Incoming chief working officer of the civil service Cat Little speaks to Sapana Agrawal, the director of modernisation and reform within the Cabinet Office, on the closing session of Innovation 2024. Photo: Rob Greig
The incoming chief working officer of the civil service, Cat Little, has stated she goals to assist concentrate on “the things only the centre can do” with the intention to liberate different departments of presidency to succeed.
Little spoke with Sapana Agrawal, the director of modernisation and reform within the Cabinet Office, on the final session of Global Government Forum’s Innovation 2024 convention as she transitions to the position of COO and Cabinet Office everlasting secretary, from her present put up of second everlasting secretary within the Treasury.
The dialog mirrored on the discussions throughout the 2 days of the Innovation convention, particularly how authorities can take extra dangers in making an attempt new methods to ship providers.
Little stated she was significantly fascinated about exploring “how do we focus on the things that only the centre of government can do?” to provide departments area to innovate.
“Only the centre of government can create the conditions for the state to succeed,” she stated. “That doesn’t imply us operating issues and controlling issues from the centre, or organising some guidelines. It’s truly about how will we liberate and empower Whitehall departments, the nation, devolved governments, and enterprises throughout our provide chains, to essentially grapple with among the challenges that we’re dealing with.
“How do we do that? Well, I think the centre therefore needs to focus on only the things that the centre could do. And the things that the centre really has to do are to set a strategy to be clear about the priority outcomes, the problems we’re most trying to fix, and that has to be part of the usual democratic process with ministers, and then we need to set the investment.”
This course of will set the framework for departments to be extra modern, she stated. There will probably be a authorities spending evaluate following the UK normal election that should take place by 28 January 2025, and Little stated this was “where strategy and resources come together to bring fiscal meaning to grand ambition”, including: “Only the centre can do that. But I’m really interested in how do we create conditions for people to succeed and to liberate people to innovate more effectively.”
Read extra: UK urged to create ‘Department for the Civil Service’
‘Assume you’ve acquired extra energy than you assume you do’ to innovate
Elsewhere within the session, Agrawal requested Little how civil servants may very well be empowered to take dangers.
This was a frequent theme on the Innovation convention. Sarah Munby, everlasting secretary of the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation & Technology, mentioned tips on how to change the best way civil servants take into consideration threat, telling delegates that “you need to really give them an enabling space that lets them do things that are different”.
In her feedback, Little stated that she would urge civil servants to query the frequent assumption in authorities that they don’t have permission to do issues in another way.
“We always underestimate our own agency,” she stated. “The quantity of people that come to me in my present job and say, ‘Could you help me out with this thing, because I need this approval over here’, or ‘I don’t assume the Treasury goes to let me do one thing, since you at all times say no, so how are you going to assist me to work out tips on how to get you guys to say sure’, and it’s [a situation where] you’ll be able to simply do it. You don’t want to come back to us with permission.
“So our kind of default can be to assume we don’t have the authority to do something that someone else has. So I would always suggest, just question that a little bit. Assume you’ve got more power than you think you do.”
Little in contrast the “very hierarchical” tradition on the Ministry of Defence, the place she labored as director normal finance, with the Treasury, “a very small place that is really big on empowering the most junior person to take the biggest decisions”.
“There’s no right or wrong – there are very good reasons for why these organisations work in that way. But my early compare and contrast when I joined the Treasury was: isn’t it so exciting that we give the most difficult thing to the most junior person with the least experience? There are some pitfalls to that, but isn’t that great to be able to say, as a leader, I trust you to take this really wicked problem, and I’m going to give you empowerment and authority to work out what you think the solution is.”
Calling this “a really bold, high-risk thing to do”, Little stated that she would suggest civil servants “take some risks” by partaking extra folks throughout authorities organisations to assist clear up issues. “Empower the most junior person you know to go and think about [a problem], because I bet you they will take that very seriously and think very hard about it and come up with some brilliant options that the most senior people, who tend to be less creative and I include myself in that, [might not].”
Read extra: ‘Hope is not a strategy’: tips on how to change how civil servants take into consideration threat
Innovation 2024 was held on 19 and 20 March 2024. The event was supported by platinum international information associate EY, and gold information companions Appian, Capgemini, Defence and Security Accelerator, Google Cloud, IBM, Nortal, PA Consulting, VISA Government Solutions, Workday, and WT.
