Commenting on the publication of the Commons public accounts committee’s report on the Cabinet Office’s programme of bi-annual Capability Reviews, South Norfolk MP Richard Bacon, a member of the committee, said:
“The Capability Reviews are a very useful tool in bringing transparency to Whitehall and showing whether government departments are fit for purpose. However, the reviews still need some work if they are to drive real improvement.
“Too many of the judgements in the review process are subjective and there are few external benchmarks, even though studying success elsewhere in the private and public sectors can only help drive forward improvements. Senior civil servants often seem able to get away with mistakes that would cost most people their jobs. Capability Reviews need to drive a much stronger culture of performance management, with sanctions for failure starting at retraining and ending in dismissal if necessary.
“Capability Reviews are not perfect but they must continue and the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, is to be commended for driving this valuable process through. However, Sir Gus can only guarantee that the reviews will continue whilst he is at the helm. It would be unfortunate if they were to be quietly shelved once Sir Gus steps down.”
Mr Bacon was speaking as the Commons public accounts committee published its report on the Cabinet Office’s programme of bi-annual Capability Reviews. In 2005, the Cabinet Secretary launched a programme of bi-annual Capability Reviews. They involve published external assessments of departments with the aim of achieving a major improvement in civil service capability. The programme is a significant step forward in how government departments are assessed and, to have publicly available commentary, potentially critical, of departments’ capability is a real driver for improvement.
The report finds that there need to be improvements to the metrics used to establish a clear link between departments’ capability and performance, as improving departments’ capability and performance requires a much wider range of objective quantitative measures than Capability Reviews currently use and publish. Benchmarking against the best private and public sector organisations is also a key driver of improvement and the report finds that there need to be quantitative external benchmarks against which departments’ capability and performance are assessed.
The report also identifies that there needs to be a much stronger culture of individual performance management, clearly linked to departments’ overall delivery metrics. Incentives and sanctions to reflect success and tackle failure are weaker in the civil service than in the private sector and in senior levels of local government. Good performance needs to be recognised and suitably rewarded.
15 September 2009
REPORT:Assessment of the Capability Review programme
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