Delivering change
Bruce Robinson took over as Head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service during the summer and Owen McQuade met with him to discuss a range of leadership issues.
Bruce Robinson leads the Northern Ireland Civil Service having previously been Permanent Secretary in the Department of Finance and Personnel, where he led the Government’s reform programme. I ask him how he sees his role in the devolved administration. He replies: “I see my role, and that of the Civil Service, as supporting Ministers in the implementation of the Programme for Government. Whilst the Programme for Government itself was largely conceived in different economic circumstances – much of the work was done about 12 months ago [and] I am sure that although there needs to be some small adjustments to the programme – I still believe that it does represent a viable way forward for Northern Ireland. We have for the first time in the Budget a very firm Investment Strategy with capital expenditure running at close to twice the level it was only some four years ago.”
Two key stakeholders – the Business Alliance and the Construction Alliance – have also emphasised to him the importance of pushing on with and implementing the Programme for Government and Investment Strategy at this time.
“Our role is to support Ministers in the delivery of that,” he continues. “It is for us to recognise the challenges and to work in ways that best achieve those goals and for us to be open to new ways of working and to the demands of the present situation in order to maximise the impact of what is really a significant amount of public expenditure in the local economy.”
He adds that the Programme for Government also contains “extensive commitments to social improvements” which give government an important role in helping roll out the benefits of the public expenditure programme right across society.
In discussing the global financial crisis I ask Robinson how it will impact on Northern Ireland. Having previously been involved in attracting inward investment as a former head of the IDB, he is well versed in the workings of the economy. He focuses in on how the current crisis will impact on the delivery of the Executive’s Programme for Government.
“Clearly the current economic circumstances are difficult. The main pressure we see in the short term is around the way in which inflationary pressures are impacting on our costs, particularly on areas such as energy and transport. In consequence we do see continued pressure on budgets. The budgets were set at the start of the year and we already had a 5 per cent administration efficiency target.
So already if costs run ahead of the forecast from this time last year that will only increase the pressure and that is the case. So I do envisage us facing quite a lot of pressure on the budgets.”
Delivery is a word that features a lot when talking to the Head of the NICS and I ask him what the big challenges are in delivering on the efficiency and effectiveness agenda. In response, he points to how the Programme for Government deals with some significant challenges for the Civil Service.
“We need to build on the progress we have been making on developing a stronger performance delivery culture. We have made encouraging progress on that in recent years and I would point to the success in the last budget settlement in achieving procurement savings. Across all departments we achieved £250 million worth of savings.”
In detailing the improved productivity, he adds: “In our budget plans we reduced our headcount by 2,300 over the last budget period. We are investing heavily in information technology, so the reduction in headcount did not result in any redundancies, but undoubtedly it is important for us to gain the benefits from the investments and it reflects how well we have managed the investment across all departments.”
Meeting rising expectations
To date the reform programme for Northern Ireland has delivered very successfully on a number of high profile projects that will streamline the internal workings of the Civil Service – essentially a series of shared service projects. The next phase will be on the delivery of a number of citizen-facing projects, including NI Direct, which will rationalise all contact channels between citizens and government. Robinson says that this is now very much top of the list in the reform process: “We are all very concentrated on the launch of NI Direct, as it is set out in the Programme for Government. Ministers are very keen for the ordinary citizen in Northern Ireland to receive a better delivery of service from government and we see the establishment of NI Direct, with the first phase with, what I call, four anchor tenants.”
This, Robinson says, is an important first step on the journey but he adds: “However, one of the concerns I have is clearly we have an ambitious programme with several phases and this will take some time to roll out. It is important to manage citizens’ expectations, that we are not going to be in a position next year to deliver all government services in that way.
“But I am confident of the thrust we have towards better integration of public services. Our people understand that that is the direction we are going and actually understand the value of it. So that is going to be a very big challenge. At the same time we will be embedding and getting more benefits from the investment we have been doing largely on our own internal costs.”
The Civil Service will have benefitted greatly in delivering the shared service projects over recent years and will have learned a lot about delivering large change projects. Robinson emphasises that although the technology is important, it is the people side of things that brings success: “We have learned in all the work to date [that] to bring our staff to understand the power of the new capability is crucial. I can see over the next few years a continued emphasis, in fact a stronger emphasis, on growing and developing our own people and allowing them both to fulfil their own potential but also through that to realise the benefits of this major investment programme to enhance the service to the citizen.”
Stronger performance delivery culture
Robinson is confident that the Civil Service is changing and that it has overcome the important barrier of believing that it does need to change.
One people issue that took a lot of his predecessor’s time was that of the high level of absence in the NICS. There is a risk that with the major upheaval from the reform programme, the situation might get more difficult. However, that is not the case and Robinson points to an improving record in this area: “There has been criticism of the entire public sector on absence and absence management. The results were exceptionally poor. I am pleased that we have made solid progress over the last four years.”
He points to a 17 per cent reduction in absence over this period; the average is now down to under 13 days per annum. “That has been good but there is no doubt in my mind that we need to build on that. That [level] is still significantly above the equivalent for across the water and we must continue to improve,” Robinson remarks. Further improvement will depend on a number of factors – “there is no one particular initiative that will produce results”. The improvements so far have focused on managing short term absence and the Civil Service is now turning more attention to tackling long term absence management. “We want to do that in a way that is sensitive to our workforce, but everyone does recognise that we need to see a significantly better performance in this area.”
Delivering on reform
We continue our discussion on reform and managing change. Robinson believes that the NICS has learned valuable lessons in the reform programme to date – a reform programme that is ahead of what is happening in Great Britain, on the shared services side, and in the Republic of Ireland where the Government is only starting down the reform path. He highlights two aspects of the reform process: “Our experience over the last few years in rolling out the reform projects points very clearly to two things – and they shouldn’t be a surprise to any of us. Firstly, the better the focus and the better organised the training in introducing the new technology and work methods to staff, the much more quickly they are picked up and implemented. Secondly, the extent of the benefits and the rate at which the benefits flow are directly related by helping people understand what they are designed to do and by capturing their interest and enthusiasm for developing the new methods.”
He mentions the role of the Centre for Applied Learning as making a significant contribution and indeed its efforts have been recognised by its inclusion in the final shortlist for one of the prestigious UK-wide Civil Service Awards, due to be announced later this month: “The Centre for Applied Learning, with its emphasis on skilling people and in creating a culture and environment of change, as well as being an efficient organisation itself has been an important strand in making the progress we have made to date.”
Culture
Any discussion with the leader of a large organisation will inevitably turn to the culture of the organisation and I ask him what would he like it to be? He replies: “I think there are some real strengths in the existing culture. We have a strong ethos of commitment to public service, and that is very important.” Robinson continues: “The values of the organisation are excellent and the commitment to maintain the values of fairness and probity are very important. I suppose the element we would like to see stronger is a focus on performance. In our culture we are very strong, for good reason, on proper processes and due processes being set up to deal with issues. I would like to see that that could be augmented with a greater focus on the outcomes we achieve and on what I call a stronger performance delivery. That requires us to challenge ourselves; to look at what’s happening elsewhere; to benchmark ourselves; to seek to deliver the best possible outcomes.
“I am very encouraged with the evidence we have on how we have been able to motivate staff and their recognition of the need for change. Some two-thirds of our staff recognise the need to transform how we deliver public services. The challenge for us now as managers is to help our staff channel that into delivery of better performance.”