Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 2
2
Accepted
Require Heads of Profession to enable staff for raising ideas and improving services.
Conclusion
There are examples of innovation happening across government but more needs to be done to harness the ideas of the 290,000 members of the ODP for improving service delivery. There are 23 examples of innovation in the NAO’s report, which show it is possible for teams working across government to continuously improve and be innovative–even in adverse circumstances where operational delivery is highly challenging. The transformative changes needed by government will require both large scale projects and day-to-day incremental improvements involving front- line staff. This requires a working environment that encourages openness, innovation, and challenge of current thinking, with senior leaders who 3 see failure as an opportunity to learn rather than an exercise in sharing out blame. It is important to build ways of working that allow ideas to flow and give people time outside of their day job–for example, HM Passport Office says that its Quality Framework project has involved training around 1,000 people to identify issues and raise them. But considering there are 290,000 members of the ODP, the innovative potential is enormous. recommendation The ODP should require all its Departmental Heads of Profession to set out how they will ensure that their staff have the time, skills, tools and support to raise ideas, learn from each other, and get involved with improving services.
Government Response Summary
The Profession will continue to use existing Heads of Profession forums to discuss and share best practice on driving continuous improvement, building capability, and promoting learning and participation in initiatives. Work is also underway to introduce service standards to enable benchmarking and shared learning across departments.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The Profession agrees with the Committee’s recommendation (HoPs) and other stakeholders use to engage their staff in improving services. These include the Professional Skills Framework, Centre of Excellence website and Senior Community of Practice (SCoP). The Profession will also continue to use existing HoP forums to discuss and share best practice relating to: • driving continuous improvement activity at all levels in operational delivery; • building operational delivery capability in problem solving and change leadership and management; • use of case studies within the National Audit Office (NAO) report, Smarter delivery - improving operational capability to provide better public services: driving staff to explore solutions to common operational challenges; • championing participation in civil service-wide initiatives such as ‘One Big thing – AI for All’; • supporting operational staff to allocate time to invest in learning, attend cross-government ODP learning events, such as ODP Fest, and webinars; • embedding standard ODP support structures including HoP role profiles and expectations; • leading by example by hosting departmental learning and career development events. Work is also underway to introduce service standards that will enable benchmarking, collaboration, and shared learning across departments and agencies, while respecting individual departmental contexts.