Letter to the Clerk of the Committee from
the Permanent Under Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth
Office
We have just completed our 2008 FCO Stakeholder
Survey and I wanted to share the results with you. Because participants
who took part were guaranteed full anonymity, I have no way of
knowing which of you actually agreed to be interviewed. But I
want to express my very warm thanks to all those who did agree
to participate. This is one of the most important ways we have
of judging our performance, and so it is central to our efforts
to further improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the FCO.
I hope you also found it a worthwhile exercise.
The survey was conducted by a specialist agency
called Jigsaw. Stakeholders were asked how they rated the FCO
and the services we provide. A total of 136 interviews took place,
with participants drawn from the full range of our stakeholders
(academics, business, faith groups, NGOs, parliament, press, think
tanks). An additional feature of this year's survey was a parallel
exercise that sought the views of other Government Departments
on the FCO's performance against one of its own key Departmental
Strategic Objectives—that of providing a flexible global
network servicing the whole of the British Government.
Overall, stakeholders gave us positive feedback.
Satisfaction with FCO staff is high (90%); and most of you think
the FCO is important to your own work (88%). The majority of you
also thought your own needs were being met by the FCO (80 per
cent) and a significant proportion of you (45%) thought that the
FCO's performance had improved since 2006.
I often tell our staff that they are the FCO's
greatest asset. It is therefore particularly gratifying to see
that you, our key stakeholders, comment on the calibre of FCO
people and feel that the FCO is becoming more inclusive and diverse.
This is good news.
Of course there were also messages about what
we could do better. Some commented on an inconsistency in the
FCO's level of service across our network of overseas posts and
expressed concern that diminishing resources may exacerbate this
issue. There was also concern that the FCO's system of moving
UK-based officers overseas after four years at most meant that
knowledge and expertise was lost when staff moved posts. Another
common theme was a frustration over who to contact in the FCO.
I am already following up these issue internally.
More specifically, I understand that a number
of parliamentarians said they would welcome more background, and
oral briefings as well as a more rapid response to PQs. In addition,
MPs asked for support from posts for parliamentarians making overseas
visits. We are always happy to offer briefings and are happy to
try and accommodate any request that is made to us. We are also
looking at opportunities for increasing our proactive briefings.
We are currently in the process of revising our PQ procedure to
enable us to meet the tight (particularly on Named-Day PQs) deadline.
In addition, we are working with departments to encourage a more
active relationship with parliament generally and specifically
with APPGs. As for assistance from overseas posts, the need to
provide such assistance is laid down in our parliamentary guidance
and posts are instructed to provide as much assistance as their
resources allow.
The full report is now available on the FCO's
external website. The full URL is provided at the bottom of this
letter. We intend to repeat the survey again in two years' time
to benchmark our progress.
Sir Peter Ricketts
12 August 2008
http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/about-the-fco/what-we-do/building-strong-relationships-o1/stakeholder-groups/stakeholder-sur
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