I used to work with a man called James B King. He was a larger than life figure and held the post of President Clinton’s director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). OPM is the equivalent of the civil service but Jim was an operator who could straddle public service and politics.
Jim worked for all three Kennedy brothers, Senator John Kerry, and Presidents Carter and Clinton. He embodied everything about the purpose of public service either as a politician or as a public servant.
Jim could walk into a pub and after an hour had this instinctive ability to grasp what issues motivate locals. One of the many pieces of good advice he gave this writer was, “If you don’t want to see something again, never write it down.”
It’s a golden rule when giving advice. It should be a sacrosanct rule if a senior civil servant. It’s advice which, Hugh Widdis, the permanent secretary at the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland should have heeded when he decided to chide chief constable Jon Boutcher in writing.
The chair of the Police Federation, Liam Kelly (no relation), was correct in his assessment that it was an attempt to “gag”, “embarrass” and “chastise” Mr Boutcher.
To my mind, it was also high-handed, clumsy and foolish.
The justice minister, Naomi Long, said: “Such correspondence is entirely appropriate, and it’s regrettable that private correspondence has since been leaked.”
Technically on the first part of this, Long is correct. But dire circumstances demand drastic actions.
Policing in Northern Ireland is in a desperate situation and the prime minister should know just how bad.
Regretting the leaking of not-so-private correspondence is risible.
Widdis didn’t write a solitary private letter to the chief constable about procedures and channels of communication. He copied in the prime minister, the first and deputy first ministers, the justice minister, the justice committee and the Policing Board.
Short of pinning the contents letter to the doors at Stormont, this letter was always going to end up in the public domain.
Policing in Northern Ireland is in a desperate situation and the prime minister should know just how bad
How normal is it for permanent secretaries from devolved administrations to copy their private correspondence to the prime minister? Perhaps that’s a question the chair of the justice committee could ask Mr Widdis.
The contents of texts between senior civil servants released to the Covid Inquiry demonstrated the dysfunctional nature of the NICS.
The ability to respond to a major existential crisis is part of the remit of civil servants. In Northern Ireland, the preparedness of the emergency contingency planning hub seemed to have slipped the minds of several former permanent secretaries.
The NI Civil Service needs externally driven, root and branch reorganisation from top to bottom.
Civil servants often want to please their political masters and to be loved for doing so. They prefer passivity to change. The current head of NICS set-up simply doesn’t work. The executive needs a CEO, like Scotland, who can be held to account for failures and who is responsible for delivery across departments.
The Department for Infrastructure is a case in point, when it comes to systematic managed failure. There are enough damning reports at HQ on the need to reform the planning process and invest in water and sewerage infrastructure to absorb the green algae on Lough Neagh.
And yet, the ministerial and senior official response is akin to saying carry on as before with the same resources.
Unsurprisingly, ministers want to be agents of good news. They want to cut ribbons, meet and greet dignitaries and be feted at lavish dinners by chambers of commerce. But that’s window dressing, not work.
Politicians and senior civil servants need to quit giving each other cover for inertia.
