SECONDMENTS AND EXTERNAL APPOINTMENTS
87. A response to skills shortages in the Civil service,
other than by training, might be to increase the number of secondments
and external appointments into the Civil service. This issue was
recently discussed in our report into the FCO (May 2007), in which
we recommended that there be "a large increase" in secondments
and externally-appointed Civil servants to fill skill gaps in
the FCO. Witnesses to this inquiry have told us that bringing
in external expertise has a number of benefits including more
robust policy through its creation by those with skills that might
be lacking within the Civil service. Nick Mabey believed, from
his perspective, that:
…bringing in more people… has been
incredibly positive. It has not always been recognised as being
as positive as it should be. A lot of secondees have been appalled
and amazed at the opportunities for making change inside Government,
appalled, in some ways, that people were not doing all this stuff
already. It just shows that if you put someone who has been working
for 20 years on an issue inside an organisation where most people
only spend two or three years working on an issue, they can add
an awful lot of value.[124]
88. The use of outside expertise through appointments
and secondments has greatly increased in recent years.[125]
Witnesses stressed that there remain hurdles to the effective
use of outsiders, primarily centred on the difficulties of integrating
them into the strong culture that exists in the Civil service.
As a result of this culture "outsiders get quite frustrated
because they cannot integrate within the Departments and some
of them leave quite frustrated early on that they have not been
able to come in and do the sorts of things that they would like
to do".[126] We
were also told that when an outsider leaves, "generally the
system closes up behind" them. Nick Mabey has found that
in order for external appointments to leave an institutional mark
on the Civil service, the appointee him or herself must develop
links between the Civil service and outside organisations:
If you managed to embed a process which was partly
external, then that would keep the processes you had worked on
there going. More should be done both ways: to bring in professionals
and to keep them there. Also more should be done to make sure
people do skills transfers.[127]
89. In order to address their perception that a greater
input of specialist expertise in policymaking is needed, and to
help address institutional failures in retaining this expertise
when an external appointment may end, witnesses argued that the
Civil service must be more open. Guy Lodge argued that the role
of Civil servants involved with policymaking should evolve to
become more like co-ordinators, who would "[bring] in relevant
experts and [draw] on their knowledge and information, and then
[advise] Ministers".[128]
Mr Mabey argued that the core Civil service, those who remain
Civil servants for their entire career, should become much smaller:
There is a core that needs to do parliamentary
work well and legal work well and drive through bills, but, to
be honest, the rest of it is similar things that people do in
the public and private sector outside. They have a lot more skill
and expertise because they are not generalists. It would be a
much better governed country if more people also had an experience
of how difficult it is to run the Government and be a Civil Servant
and to understand the pressures and difficulties and tensions…
There is a two-way benefit of looking for a much more aggressive
system of both secondments and openness in hiring that reserves
the core of the Civil service but minimises that, rather than
the feeling at the moment that we are trying to maximise that
untouchable core…
I think there should be a larger Civil service
than there is now in terms of people who do policy and implementation,
governed by good Civil service ethics and some type of professionalism
of Civil servants, but only a small proportion, say 20 per cent,
should do that for the whole of their career. I think there are
plenty of people who know how to run large, complex organisations,
lots of people who know how to do strategy and policy outside
Government, who could make up the other 80 per cent for a significantly
large piece of their career.[129]
90. The PASC has looked at the issue of external
appointments. It concluded that "no organisation should be
closed—outsiders can bring different skills and perspectives
which should be welcomed. Every organisation can benefit from
some degree of "ventilation"".[130]
Nevertheless, the PASC was sceptical about increasing the number
of external appointments through the use of targets, primarily
due to the Government's own target that "about half"
of senior Civil service postings should be externally advertised.
It argued that "this particular target seems arbitrary and
inexact, and does not seem to be based around identified skills
gaps. If the Government does want to set a target, there should
be a clear evidence base for it".[131]
The PASC also warned that "if career Civil servants have
limited opportunities of getting to the top [as a result of more
external appointments to senior posts], the Government will not
get the benefits of talented people joining lower down the service".[132]
91. We believe that external appointments have an
important role to play in equipping the Civil service with the
range of skills required to tackle climate change, especially
in those areas where the Civil service is unlikely to be able
to develop the skills itself. We agree with witnesses that policy
makers are more likely to develop more effective policy for climate
change where they act more like coordinators, bringing together
experts from all sectors, including the private sector, third
sector and academia. We therefore call for a further increase
in the movement of people into and out of the Civil service. However,
any changes should be implemented in such a way that the benefits
associated with the long-term employment of highly-skilled civil
servants are not lost.
92. We recommend that the Government undertakes
a study to identify climate change skill and knowledge gaps in
Government for important sectors, including energy, transport
and construction. On the basis of this evidence the Government
and Civil service should seek to fill the identified gaps with
those individuals that have the best credentials, whether or not
the individual is appointed internally or externally.
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