Sir Chris Wormald introduces the 22nd edition of Civil Service Quarterly. The lead item is a new interview with Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service Sir Mark Sedwill, while other articles focus on subjects ranging from the National Security Council, a decade after its creation, to how UK Research and Innovation is changing the way research is funded.
Gavin Kitchingham from the Ministry of Defence discusses the International Defence Engagement Strategy and how civil servants are working alongside military personnel to devise strategy that supports government commitments to maintain a secure and prosperous UK.
Dr Shabana Haque, Head of the Government Science and Engineering (GSE) Profession Team, describes their innovative communications solution for raising awareness of the profession and the value that scientists and engineers can add to government.
Lucy Geoghegan, former Deputy Head of International Climate Change Strategy at the then Department of Energy and Climate Change, explains the years of dedicated work by UK officials to achieve the global agreement to tackle climate change at the 21st Conference of Parties in Paris in December 2015.
Welcome to Issue 11 of Civil Service Quarterly, our in-house journal dedicated to opening up the UK Civil Service to greater collaboration, challenge and innovation. We open this edition with a feature from Martin Donnelly, Permanent Secretary at the Department …
As she leaves the Civil Service, Una O’Brien, former Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health, looks back at her successful career in the public sector, outlining the lessons she has to share with colleagues starting out or progressing their careers today.
As part of the drive to professionalise policy making, the Civil Service has partnered with the London School of Economics and Political Science to run a bespoke Executive Master of Public Policy programme. Jen Mason from Civil Service Learning outlines the thinking behind, and focus of, this programme and its benefits for ambitious civil servants.
Government spends around £600 billion each year on running its business operations, and most government organisations have committed significant time and money to improve their management of these services. Rob Barnes, a civil servant on secondment to the National Audit …
Achieving complete gender balance throughout the Civil Service is a critical priority for the organisation. The UK Civil Service ranks as one of the highest in Europe for the proportion of women in senior roles, but there’s still more work to …
How can the UK affect global grain commodity markets when it only produces a fraction of their output? Ian Mitchell, former Deputy Chief Economist at the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, explains how his team applied the most innovative …
Gareth Davies, Director-General for Business and Science in the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, and Andrew Thompson, Chief Executive of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, discuss how academic research can inform better policy-making. The UK’s world-class science and research …
Recent comments on the blog