Welcome to my website civilservicereform.uk. This website is a hub for my research investigating when, why and how civil service reform works. I aim to develop actionable insights that will help politicians and officials to succeed in civil service reform.

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There is no shortage of views on the fitness for purpose of the civil service. The paradox of UK civil service reform is that is subject to two quite contradictory narratives. In the absence of compelling evidence on the impact of reforms the confidence of those taking a positive view of the benefits of civil service reform efforts has become almost ideological. The wistful certainty of those who articulate a narrative of decline and fragility seems to reflect a similarly ideological distaste for the notion of business and management in public administration. 

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Discerning the impact of reforms is a tough task that faces almost insurmountable barriers. These barriers partly explain the lack of evaluation and the often-unsatisfactory findings of those few evaluations that are undertaken.

 

The starting point for my research is that both the public administration view and the prevailing narratives of decline are partial, often misleading and generally fail to capture the cumulative and transformational impact of 65 years of reforms. 

 

It is possible to believe the civil service has substantially improved its capability through decades of reforms whilst also holding the view that it is still not fit enough for today’s purpose and tomorrow’s challenges.

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The main body of public administration research has struggled to articulate what successful reform looks like; largely failed to offer actionable insights into how successful reform is achieved; neglected the role of politics and policy choices; and, for some of the biggest challenges facing government (for example financial crises) exaggerated the potential of management to resolve them.

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None of this helps us to better understand how reforms have positively changed the civil service and consequently increased the possibility of effective government. 

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To do that we need to distinguish between the rhetoric and actuality of reforms. We need to think differently about the patterns and impact of successful reforms. And we need to re-tell the story we thought we knew about successful reforms - with a particular focus on the practice of reformers who navigated the context, contradictions and complexity that confront all reform efforts.

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My evolving research programme

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I am building a programme of research that will:

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• Shine a light on a number of research fields that are relevant to the challenge of reforming a big public institution, but seem to be largely ignored by practitioners and public administration researchers.

• Draw on those research fields to build a conceptual framework for understanding civil service reform.

• Use that framework to look again at notable reforms from a different angle to better understand their success or failure.

• Highlight some neglected reforms that have played a critical part in creating essential foundations for better known reforms. 

• Conduct interviews with past and current reformers to understand their experience of successful reforms with a particular focus on their practices (what they did, why and how they did it).

• Share my own stories and artefacts from some notable reforms of the last 25 years.

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The evolving content on the website will explore the last 65 years of reform efforts: drawing on secondary research, my own previous research and, grey materials relating to particular reforms.

 

As I begin primary research with past and present reformers I will focus on three key questions which I believe are most likely to produce actionable insights for would be reformers:

 

• How do context and antecedents help or hinder reform?

• Which moments in a reform process are most important to the success or failure of the reform effort?

• What do reformers and reform teams do in these key moments? What is it about the way they do it that helps the reform succeed?

 

If you have ideas, connections or suggestions that you think could help me in this research please do get in touch.