual capital and linking
it into training, something which has never really happened in
the history of the Civil Service College, and became more problematical
during the period when the College was an Agency. So these are
still very early days, but I hope that we have made some significant
progress, and certainly we very much welcome the opportunity to
come before the Committee and share some of our thoughts with
you.
770. Thank you very much for that. If I could
just kick off by asking two or three questions. In a nutshell,
I know this is a very difficult thing to answer, but, in a nutshell,
what was the problem to which CMPS was the solution?
(Professor Amann) I think the central problem, in
a nutshell, was one of market failure. I think the Civil Service
College, operating as an Agency, operating as a business, was
trying to maximise its income stream by giving customers what
they wanted, and, indeed, it was very successful in that, in its
relationship with individual customers, it was successful financially,
and people who had attended courses at the Civil Service College
gave them high marks in evaluation. But what individual customers
think at the moment when they leave a course is different from
what the Civil Service as a whole needs in order to meet its corporate
objectives, and the real problem was whether the Civil Service
College, as an Agency, was set up in the right way to be able
to respond to the new Modernising Government agenda. And, to get
back to the point that I was making about Fulton, I think the
central problem was that it had not really amassed the resources
that would allow it to generate the sort of intellectual capital
that could develop those programmes; and so a wedge of central
funding and a stronger connection with the Cabinet Office was
required in order to move things forward.
771. Thank you for that. And, if I am following
this right, the pay-off from your existence will be that we shall
get better and more informed policy-making?
(Professor Amann) Yes.
772. How shall we know that we are getting that?
(Professor Amann) Well, that is the sort of classic
question to ask: "How do you know that you are going to be
successful?" It is always difficult to answer. And in an
area like policy-making it is extremely difficult to know the
answer, because there are so many factors that would have a bearing
on the quality of future policy-making, that the input of CMPS
is merely one variable and it is difficult to isolate its impact.
However, we do take seriously the question that you are asking,
because we want to try to do new things in the area of evaluation
too, we want to do things that other departments have not done
yet. What we propose to do in policy-making is to conduct a survey
of current Government practice, a systematic survey which looks
at what best practice is in different departments, and we have
just started that; at the present time, we have sent out a questionnaire,
we are getting the replies in the next few weeks, and we want
to establish some base-line data, so that, once we have established
it, we can go back to departments in the future, periodically,
and measure the kind of progress that we are making. We are going
to do exactly the same thing, and it is slightly easier, with
the training that we offer. At the moment, we measure our success
in terms of the forms that participants fill in at the end of
their course, and that is pretty good, but, of course, the warm
feelings that you have as you leave a course are different from
the more mature reflections that you might have a year down the
track, when you begin to ask yourself how useful this training
has really been in helping you to do your job better. Now, because
we want to build up networks of students after the event, so that
they can follow up their training and we can continue their learning,
we want to get ourselves into a position where we can consult
them in the future, so we can see what real difference it has
made, or they think it has made, to their own competence in the
job, and also to evaluate in terms of how departments think that
training has impacted upon the performance of departments.
773. A simple soul might say, does this mean
no more Dangerous Dogs Act, no more Child Support Act, no more
rail privatisation, no more poll tax; is this going to so revolutionise
policy-making that we do not have this trail of policy disasters
any more?
(Professor Amann) I think it might cut down disasters
by a significant margin, it will never eliminate them completely,
and you will never get away from making political choices, perhaps
sudden political choices, if the circumstances require it. But
I think what evidence does is to discipline and constrain decision-making,
so that at the margin you are better informed, you are taking
a broad, comparative view, and you do come to better decisions.
Personally, I think the term "evidence-based policy"
is incorrect, I think the proper term is "evidence-informed
policy", but, since we are using "evidence-based",
that is the buzz-word, but it is more accurate to say "evidence-informed
policy".
774. Just to explore another area, before I
hand over, what I would put to you is that there is a problem
here about when politics meets Civil Service policy-making, and
you have referred to this, in talking about these innovative courses
that you are doing with Ministers. These people inhabit different
worlds and they have different requirements, and when the Cabinet
Office did this nice report on `Professional Policy-Making for
the 21st Century', it said: "One area of concern is that
we found evidence of a lack of clarity about the prospective roles
of Ministers and officials in communicating policy. In particular,
Ministers want presentation that is `politically acute, not naive,'
while some policy-makers are uncomfortable with this, seeing it
as at odds with their political neutrality." Well, is not
that just a fact of life, that politicians operate in the short
term, they want political pay-offs, they have to win elections,
and they often do things which are daft? You come along and say
to them, "That's daft, doing that;" they will do it,
nevertheless. And, because this place works as it does, we shall
all vote for it. Is not that the fact there?
(Professor Amann) I think both of those elements are
always going to be present, and, just because there is always
going to be a very powerful political element, it should not,
in my view, be a counsel of despair about the use of the best
evidence. We see it as our job, in CMPS, to develop new approaches
to policy-making, to develop external networks where we can allow
Government to access, in a much more effective and user-friendly
way, the enormous intellectual capital that there is outside Government,
and to make that available to policy-makers. That is really the
job that we will do.
775. Let me give you an example, though, just
to make it more concrete. If we summon up intellectual capital
to the issue, there is no correlation between crime levels and
funding of the police or numbers of policemen, this is a fact,
established; and yet that does not stop politicians pretending
otherwise and putting in place programmes that are built upon
the opposite proposition. These are different worlds colliding,
are they not?
(Professor Amann) Yes. They are different worlds,
but, if you could take a different example from the same area,
the research evidence shows that if you concentrate resources
on major crime and repeat victimisation you use the evidence to
actually focus police effort; you can have more of an impact than
simply, in an indiscriminate way, putting a lot of policemen on
the beat. But there is a popular perception—and who is to
say that it is wrong—people feel more secure; so there is
an argument between a political imperative and what the evidence
suggests. But in many cases there will be police authorities who
will actually use that evidence in deploying their forces. So
I think those factors are always going to be present, there is
always going to have to be a judgement made in the final analysis.
I think it is our job to inform that judgement as best we can.
Chairman: Thank you for that.
Mr White
776. Is it not a fact that, you talked about
policy, in answer to the Chair's question, the fact that you are
the solution to the wrong question? And one of the problems, that
the Civil Service has failed, over many, many years, is the whole
question of implementation; that the Civil Service is very good
at designing policy but implementation is tacked on the end? And
your emphasis on policy is still missing the whole point of, unless
we get implementation right then you can have as many policies,
as many evidence-based things as you want but it is not actually
going to change the reality on the street?
(Professor Amann) Yes. I think it is a very good question
and I welcome it, because it gives me the opportunity to go into,
in a little bit more detail, what I mean. Because when I suggest
that we want to improve policy-making, I am not seeing that purely
as the intellectual exercise of assembling evidence and analysing
it. I am talking about the entire policy process, that includes
implementation; and policy is something that you have to manage
as well. We talk as if management and policy-making are somehow
very different, but, in fact, policy-making is an aspect of management.
Through the use of information technology, and what we call Knowledge
Pools, which would be sites on the Government Intranet, around
which policy development would take place, it gives the opportunity
to draw into policy discussion a much broader group of individuals,
in what would be a virtual policy team. An important aspect of
that would be to draw in those who are responsible for implementation,
because not only do you want research evidence but you also want
the advice of those who will be responsible for implementing policy,
whether they are teachers, or nurses, whatever the area of policy
might be; that should be something which is integrated into policy
development at the very beginning.
777. But it says, and Richard Wilson is talking
about the Knowledge Network: "Direct access to the Knowledge
Network is prohibited for any outside organisation or individuals."
How are you going to get this wider group, when one of the most
fundamental things about the way that the Civil Service is going
to develop presentation of information to Ministers, the Knowledge
Network, is going to be barred to people that you could be bringing
in?
(Professor Amann) I think I would like to make a distinction,
first of all, between the Knowledge Network and what I am talking
about. The Knowledge Network is a very specific network and its
main function at the moment is to provide, as I am sure you know,
policy briefing and disaggregated data down to regional and constituency
level. For a short time, the Knowledge Network was the responsibility
of CMPS; that responsibility has now passed on to the e-envoy.
The reason it was with CMPS was that we were wanting to broaden
the remit of the Knowledge Network. It is to do with knowledge
sharing, fundamentally, so that, in just the same way it could
be used for policy briefing it could be used for policy-making
more generally. But the Knowledge Pools that we in CMPS are developing—and
we are doing so on a pilot basis, we are hoping to set up four
Knowledge Pools in different areas of policy-making—would
be a way of involving a broader stratum of people throughout the
Civil Service, both professionals and policy-makers, and perhaps
involving people from outside the Civil Service. So it is different
from the Knowledge Network.
778. How much interaction will you have with
the Information Commissioner, for example, in terms of freedom
of information, and things like that, in terms of sharing that
information, opening up the Civil Service to that? You were suggesting
the sharing of information, it sounds like the right course, but,
given the history of the Civil Service, given the statements that
have been made, it seems to be in opposition to what potentially
is going to happen. And, therefore, I am curious to see how you
are actually going to get that sharing of information, get that
outside influence, that you think is a good idea, and which I
think everybody would accept was a good idea, when the pressures
on the Civil Service are not to release information. We have had
suggestions from Andrew Tyrie, earlier on, that he was getting
blocked in answering Parliamentary Questions. How are you actually
going to break down that cultural barrier to the sharing of information?
(Professor Amann) There is good practice at the moment
issued by the Government Chief Scientist regarding the involvement
of experts in policy-making and giving advice. I think the presumption
would be that a lot of the information that we are talking about
is actually in the public domain, and we would presume that as
much of that information as possible could be made public. One
thing I am very clear about, once you get into the area of evidence-based
policy and developing networks and better relationships with researchers
in universities and independent research institutes outside, that
relationship is not going to be sustained in the long term if
the door opens in only one direction; in other words, Government
cannot just simply suck in information into different areas of
policy development, there has to be some entry from those outside,
they have to feel that they have made an input.
779. The final question I have got is, we live
in a much more complex world, we have got the European Commission,
which has a different style of operating its Civil Service, we
have got the devolved authorities in Scotland and Wales and Northern
Ireland, and you have got embryonic regional government, through
the Regional Development Agencies, and regional government in
London now, with the Mayor, you have got local government as well;
how are the different cultures going to interact, or are you looking,
purely, only at the British Civil Service, how is the British
Civil Service going to interact with those other Agencies?
(Professor Amann) Most of this discussion about policy-making
is really talking about what is happening in Whitehall, in central
Government departments, but if you move on to the training area,
which is the other aspect of culture change, we are working very
hard to develop our relationships, particularly in Scotland, where
the Civil Service College Directorate has an organisation, and
I do not know whether Ewart Wooldridge would want to bring us
up to date on what is happening there.
(Mr Wooldridge) Just to add to that, which is really
the point about the wider context of the public sector, is this
just the Civil Service or is it the wider context, and it is very
much the latter, not only is it a fact that we have re-opened
an office in Edinburgh, and, in fact, we also have a relationship
with the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, we have therefore
invested in Scotland. We are investing also in partnership agreements,
arrangements, with local government, particularly with the Improvement
and Development Agency, and are developing our work in that area;
and, indeed, in the wider public sector, we are working with the
IDA and the NHS Executive and other institutions on research in
public sector management. Very much the brief of CMPS as a whole,
the Civil Service College Directorate, is for the wider public
sector; and our customers, as it were, at the College, come from
a wide cross-section of that sector.
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