Cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell has announced the first wave of government departments to undergo Capability Reviews designed to assess leadership, strategy and delivery in the Civil Service.
The Department for Constitutional Affairs, the Home Office and the Department for Work and Pensions will be the first to undergo scrutiny.
Each review aims to identify where departments need to improve, and will include the development of an action plan to address these findings. The programme will be rolled out across all 17 main departments over the next 18 months.
O’Donnell said: “One of my key personal priorities is to improve the capability of the Civil Service. We need strong values, a strong culture and stronger capability to get the dynamism we need to sustain a world class Civil Service in the 21st century.”
He also launched a consultation into a new Civil Service Code designed to “fuse traditional values with dynamic 21st century skills” to deliver better advice to ministers and services to the public.
The code, which was launched 10 years ago, sets out standards of behaviour expected of civil servants and forms part of their contracts of employment.
