Civil service gets ready to change gear and head out into the fast lane

THE cornerstone of the document Delivering Better Government launched last week quality to be provision of excellent I am has a record in providing services that compares well, with the civil services of other countries I have dealt with and with any of the private organisations I have encountered.

We recognise, in the civil service, that we have been, for some time now, experiencing rapid change and that the pace of change will increase. This change means that the Irish civil service will also change whether we like it or not. We have a simple choice. Do we react to change as it rolls over us or do we manage change consistently and coherently?

I am satisfied that the Co-ordinating Group of Secretaries were choosing the consistent and coherent management option when we worked together to produce the framework for change endorsed publicly by the Government last week. That co-operative strength will now be matched by comprehensive consultation with and involvement of people right across the civil service.

This is a crucial element in gaining the ownership of and commitment to the specific change initiatives that will now be developed in the filling out and implementation of the framework published last week.

A key feature of the launch on Thursday was the commitment by the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste, the Minister for Social Welfare, the Minister for Finance and the Minister of State, Ms Avril Doyle, who has a special responsibility for the implementation of Delivering Better Government, to guarantee at the political level the will and the means to make the document a reality.

The Taoiseach made clear at the launch that the implementation of the report will take a consistent commitment over time in the civil service and across the public service and at every political level. It will, involve a change in culture across all those levels and such changes in culture take consistent application over years to deliver successful and permanent results.

FURTHERMORE, he said that in the implementation of the report (as part of the Strategic Management Initiative) there will be new relationships between politicians and public servants at the whole series of existing levels.

There will also be new relationships within the public service in particular between the management level and the front line level. Those new relationships will focus, in particular, on results of performance both good and bad and on teamwork.

The issue of bad performance and how to deal with it has achieved a prominence, in the reporting of and comment on the report that is, in my view, substantially out of proportion to its importance in the changes to be implemented. Again, in my view, it would not rank in the top 50 of those changes in importance. The norm in the Irish civil service is good performance.

This can be better with, in particular, improved training and development and improved use of information technology. Bad performance, which exists in a minority of cases, should be faced up to and dealt with, not least because of its impact on the morale of the significant majority who are good performers.

Changes will flow from Delivering Better Government in two directions.

First, changes will flow outwards from the civil service through Quality Service Initiatives in each department and public body, through regulatory reform and the reduction of red tape, through openness and transparency in service delivery and through cross departmental approaches including the use of one stop shops to the many important issues that impact on, or require inputs from, a number of departments.

The other flow of change is within the civil service through new management structures, through a different approach to human resource development especially a commitment to providing 3 per cent of payroll for critically important training and development through new directions in financial management, for example in multi annual budgeting and accrual accounting, and finally, but definitely by no means least, through improved use of information technology, especially in the front line and in the confirmation systems consequences of it.

The implementation of the changes in both outward and inward directions will now be put in place. This will involve a deepening of the Strategic Management Initiative within the civil service with a specific commitment by Government to the publication of a Strategy Statement by each Minister before the end of 1996 and a widening of the SMI across the public service with a further specific commitment to the introduction of the Strategic Management Initiative to each public body within 12 months.

IMPLEMENTATION will have two structural aspects. The first" aspect, since quality service is the cornerstone, is the front line, dimension of change and the action necessary to enable front line people across the civil service to give really good services to their clients and customers. The other aspect is the management dimension of change especially performance management in its many facets crucial to making excellent services a reality.

In all this, I want to underline, as I did at the launch of the report that what we are about is excellent and distinctive public management. We intend to respect fully the core public service values of equity and integrity that have served this country well. We intend to develop strongly the partnership of people working together that is rightly valued in the civil service.

I am satisfied that if asked to write a similar article next year and in succeeding years, I will be able to report solid progress that is viewed positively by our civil services many customers and by the civil servants who will be doing an even better job in providing services to them.