Last week I accompanied Sir Gus O’Donnell, Head of the British Civil Service for some calls in Canberra on his way back from CHOGM.
He met Australia’s “200 Group”, a collection of the country’s top 200 federal civil servants, and gave a fascinating talk drawing on his experience of delivering change, and improved performance across the public sector, in the context of tough financial pressures. He referred to his famous 4 Ps mantra – Pride, Pace, Passion and Professionalism as values for the civil service.
Britain’s top official, Gus is very definitely not the stereotypical Whitehall mandarin. In fact, in my experience, such stereotypes are nowadays confined to the re-runs of “Yes Minister” TV shows (the West End stage show based on the series is just about to come to Australia). As Gus said, for modern civil servants, policy formulation is not enough, excellent delivery is absolutely essential. He started life as a professional economist, and continues to draw on an economic frame of reference in analysing policy issues. He has worked closely with the last four prime ministers, Conservative and Labour.
His Australian counterpart, Dr Ian Watt referred to Gus’s “wondrous interpersonal gifts”, quoting his Wikipedia entry, and he certainly lived up to the billing. He has a knack of addressing complex issues with great clarity and with telling examples drawn from his direct experience. British and Australian officials face many similar challenges, particularly in dealing with so called “wicked problems” that have complex interdependencies that run across the responsibilities of several ministries. There is no single right approach, so we have much to learn from each other. I spoke to one young Australian official who had recently returned from a secondment at the Cabinet Office in London, who was full of enthusiasm for the benefits of such exchanges. In a world where the public sector in all countries is sometimes unfairly maligned, it was good to be among a group of senior professionals taking such an obvious pride in their vocation.