Rum.

The Cabinet Office is being ridiculously secretive about who is helping it consider future civil service reform. And there is still no sign of any public or internal civil service consultation. All very strange/troubling.

Saddened but not surprised by this. Radical civil service reform is vital if, for example, the vision of "joined up government services" highlighted in the GDS Roadmap has any chance of being implemented.

On the face of it, a very odd refusal to name external advisors

This is a good thought, though my understanding is that work has very much continued/is continuing

If things are still as they were when I was SCS five years ago, a Deputy Director at least will have had to have signed off this FoI exemption. This should worry us for several reasons:

This is quite concerning (and, imho, legally flimsy - not sure it would survive a JR challenge given that what was asked is simply composition/memberhsip and not content..)

Good stuff from Gavin here. It's incredibly worrying that this is being done behind closed doors. It only breeds worry that it's the very worst and wrongest people being listened to. To renew faith and trust in government, this kind of work must be done in the open.

Very much worth reading. I'm really not sure I understand the Cabinet Office's position on this.

Good post from Gavin. Leaving aside the typically nonsensical response from the Cabinet Office (notorious for their approach to FoI) it begs the more serious question as to whether or not anyone is advising on civil service reform! I've heard nothing anywhere...

Very interested to hear from anyone with any insights into the government’s approach towards AVR and data, or ideas for ‘retrospectives’ - previous government data projects that might have faced similar challenges

I think it's my 35th half marathon 😬

This looks very interesting. It was impossible to do when we built IER but perhaps things have changed in a decade.

Thank you!

Very excited to start working on this!