What do civil servants actually do? — Part Four: engaging with the sector

In this fourth and final blog in this series, I will explore how civil servants engage with the real world when developing and delivering policy.

Forming policy advice

This is a critical part of the role of being a civil servant: engaging with those in the system who are some way involved in the delivery of, or impacted by, a policy area is essential in the development of good policy advice. As I set out in the first blog of this series, a policy official will find themselves with the responsibility for an area of work and the need to understand the issues that need addressing, and the methods and risks they are managing. In such circumstances, speaking to those people with more knowledge and experience makes considerable sense, not just in terms of developing policy options for Ministers to consider, but also to understand the likely impact of decisions and what the practical challenges to effective delivery will be.

The problem is that this is an almost impossible task. If I think about the policy area I worked in — education — then we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people directly employed in education (including teachers, lecturers, early years specialists, nursery nurses, teaching assistants, administrators, and ancillary workers), as well as millions of children and their parents and carers. Even looking at a smaller policy area — say teacher recruitment or curriculum development — you are still talking about hundreds of thousands of interested people. Each of these people will have different views, levels of expertise, and interests, many of which will be competing.

It is of course possible to rely on the voices of key ‘representative’ organisations — unions often foremost amongst them — but these voices are unlikely to be neutral and will use engagement with the civil service as a key way of pushing their own agendas. The unwary policy official can all too easily be swayed by a persuasive voice rather than the weight of evidence.

And yet, at some point, advice to Ministers will need to set out what ‘the sector’ thinks and how different policy options will be received. So an official must use judgement to try an unpick the evidence from the assertion, and help Ministers to understand what those affected really think, and how they might react do different decisions. As with other types of advice, the official who is able to give an accurate picture, succinctly, is highly valued by Ministers.

Building effective relationships

I have always been of the view that it serves the Government and those impacted by policy to forge strong working relationships. As an official I enjoyed working with sector organisations and speaking to those working at the front line. Any working relationships worth their salt have to be based on a degree of trust otherwise they quickly descend into a Machiavellian game of playing one another for short term gain.

A key part of building this trust is being honest. The challenge with that is that there are times when not all information can be shared, either for reasons of policy development or for issues of confidentiality or even security. My approach has generally been to be as open and honest as I can be, and be clear when I am unable to say something and why. Might this be seen as naiveté and be exploited?

Perhaps, and in truth I don’t know how far people tried to ‘play’ me. But I do think there are two factors which are not always understood in Government which should encourage a greater degree of honesty:

— the power dynamic is almost always tilted towards to official. It has taken me leaving the civil service to fully appreciate the power that being the voice of Government has in a conversation with somebody — individual or organisation — trying to shape Government policy. As an official I frequently felt buffeted by the fates (made flesh in media content and speeches). But I was almost always the voice of authority in a conversation; and

— an honest conversation is more likely to lead to better outcomes overall, even if there are some short-term challenges.

Such an approach does require a certain thickness of skin, however, especially where an honest conversation might be over an issue that is publicly contentious. I had the very great pleasure of spending some time working closely with the education unions at a time when the public relationship between unions and Government was especially fraught. Hours were spent negotiating, discussing, pushing, challenging, before reaching agreement on a host of issues (or sometimes being clear where agreement could not be reached). Those conversations were always held in a spirit of politeness and openness, with a genuine desire to achieve the best outcomes in the circumstances. But, no matter how cordial and even consensual these discussions often were, the public posturing of both politicians and general secretaries was almost always very different, hateful even.

The best officials understand that this is the political backdrop against which progress has to be made, and should never confuse the public positions of a politician or an organisation with the actual desire to get things done, no matter how frustrating it might be to observe.

Serving the Government of the day vs stewardship of the system

As set out elsewhere, the first duty of every civil servant is to serve the Government of the day, providing the advice to Ministers to enable them to make the best decisions they can, and then carrying those decisions out. As noted above, this advice should include a balanced understanding of the impact of policy decisions, including on how people will think and react.

But there is an additional element, which feeds into both the formulation of advice and the building of relationships — the civil service as stewards of the system. This idea reflects the fact that civil servants stay in post even as Ministers change and Government policy alters, and so the civil servant is the conduit between what new Ministers might want and what the system might need. As a good example, Ministers invariably want to make changes and invariably they will believe their changes are essential. If this urge is not tempered by an understanding of how the system will respond, and in particular that a new Ministerial initiative may well be one of many that people have been subjected to over recent years, then even the best Ministerial idea is likely to be difficult to implement. So the official, as part of the role of gathering views from the system, also has to play the role of ‘voice of the system’, explaining why even the best changes might be too much for a system that has often been overwhelmed by initiatives.

The tension exists when this is seen as obstruction by Ministers, or even when the civil services gets cast in the role as part of the ‘blob’ — unwilling to countenance change and defending the status quo through lack of imagination or because of some cosy consensus between officials and the system. Once again, the official who can convey a real sense of the depth of feeling on a issue and set these in the context of how a sector has been treated over time, and yet retain the confidence of Ministers that they are committed to pushing forward the Government agenda, is a skilled operator indeed!

Public appearances

Speaking in public is often one of the most challenging tasks a civil servant can take on. Having to toe a particular line is not, of course, unique to the civil service — any employee of any company will have to be careful what they say in public when acting as a representative. But anonymity is a core part of the civil service way — officials acting behind the scenes to provide advice and deliver policy, not taking centre stage in public.

It is of course impossible to hide away as a civil servant, nor is it desirable when we are talking about gathering the views of people working on the front line or trying to influence policy. It is also extremely important that civil servants play their part in explaining issues and decisions so that they are well understood.

So why is it so challenging?

Well, first, there is something about being the representative of the Government that often changes the dynamic in any public interaction. I mentioned above that officials often have more power in conversations that they may realise, and I think this is true. The flipside is that officials will often be treated in the way you might treat somebody in a position of power — unequally and with a degree of mistrust.

When I spoke in public, I spoke as a representative on the Government, and was treated as such. My most memorable experience involved me delivering a speech originally intended to be delivered by a Minister who couldn’t make the event. I was booed, slow hand-clapped, hissed at, and the demands on my job meant I had to take it with as good a grace as I could muster. As I have said before, officials need thick skin.

Second, officials will often find themselves pushing a Government line with which they may have argued vigorously. This is, of course, part of the job, but it does make it difficult when being pressed on a point by, say, a member of an audience. I had to work hard to develop my ‘poker face’ to manage these interactions and accepted them as part of the job. What worried me more was the possible loss of integrity when trying to establish strong working relationships when I had clearly advocated a line in public which might undercut the trust I wanted to build.

Finally, at a certain point officials speaking in public might come into the sight of journalists. Thankfully I have never had to deal with anything more than sector press, but even these limited interactions have left me reflecting on the ability of statements to get twisted for a headline, which again discourages open dialogue. Officials are often defensive and closed when speaking in public, in part in fear of how other comments might be reported and what impact that might have on Ministerial confidence in advice given.

On the nature of truth

A final area of difficulty is how to ensure that, as an official, you maintain your integrity — especially when protecting an important and constructive relationship with key stakeholders — when official Government lines are hard to justify. I have never had a problem with putting forward ideas I don’t necessarily agree with personally on behalf of the Government, but I confess I have struggled when information shared is partial or misleading. I once worked on a consultation where over 90 per cent of the respondents opposed a Government proposal, and yet the official Government line was that the response was ‘mixed’. That isn’t a lie — there were a range of views — but it is clearly misleading and I found that difficult (and I said so internally).

To be absolutely crystal clear, this isn’t an issue related to a particular political party or politician, but a wider challenge around the balance between presenting information in a way that helps the Government make its case reasonably and enact its decisions, whilst still being open to contrary data and information.

In public I would never do anything other than support the official Government line (although I happened upon this when working on this blog which I had no idea about before (page 31 if you are interested) which shows me indulging in a bit of unsavoury sub-tweeting). But in private conversations with stakeholders, where you all know that an official Government line is, let us say, not the whole truth, I found it self-defeating to try and pretend it was. Officials therefore often have to make a judgement about how far to be honest about the limitations of official Government lines with stakeholders, in order to help deliver better outcomes. This can be incredibly exposing and risks undermining a career if handled badly, which is in part why I place such a high premium on developing relationships of trust with stakeholders. It is worth saying that this works in the other direction as well, and many stakeholder positions may be based on partial evidence and designed to mislead. So a more open relationship can help in both directions. But the risks are real and I think damage the wider policy making process.

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I hope these four blogs have been of some use. They are in no way comprehensive and the workings of the civil service have been subjected to much more learned musings than anything I have pulled together. But they do represent some of the things I have learnt from a 19 year career as a civil servant.