The 'Next Steps' and Control of the Civil Service

Abstract

This article suggests that the report by the Government's Efficiency Unit on 'Improving Management in Government: The Next Steps' has potential implica tions for the system of accountability and control in the Civil Service which have not been fully considered. Questions are raised about why current procedures evolved in the way that they did, examining in particular the development of establishment control in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first part of this centtny. The aim is not to suggest that the Civil Service should blindly adhere to past traditions and procedures, but that more care should be taken in considering the upheaval of those traditions and procedures, and that a Royal Commission on the Civil Service would be the most appropriate means of consid ering further reform of the Civil Service.