I've been reading through the Institute for Government's new report on Finding The Right Skills for the Civil Service and had a few random thoughts.  The report has a "ripped from the headlines" recommendation about "porosity" (expertise moving between the Civil Service and the Private Sector). It says ACOBA is the gatekeeper that limits ‘revolving door’ abuse of government insider knowledge "(but)...there are.no firm sanctions for those who break the rules, and those who follow them are unlikely to be the people behaving improperly. " So,"...the system needs a thorough overhaul." As I said here , it's clear the problem lies on the top shelf of the oven, and I hope any remedies don't end up dripping down to the bottom levels. As far as the findings on skills goes, I still felt a bit of residual pride that HMRC is identified as a bit of a leader here with a large number of civil servants who are members of a profession that in...

 Call me suspicious, but as sure as slurry runs downhill, I suspect the current row over Greensill and second jobs for civil servants will eventually end up having the biggest impact on those at the bottom of the oven. The current row started with a former head of Whitehall procurement being revealed to have a "second job" with Greensill Capital. As a result the head of the civil service has ordered Government departments to tell him how many other civil servants have second jobs. I assume the Cabinet Secretary is just interested in "top" civil servants - senior managers with the knowledge and connections to benefit private enterprise. I really hope this isn't going to be the start of a grand campaign that blusters down to the lowest levels of the civil service. At the lower grades, some civil servants are so poorly paid that - before the pandemic - they felt the need to take a second job. Others are involved with family businesses and do a bit of work at weeken...

  I had to wait til Mid-day to check if the story was true. Appropriately, it was April 1st 2021 when the "i" Newspaper reported that Ministers are looking to "start bringing some civil servants back into the workplace under a phased return to the office from 12 April." We were assured this will only apply to "those whose roles are unsuited to working from home." As I said when talking about the early days of the lockdown  here   the definition of not being able to do your job remotely was always a bit ambiguous. It turned out that the technology allowed more people to work from home than we'd previously been led to believe. But some sections of HMRC doubted how effective that work from home was. Perhaps that was what the  Prime Minister was thinking of when he said "people have had quite a few days off" and should make a stab at going back to the office. "Fair play, we've given you that time off so you didn't spread Covid, but l...