The new senior civil servant will be the first of the new breed of ‘chief officers’ which were promised by the States’ chief executive some months ago.
Those posts were abolished by previous CEO Paul Whitfield and replaced with a number of senior officers who work centrally and provide support across the committee system.
But Boley Smilie, speaking ahead of a Guernsey Chamber of Commerce lunch event yesterday, said there are multiple reasons why he is bringing chief officers back.
‘Firstly, whatever you think of the political structure, it isn’t right in my view that the civil service structure doesn’t align with that. So that’s the most important thing, that we get alignment and real clarity between political committees and the officers that are supporting them.’
Mr Smilie also said having identifiable heads of each department will make the leadership structure clearer and help with his agenda of openness and accountability. But the States CEO stressed that the forthcoming appointment will not be a permanent one.
‘We will likely make an appointment on an interim basis in the next couple of weeks. That’s likely to be an external appointment. Then we will look concurrently, both externally and internally, for the very best chief officer in health that we can find, before we make a long-term appointment.’
Mr Smilie said it will be important that both the interim and permanent appointments have experience of management within healthcare, and of overseeing transformational programmes.
He said when he decided to reintroduce chief officers, HSC was the obvious department to start with.
‘The challenges are so significant, everything we do there moves the dial one way or the other, so it has huge implications for the wider organisation, and the whole community, so we have to ensure we have the very best leadership in there.’
Despite his plan to eventually appoint chief officers to all of the States’ principal committees, Mr Smilie is reassuring islanders that the total headcount of senior civil servants won’t rise as a result. Instead, he says they will take advantage of retirements and people moving on.
‘There might be small ups and downs in numbers as we change, but this isn’t about creating a bigger management structure, it is about ensuring it is better aligned with the political structure.’
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