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Sarah Cox Director, Cabinet Office Change Team

It's been a year of widespread changes in the Cabinet Office, something which is not lost on Change Director Sarah Cox. “The first big change was adjusting to a new prime minister with new priorities. But at a departmental level I've seen a lot of evidence of collaborative working, such as on the Security Review led by Robert Hannigan. I've also been pleased to see the Department establish new ways of working on issues such as crime, climate change and health with colleagues from across government in our matrix teams.”

A key development over the last year has been a sense of improved engagement with staff by senior management. Highlights included the Angels and Dragons business development scheme and an all-staff conference featuring the first ever Cabinet Office Awards and ‘marketplace’, where units as diverse as Financial and Estate Management and the Office of the Third Sector had the opportunity to share information and ideas.

The challenges we faced

As a government Department, the Capability Review [External website] asked us a series of challenging questions:

• Do we have the right strategic leadership?
• Do we know how well we are performing?
• Have we got the right tools to make sure we continue to perform effectively?
• Do staff have the appropriate skills to meet current and future challenges?
• Are staff engaging effectively with their key stakeholders, partners and the public?

The reviewers also said we had lots to be proud of, while our people survey (developed for the first time with Towers Perrin ISR and based on employee engagement principles) along with feedback from key stakeholders, pointed to the need to raise our game in four areas:

• defining more clearly how the Cabinet Office enables the business of government;
• strengthening the capacity to lead transformation across the Civil Service;
• making a high-level vision come alive for every individual and unit; and
• creating coherent systems so that the Cabinet Office can deliver

Peter Hatchard, Civil Service Capability Group, and David Lamberti, Economic and Domestic Secretariat, attend a matrix team meeting

Progress so far

A 12-month assessment of action to tackle the areas highlighted previously reported encouraging progress. The review team recognised:

• the setting up of matrix teams – five working groups run by the Cabinet Office to address key priorities across government on cross-cutting issues – comprising civil servants from a number of departments:
  • Crime, Home Office, Ministry of Justice and Attorney General's Office;
  • Climate Change and Energy;
  • Department of Business Enterprise, Innovation and Regulatory Reform;
  • Communities and Local Government; and
  • Health.
• improved collaboration with the Treasury [External website], including joint Board meetings and the publication of a joint Compact agreement [External website] on how the centre will work with other government departments;
• clarifying the roles, responsibilities and remit of the Civil Service Steering Board (CSSB) and the Permanent Secretaries Management Group (PSMG) to help meet Civil Service wide objectives; and

So what's next?

We have refocused and prioritised our change programme to focus on:

22 Whitehall

• better management of the Department, including:
  • improved clarity on the governance structure and accountability arrangements;
  • more effective business planning;
  • risk management;
  • workforce planning;
  • a more diverse Department – which will now be tracked by measures written into the corporate objectives of senior managers.
• making better use of our estate to improve our effectiveness as an organisation;
• developing more efficient and coherent systems like the implementation of IT innovations such as Flex [External website] across the Department and a new shared services model [External website] in partnership with the Department for Work and Pensions [External website] for Finance and HR transactions; and
• transforming the Civil Service by developing a clear vision for the future.

“The drive for change has come from the Cabinet Office Board, particularly the time it spent prioritising the change progamme. By concentrating on doing a few things well we have seen real progress in the last year. It is not until you pause and look back at where we were in April 2007 that you really see how far we have come,”

says Alexis Cleveland, Director General, Transformational Government and Head, Cabinet Office Management.