Capability Reviews: Progress and Next Steps - The Civil Service

1. Tranche 1 departments: a year on‘However, as well as increasing the overall salience and urgency of theneed for change, encouraging more openness at board level, andproviding some common language and frameworks, the CapabilityReviews are also starting to impact on a number of substantive issueswithin departments, especially those in the first two tranches. TheCapability Reviews process has helped create an imperative for actionto tackle genuinely difficult problems.’Take-off or Tail-off? (Sunningdale Institute Evaluation)Four departments were reviewed initially: the Department for Constitutional Affairs(DCA) (as a pilot) and the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), the HomeOffice and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) (as Tranche 1). TheCapability Review reports for this first tranche were published in July 2006. Sincethen, there have been various machinery of government changes affecting thesedepartments: the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has been created, taking on theresponsibilities of the DCA, together with responsibility for prisons and probation fromthe Home Office; responsibility for skills and higher education has transferred fromDfES to the new Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS); a newDepartment for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) inherits the remaining DfESresponsibilities within its new wider cross-government remit on children’s matters; theresponsibilities of DWP have remained unchanged.Given the significant differences between the MoJ and DCA, and the uniquechallenges of setting up a new department, the Cabinet Office has been workingwith the MoJ to support it in embedding machinery of government changesthrough the new organisational structure required to deliver its four Public ServiceAgreements (PSAs). During this interim period the Department has reconfigured itsaction plan to reflect the diagnosis of both the DCA and Home Office reviews.Progress will be tested through a re-review provisionally set for spring 2008.The Tranche 1 departments started from very different baselines. DfES was thesecond highest-performing department in the Capability Reviews programme, withfour elements scored ‘strong’ or ‘well placed’ and only one ‘urgent development area’in the element of Build capability. DWP also had four elements scored ‘strong’ or‘well placed’ and two ‘urgent development areas’. The Home Office started withsome significant challenges, with the review team having ‘serious concerns’ abouttwo elements. The DCA had five elements scored ‘strong’ or ‘well placed’ and three‘urgent development areas’. Consequently, the ‘journey’ has been very different foreach department. The Home Office has had more scope for improvement, but alsohas had to embark on a significant internal capability building programme to kickstartthat progress and manage machinery of government changes. DWP hascombined its change programme from the Capability Review with processimprovements and a very challenging agenda of efficiency savings and staff cuts.DCSF has focused on a targeted programme of improvement in strategy, leadershipCAPABILITY REVIEWS: PROGRESS AND NEXT STEPS5