What do civil servants really think about the state?

Civil servants shows they feel stifled by cumbersome processes, weak talent progression and ineffective procurement, according to a new survey that casts doubt on the government’s ability to deliver on the transformative “missions” it’s promised, says Joe Hill

The Government took office a year ago pledging to change the country with five big “missions”. This approach was heralded as more than the sum of its parts – not just a new set of priorities, but a new way of governing the nation, based on their frustrations with a state which felt like it couldn’t deliver for the public.

Having been a civil servant, I know that the things which frustrate people outside of the civil service are just as frustrating on the inside. But it’s often hard to explain why – so recently we asked civil servants what they thought about the state of the state.

Missions are meant to be defined by a laser focus on key priorities, and gearing the whole of government to deliver those. The Prime Minister said it was a “gauntlet thrown down” for the civil service to pick up. But based on a of over 1,200 civil servants which we at the think tank Re:State have published today, there is a long way to go. While it is a small sample of the half a million strong civil service, it illustrates concern among officials who hardly ever get a chance to give their side of the story.

The same officials the Government is relying on to drive growth, cut crime and fix the NHS say they feel trapped by the processes they work in, rather than empowered to innovate and make the state more efficient and effective. A majority – 70 per cent – agreed with the statement “I often feel that processes get in the way of me performing my job”, while only 16 per cent disagreed (the rest either didn’t know or chose to say they neither agreed nor disagreed). 

Bureaucratic and risk-averse

Big, bureaucratic and risk-averse systems like the civil service risk becoming overwhelmed by their own complexity, making it impossible to make any change. One respondent wrote in the survey that “coming from the private sector I find the slowness of the Civil Service processes and procedures very frustrating. It stopped me being able to complete my job far too many times.”

Any successful business knows that getting top talent is vital to success. In other countries, the civil service is seen as having a quick route to the top, and talented people join expecting rapid progression. But the civil servants we surveyed didn’t feel that about their organisations. Only 25 per cent agreed with the statement “talented people rise to the top of the civil service”, compared to 60 per cent who disagreed. 

The trouble is, the civil service also needs to shrink, and it is trying to. Hiring freezes are being used by ministers to stop their departments continuing to grow, and voluntary exit schemes are now being used to try and shrink the size of the civil service. But this approach risks the best people deciding to take the severance package because they don’t see a future, rather than the Government making strategic decisions to manage out poor performers.  

Many of the best ideas and people that the Government needs will be working in the private sector. But even when it comes to buying in their services through public procurement, civil servants felt they were falling short. Of those who had worked on public procurement, just 12 per cent agreed that “the civil service procures goods and services effectively from the private sector”, and 58 per cent disagreed. 

There’s clearly huge interest in using better tech, for example. Of civil servants who said they were using AI in their work, 78 per cent agreed that those tools helped them do their job better. But long, bureaucratic procurement processes often mean that officials don’t have the things they need, when they need them, to deliver the transformations which Pat McFadden, the Cabinet minister responsible for civil service reform, said would “rewire the state”.

It’s easy to blame the blob for the failings of the state, and we should hold the civil service to account for delivering for the public – that’s their job. But it’s also easy to forget just how frustrated many civil servants on the inside are by the same things that frustrate critics on the outside. The Prime Minister said in March that the state had become “bigger but weaker”, and it’s clear that many officials share those same frustrations. 

The challenges facing the country are existential, Ministers and civil servants need to work together on the same challenges that affect them, and the country as a whole. 

Joe Hill is policy director at Re:State