NEW REPORT: the government claims that it wants public services to be more devolved, better integrated, and more focused on prevention
With a raft of reform programmes now underway in services, are they on track to achieve those aims?
www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...
Initial thoughts: there has been a big increase in requests. How to respond to that warrants thought - but reducing cost limits feels like a blunt tool that would meaningfully curtail information rights
The FT is reporting today (perhaps not unrelated to yesterday's story) that the government is considering reducing the cost limit for responding to requests: www.ft.com/content/2c34... #foi
Chinese agents must be discovering the pleasures of delayed responses, incorrectly applied exemptions and lengthy appeals
A missed opportunity (Bilbao)
#bikesky
A quote from Dan Haile, IfG senior economist "Despite lots of moving parts, the OBR forecast for the UK economy and the public finances hasn’t changed much. However, international events will continue to pose risks which is why the chancellor was right to build up more of a buffer against her fiscal rules last November and to preserve that buffer today."
What did we learn from the OBR's forecast?
@danhaile.bsky.social gives his reaction to the 2026 spring forecast and tells us why the chancellor was right to preserve a buffer against her fiscal rules.
More analysis to follow www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/spring-forec...
The civil service people survey results are out
DHSC has the largest drop in engagement (staff morale) among Whitehall departments, 6ppts from 63% to 57%
The dept also had a *13 ppt* drop for its leadership and managing change theme
Seems like NHS England abolition is causing serious discontent
We're developing recommendations for central government to support better coordination in the SEND system.
Have a read of the comment if you'd like a taste of some of the issues we'll be thinking about, and if you have any thoughts please get in touch!
Worth noting, the People Survey was carried out in Sept-Oct 2025 – so after the exit of the previous National Statistician and appointment of a new perm sec in August. Though we’re still waiting for the a new Nat Stat to be appointed
Hopefully 2026 will start to see a recovery
(3/3)
A line chart from the Institute for Government showing civil servants who feel that change is well managed in their organisation, ONS and whole civil service, 2010–25, in which the share of ONS civil servants agreeing with this statement is now well below the figure for the whole civil service
On the question of how well change is managed, the number of ONS civil servants who think it is managed well has unfortunately dropped from 17.9% to 15.9%
(The second change mgmt q I honed in on last year, which the ONS also performed particularly badly on, has been dropped from the survey)
🚨 Results from the 2025 Civil Service People Survey have been published
Last year these showed deteriorating morale at the Office for National Statistics – especially around change management
The 2025 results show a slight further dip in overall morale - but bad results again on change mgmt (1/3)
We've got the full picture of what happened across the main themes in the people survey here 👇
A notable increase of almost 3 percentage points in officials' satisfaction with their pay and benefits
And the fifth(!) consecutive year of falling satisfaction with 'leadership and managing change'
A line chart from the Institute for Government of civil servant engagement, 2010 to 2025, where engagement rises from just under 50% to a peak in 2020. It then falls slightly for three consecutive years before rising slightly again in 2024 and staying the same in 2025.
New data! Looks like civil servants were about as happy in 2025 as they were in 2024 (which I think is quite impressive given big exit schemes happening)
@instituteforgovernment.org.uk will be digging into the new civil service people survey scores to get under the skin of how CS are feeling...
New comment from @danhaile.bsky.social, @jillongovt.bsky.social and me on why next Tuesday's spring forecast should ideally be a fiscal "non-event".
We don't expect major shifts in the economic outlook, and so shouldn't see the "knee-jerk" policy responses of past spring statements.
Will Rachel Reeves’s 2026 spring forecast be as low key as promised?
@danhaile.bsky.social @martha-ford.bsky.social @jillongovt.bsky.social assess whether the chancellor will be able to avoid creating headlines and what we might expect on 3 March www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/rach...
A job advert for a communications intern, starting in September 2026. The salary is £32,000 per annum. Applications close on Monday 9 March, 10:00
Looking to kickstart your career in communications? Applications are now open for our 2026-27 Communications Internship, starting in September 2026.
⏰Closing date: Monday 9 March at 10:00am
Find out more www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/about-us/car...
My bike on the Greater Anglia train to Cambridge North
Bikes on trains review: London to Cambridge North with Greater Anglia
Two carriages with dedicated bike space, making for a nice, easy experience. And it's well used - six bikes in our carriage alone
4.5/5
#Bikesky
Great new explainer on the May elections from our devo team - full of charts and maps
@meganisaac.bsky.social @matthewfright.bsky.social @akashpaun.bsky.social
Analysis of government spending on consultancy services has become a solid feature of Whitehall Monitor (2026 edition out today!) in recent years.
This year it's particularly pertinent given the government's focus on cutting spending.
www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...
This year's Whitehall Monitor deep dive into how the civil service is looking under this govt reveals familiar and longstanding problems. This govt has strongly advocated for digital transformation and AI to boost productivity - but it's not clear it's going about it in the right way (1/3)
Government is looking for efficiencies within its tight spending plans: 16% back office cuts, 'technical' efficiencies as big as the MoJ budget (£13.8bn) and a reheated Sunak-era blanket 5% savings target
Some thoughts on how these all add up from the IfG's Whitehall Monitor report out today...
👇In which I explain that while civil service reform may not be the most glamorous thing a government could focus on, they absolutely need to do it. A year and a half on from entering gov the civil service hasn't meaningfully changed. Gov needs a plan to make that happen.
There’s plenty more great data viz and analysis in the full report - do go and take a look: www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...
A Venn diagram from the Institute for Government of savings and efficiencies by 2028/29 planned at spending review 2025 (2025/26 prices), where total savings and efficiencies (£21.9bn) and technical efficiencies (£13.0bn) and administration budget savings (£1.6bn) overlap somewhat, but the size the overlaps is unknown.
And @drbenpaxton.bsky.social has nicely illustrated the overlapping savings and efficiencies goals the government has set for itself
A graphic from the Institute for Government showing quotes taken from six government digital transformation strategies between 2010-2025. The quotes highlight the consistency of the promises over the years, often mentioning culture change and ‘putting people’s needs first’.
Another from @hcdunlop.bsky.social and @melissaittoo.bsky.social
There have been..quite a lot..of digital transformation strategies since 2010…
A small multiple of scatter plots from the Institute for Government showing civil servant engagement compared to satisfaction with four aspects of their working experience – ‘my work’, ‘leadership and managing change’, ‘learning and development’ and ‘pay and benefits’ – by department, 2024, where the first two themes are strongly correlated with overall engagement and the latter two are particularly uncorrelated with overall engagement.
I updated some analysis looking at the key drivers of civil servant engagement
Using data from the Civil Service People Survey, I found that civil servants’ day-to-day work and the leadership they receive drive engagement much more than factors such as the L&D offer or pay
A column chart from the Institute for Government of Cabinet Office leavers by leaving route, 2024/25 and planned exits, where leavers by all six different routes in 2024/25 were near or under 250, and planned exits 2025/26 and 2025/27 are 1,200.
@hannahkeenan.bsky.social has taken a detailed look at exit schemes in this year’s WM
Focusing here on the Cabinet Office, CO expects 1,200 civil servants to leave by 2026/27 through voluntary exit schemes and by not backfilling vacancies – vastly more than have left by all routes in recent years
A scatter plot chart from the Institute for Government of the proportion of civil servants in the operational delivery profession compared to civil servant numbers by department in 2025. In the chart, the biggest five departments are significantly further away from the cluster of other departments, which all have fewer than 20,000 civil servants. Though HMRC and MoD have proportionally fewer civil servants in operational delivery in their workforces than four other departments, the fact that their workforces are over 50,000 makes the profession much larger. HO, DWP and MoJ are all near the top of the chart, with MoJ both the biggest department in terms of overall workforce and operational delivery workforce (87%).
Great analysis from @hcdunlop.bsky.social shows quite how big the biggest departments are – and how operational delivery-focused they are
Over half of civil servants are part of the operational delivery profession - but 82% of operational delivery staff are in MoJ/DWP/HMRC/MoD/HO
A series of six line charts from the Institute for Government, each showing the change in the number of civil servants at each grade between 2010 and 2025. Numbers of the most junior grades decreased steeply after 2010 and have not risen again. More senior grades fell by far less after 2010, and began expanding rapidly after 2016. There are now far more civil servants at these mid-level and more senior grades than there were in 2010. The first line chart shows the civil service overall, which declined in size until 2016, then began growing again, and has now surpassed its size in 2010.
An oldie but a goodie - @jackworlidge.bsky.social has the latest on civil servant numbers by grade since 2010, which makes clear where the growth has been
A slope chart from the Institute for Government showing how head of departments permanent secretaries have changed between 2024’s general election and January 2026. 12 out of 20 department heads have changed post, with the rest remaining.
If that’s the political leadership, there’s also been lots of change on the civil service side
This chart from @howesdaniel.bsky.social shows quite how much change there’s been among permanent secretaries since the GE