Many of you will have seen or heard in the news this morning about the parliamentary report into the future of the Civil Service. In particular, the Civil Service Reform Plan, and our One Year On report published over the summer come in for scrutiny. Both reports were agreed by Ministers and civil servants, and I wanted to say a few words about some of the discussions today.
The case for reforming the Civil Service is clear. As a country we are addressing some of the biggest challenges we have faced for generations. Most notably, the economic crisis, which has forced us to look at how we work as an organisation to deliver the best for Britain. But there are other issues, from the ageing population to renewable energy, which are requiring us to take a fundamental look at how we deliver answers to the most pressing issues in the country. Meanwhile, the way in which the public want to receive their services is changing, they expect us to be more joined up and deliver services digitally.
The Reform Plan and One Year On report will make sure the Civil Service is in the best possible shape to address those issues. Do we have more to do? Certainly. Have we got everything right? Of course we haven’t. Is there more we can learn? Always.
But I firmly believe that the plan we put in place, over a year ago, is the right plan. Take skills, we know we need to improve in certain areas such as project management and digital technology. That’s why we’ve pledged that all civil servants can, and should, access 5 days learning and development a year (2 million days of training across the organisation) and why over 100,000 civil servants have already assessed their skills to start planning these learning opportunities.
The progress we have made is something I, and Ministers, are proud of. We are more open about the way the Civil Service operates – earlier this year we published the first ever report into the Government’s biggest projects. We are making public services more accessible – the Student Loans Company is introducing a new digital system for its customers which has already cut costs by nearly a third and almost doubled customer satisfaction. Meanwhile, we’ve saved the public purse £10billion.
We have lots more to do, which will require the continued commitment of all Ministers and civil servants. I am grateful for all of the progress made by you to date.