At your service: What are civil servants for?

Ministers decide. That’s pretty much the UK’s constitution, if you’ve only got 20 characters to play with.

The best verb to apply to civil servants is less obvious. What do they actually do? When I joined the Civil Service 6 years ago, I’d have probably said ‘advise’. It took me far too long to work out that ‘serve’ was a more truthful answer.

Duh. The clue is in the name.

Now a step removed from Whitehall, the thing I find most interesting is how that sense of servitude is felt by those still there, how it has changed over time, and how it may have to change in the future.

If you ask a civil servant today who they serve, their answer will reveal quite a lot. If they tell you they serve their Minister, they probably work in policy, in London, for an organisation with ‘Department of’ at the start of its name.

If they tell you that they serve people, they probably work in a delivery role, outside of London, in an organisation with a name that provides a better clue about what it actually does for you. (The last bit isn’t always true. Office of the Public Guardian, I’m looking at you.)

The first group would argue that there’s no real difference between the two. Ministers are chosen by the people. Civil servants serve their Ministers. Therefore civil servants serve the people. Logically and constitutionally, that’s a sound argument. But it doesn’t always stand up to reality.

Ministers, regardless of any talents they have, cannot be a vessel for the constantly evolving needs of a society their administration must serve — even if they want to be in the first place.

For one, they represent those needs at a single point in time, which is revisited on a 5-yearly basis. People change their mattress more often than they change their government.

For two, at best, they have been actively chosen by less than a third of the people they serve. The 2015 UK government received 11.3m votes from an electorate of 46.4m — less than a quarter.

For three, Ministers have impossible jobs. Expecting them to have a god-like awareness of the ebb and flow of demands in a complex, globalised economy is not fair. No wonder few people trust politicians. We’ll complain if they don’t promise the impossible and we’ll complain when they fail to deliver it.

Thanks to the ophidian Sir Humphrey Appleby, the idea of a civil servant ‘helping’ a minister is synonymous with them helping themselves. A fear of being accused of this duplicity still gives officials pause for thought, and that’s a very good thing. But Yes, Minister is now 36 years old. Let’s move on.

Civil servants, I think, need to help their ministers more. The best way for them to do that is to get closer to the people they and their Ministers serve.

This kind of suggestion terrifies some officials, because it upends the view that it isn’t their place to have — or even convey — views. That’s the Minister’s job. Crossing that line is a step towards arrogance, towards ideas above one’s station, towards Humphrey.

Do Ministers know what their department’s users want? I’m sure some see their democratic mandate as being more than enough to crack on with. But I’d be amazed if most weren’t even a bit interested in understanding what the people interacting with their organisation think. What their users think services should look like. Maybe, even, rebuilding a bit of trust with them. But they mostly have no way of finding out, because nobody tells them.

Historically, the civil service was packed with generations of senior officials who regarded their duty as not just serving their ministerial masters, but being loud, boisterous advocates for schemes they thought would benefit their country. Rowland Hill founded the Post Office. James Kay-Shuttleworth and Robert Morant laid the foundations of state schooling. They won their credibility by being experienced in their field and understanding what was needed.

Their 21st century equivalents in the UK— some, alas, now leaving, plenty still in the machine — knew all about this grand tradition of mandarinate activism. It isn’t a coincidence that the word ‘Victorian’ was regularly used by them as an epithet for the government’s digital infrastructure.

By rolling back the decades — past Terri Coverley, past Sir Humphrey — unelected officials could be so much more valuable if they rediscover their passion for helping the people that pay for them, and fighting their corner.

What does that mean in practice? Lots of different things. Speaking truth to power. Rewarding disruption and intelligent failure. Binning the idea that policy and delivery sit apart.

But the most important thing, obviously, is serving actual people. Going to see them, not waiting for them to come to you.

And after that, perhaps, helping ministers decide.

Picture credit: Licensed under Public Domain via Wikipedia.