Pat McFadden vowed to achieve “radical” changes in the civil service system, including digitalization and officials’ stricter performance goals, to reflect private sector practices.
Under plans expected to be announced this week, underperforming officials can be incentivized to leave their jobs, and senior officials will be linked to performance.
A new goal will allow one in 10 civil servants to work in digital or data roles for five years, bringing Whitehall to the private sector benchmarks.
There are currently 25,000 digital and data civil servants, accounting for 5% of the civil servant workforce. This will be guided by the principle that both digital alternatives or AI can do better, faster and equally quality tasks on a task, on one task.
“In some parts of the state, when we are still working on photocopies or paper forms, when there are faster, cheaper, better fixes, that’s not right,” McFadden said in a statement.
The plan forms part of a broader driver of efficiency, and ministers plan to lay off about 10,000 civil servants, despite McFadden’s refusal to publicly commit to a specific number on Sunday.
He said that in addition to the export process, senior civil servants who do not meet the standards will be presented in the development plan in order to fire them without improvement within six months.
McFadden and Laura Kuenssberg told the BBC One Sunday that the government “will be radicalized” about it. “We believe in good public regulations, and that’s why we fight elections… It’s part of what we think the country can provide security and opportunities for people,” he said.
“It will guide us to take action, it’s the early stage in our policy, so we will be deeply rooted in that, but it’s about the public’s outcome, it’s not an ideological approach that deprives the nation of the ideological approach.”
The government’s driving force for efficiency shocked the union, which criticized ministers for suggesting that civil servants were satisfied with the unqualified outcome.
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TUC Secretary-General Paul Nowak told Times that he was “disappointed” with McFadden’s plan and described it as “a set of suggestions that were more about grabbing the headlines than about serious plans to reform our public services.”
The Civil Service Union FDA described the announcement as a “re-read of narrative failure”, and the prospect says that civil servants are “an important part of helping the UK deal with the challenges we face in the near future”.
Labor and conservatives have fought for advice on the overhaul of Whitehall. McFadden said on Sunday that the scale of civil servants was angered under the Conservatives – although this was partly proven by Brexit and Covid-19 – and despite the target set, Boris Johnson has not cut the numbers.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp admits that his party makes civil servants “too big”, but Labour’s plans are “weak and anemia” compared to the one that the Conservatives have been planning before losing their elections.
