In his recent Guernsey Press Politics Podcast, new States chief executive Boley Smillie spoke of efficiency savings and better IT systems
While these operational improvements have their place, Guernsey’s civil service faces a deeper challenge – an accountability crisis that efficiency alone cannot solve.
We hope that significant reforms are under consideration behind closed doors.
The People’s Trust offers this analysis to help deputies and citizens distinguish genuine reform from efficiency theatre, and to support those working towards meaningful change.
To his credit, Mr Smillie acknowledges serious spending issues. He recognises the £55m. consultancy costs over four years, including paying for answers the States already knew, and admits that public sector pay growth ‘has to change’ because Guernsey ‘can’t afford for that trend to continue’.
This suggests awareness of deeper problems. The question now is whether proposed reforms will address symptoms or causes – in other words, operational inefficiencies or the fundamental accountability deficit that enables dysfunction.
The People’s Trust sees multiple cases of poor conduct, sometimes several a week, all following the same playbook to evade accountability.
The patterns are unmistakable – delay until complainants exhaust themselves, label persistent complainants as vexatious, claim procedural technicalities trump substantive wrongs, hide behind misapplied confidentiality rules, review internally, and when all else fails, declare the matter historic and refuse to investigate.
When failures occur, the civil service investigates itself through carefully choreographed reviews that consistently avoid examining primary evidence of wrongdoing or addressing the core legal breaches such evidence reveals. These investigations follow a predictable pattern: appoint friendly reviewers, circumvent inconvenient facts, declare that lessons have been learnt, and continue as before.
This has been going on for over a generation.
No credible governance system permits those under scrutiny to control their own investigations, yet this is precisely what occurs whenever misconduct allegations arise in Guernsey. Such conduct would be unlikely to occur, let alone succeed, in a jurisdiction with mature accountability mechanisms.
Deputies are asked to vote on contentious legislation without access to legal advice about its validity.
In what appears to be a perversion of basic legal principles, law officers seem to claim to control privilege that rightfully belongs to their client, the States. This creates a shadow governance structure where unelected officials control information flow and democratic accountability is severed.
When discussing the Revenue Service dysfunction, Mr Smillie claims that ‘the people... are not the reason’ for failures, blaming instead systems and technology. While the Revenue Service may indeed have suffered from antiquated systems, this conveniently ignores the Agilisys debacle, a catastrophic failure caused to a large extent by civil servants who neither understood the systems they had nor could specify what was needed.
This incompetence is not new. Over 30 years ago, I was involved in a tendering process for a States payroll system where civil servants proved unable to produce a specification.
The process was so irregular that all tendering parties were brought together in the same room for a presentation by the then director of States IT.
At this presentation, I was the only one to ask, ‘Where’s the spec?’ The silence spoke volumes. Then finally, their response: ‘The specification is in the code…[of the old system]’, which they then provided on magnetic tape.
If genuine reform is coming, here are the tests it must pass:
1. An independent public service ombudsman for the civil service with statutory powers to investigate complaints, compel evidence, and order remedies. This office must be genuinely independent, not staffed by current or former civil servants. Consider a panel of retired UK judges allocated to cases on a ‘taxi-rank’ basis.
2. A statutory freedom of information law with teeth, including criminal sanctions for deliberate concealment or destruction of information. GDPR exclusions must be strictly limited. Overzealous redactions should be prohibited, perhaps using AI-assisted systems under committee oversight.
3. Clear legal privilege rules confirming that the States, not the Law Officers, control privilege over government legal advice. Deputies must have access to full legal advice about legislation they vote on.
4. Personal accountability mechanisms requiring senior civil servants to face consequences for misconduct, including financial liability for losses caused by deliberate breaches of duty.
5. Protected whistle-blowing channels that genuinely protect those who expose wrongdoing rather than ejecting them from their positions.
In relation to financial savings, Mr Smillie states that ‘what’s almost more important than the number is the fact we’re seen to achieve it’ and emphasises being ‘seen to be as efficient as we possibly can’. This focus on appearance is concerning. Real reform isn’t about being seen to change but actually changing.
The proper question is not how to perform unnecessary functions more cheaply, but why the government performs them at all.
As I have said many times, government exists to provide the minimum necessary services that the lone individual cannot provide for themselves. Nothing more.
A genuine reform programme would begin by questioning which functions the government should perform, not merely how to ‘equip people better’ to perform potentially unnecessary tasks.
We hope that Mr Smillie and others recognise privately that major reforms are needed. If so, this is welcome. If not, we have reason for concern.
The podcast interview's focus on efficiency may reflect political constraints rather than a lack of awareness. Accordingly, those developing genuine and proper reforms deserve support in going beyond efficiency theatre to address fundamental accountability.
The People’s Trust stands ready to support genuine reform.
We have documented many cases showing why change is urgent. We offer this experience constructively, not as critics but as citizens who want effective governance. We want to make Guernsey a better place for all.
For deputies considering these issues, reform requires courage. The question isn’t whether change is needed. I’m sure that even Mr Smillie acknowledges this privately.
The question is whether you have the vision to demand real accountability measures, the clarity to distinguish genuine reform from efficiency theatre and, yes, the cojones to insist on nothing less.
Until senior officials face genuine consequences for misconduct, until the public gains statutory rights to information, until legal privilege ceases to be weaponised against democratic scrutiny, and until independent oversight replaces self-investigation, Guernsey’s civil service will remain trapped in a cycle of failure, cover-up and empty promises of lessons learnt.
If significant reforms are indeed under development, we welcome them. But they must address accountability, not just efficiency.
They must create consequences, not just processes.
They must open the government to scrutiny, not perpetuate opacity behind claims of operational improvement.
The People’s Trust will judge any proposed reforms against these standards. We encourage all deputies and citizens to do the same.
Real reform cannot come from within a system that protects itself – it requires external pressure and political will. The opportunity for meaningful change may be at hand.
Let’s ensure it isn’t wasted on efficiency theatre when fundamental reform is what Guernsey needs.
You need to be logged in to comment. If you had an account on our previous site, you can migrate your old account and comment profile to this site by visiting this page and entering the email address for your old account. We'll then send you an email with a link to follow to complete the process.