Richard Pope and James Darling
What do you have to do to make government work better? People have been asking that question for a very long time (it’s over 150 years since the Northcote-Trevelyan report asked a version of it for the UK government), but answers continue to be elusive.
Ten years ago, there was an attempt to approach the problem bottom up rather than top down: demonstrating better government by building some small pieces of it to demonstrate what could be – and should be – possible. It was an attempt which was small to vanishing in its direct effect, but was an influential precursor of much of what followed. That influence is still visible in the way things get designed and built across government, but something of the radical edge has got lost along the way.
This post both celebrates what was done in those heady days and poses the challenging question of where the equivalent radicalism needs to come from now. Gradual change is not enough, it argues, now is not a time for patching. Given that build up, the call to action falls a little flat – a resounding cry for a committee of enquiry into the civil service hardly sets the heart racing. But the fact that better answers may be needed emphasises rather than undermines the power of the question.