Civil Service in the news
The Top 200 event: Civil Service Leaders focus on Place
On 13 and 14 November the ‘Top 200’ Civil Service leaders met at Sunningdale for one of their twice yearly meetings. This was the fifth meeting of the Top 200 group, and the theme for event was “place” and how important it is for central government to understand local issues when developing and delivering policies.
In preparation for the event, over 80 Directors General and Permanent Secretaries from the Top 200 group went on fact finding trips to either Glasgow, Portsmouth, Lewisham or Sheffield to see for themselves how local factors impact on service delivery in a particular area.
The focus on local issues was continued when the Top 200 were joined in Sunningdale by some senior managers from local government including Irene Lucas, Chief Executive of South Tyneside council and Rob Whiteman, Chief Executive of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham who talked about their priorities and the challenges in leading a local authority.
Can you beat the members of the Top 200 in a place based quiz? At the event they had their place knowledge tested by experts from the Department of Communities and Local Government – do you think you can do better?
- the questions [MS Word 330KB, 2 pages]
- the answers [MS Word 51KB, 2 pages]
About the Top 200
The Top 200 was set-up in March 2006 by Sir Gus O’Donnell as the corporate leadership group for the Civil Service. It is made up of the most senior Civil Service Leaders, Permanent Secretaries and Directors General.
The Top 200 group meets every six-months . The meetings provide senior colleagues with time and space to:
- work together to identify and tackle some of the barriers challenging successful delivery of cross-departmental working;
- build collective understanding of the environment, context and politics that the Civil Service operates in;
- reflect on personal leadership stories; and
- network with each other and build relationships across departments.
The group is central to Gus’ vision of a Civil Service where leaders work across teams to focus on projects and outcomes, rather than specific policy areas and is key to developing a more collaborative and engaged form of leadership.
The 100:0:0 challenge
Gus has set the Top 200 his “100:0:0” challenge to make sure that, as leaders of the Civil Service, they spend the right amount of their time on team, departmental and Civil Service-wide issues. By stressing the need for corporate behaviour, the Top 200 group is building its identity as the collective senior leadership group for the Civil Service which will help to improve delivery of cross-departmental priorities and targets.
