The appointment of senior officials, how they are managed and held to account, their oversight of large projects and their relationship with political committees could all be radically overhauled under a new proposal due out imminently.
Independent scrutiny would be introduced in the recruitment and retention of senior figures, and a range of functions would be considered for outsourcing to private providers, including property services, legal advice, procurement and engineering.
The proposal, which is being worked up by Marc Laine as an amendment to the new Government Work Plan, would add public sector reform as a ‘super priority’ for the political term. It will be debated and voted on by deputies this month.
If the Assembly backs his amendment, the Policy & Resources Committee and chief executive Boley Smillie would be directed to develop the details of reform in conjunction with a group of independent experts.
‘The structure, shape, board-level governance and adherence to standards provided by the senior leadership team has not met even a modest standard. It has been more akin to a rabbit caught in headlights,’ said Deputy Laine, in an article in today’s Guernsey Press.
‘A committee or board that is not presented with accurate information, combined with considered choices, is doomed, or reliant on political subject matter experts if they exist on the committee or board.
‘Whether it is structure or capability or both, we are all set up to fail over and over without having the right senior leadership team underpinning the aims of government and executing them effectively.’
Deputy Laine said he fully supported Mr Smillie but believed politicians needed to do more to help him succeed in the role he started one year ago tomorrow. The two of them have discussed a draft of the amendment.
Deputy Laine expects to hold talks with P&R members this week after the storm clear-up forced the cancellation of a meeting between them on Friday.
He will advise the senior committee that the ambitions in its Government Work Plan, published just before Christmas, inevitably require root-and-branch reform of the civil service anyway, and that backing his amendment would help them accelerate that work.
P&R recently appointed Deputy Laine to lead an IT advisory panel in the wake of revelations that tens of millions of pounds were wasted on two failed IT projects. He had initially suspected that politicians had asked the wrong questions when overseeing those projects, but now realised there was a bigger problem.
‘The system now functions reactively, with huge knowledge and experience gaps, and is reliant on consultants to compensate for missing in-house capability. It is poorly equipped to deal with today’s challenges using the same resources and structures that created the mess,’ he said.
He did not want his amendment to be seen as a bid for executive or ministerial government, which he believed would miss the point, and in any event would fail without major civil service reform.