Dominic Cummings (middle) outside Downing Street waiting for the Prime Minister to make a statement on the day after the 2019 General Election. Photo © Cubankite/Shutterstock
with huge CC lists and attachments, nobody keeps accurate files (apart from private office). The situation is so bad that many Ministers have been reduced to FOI-ing their own departments (though this is not only an issue of com- petence – it is also an issue of trust).” And the record keeping, he said, is needed in a form that allows questions to be answered: “One of the most useful questions one can ask is not only ‘who has already solved this problem?’ but ‘have we already tried to do X and failed?’ In the DfE there is no system to answer this question reliably. Unless you get lucky with an old-timer, you cannot know and because they abol- ished their own library you can’t even go and study it. (All the emails, files, papers, etc are supposedly archived somewhere but obviously they would never lets spad or a spad appointment into it to do analysis).”
Does any of this matter? Alex Thomas is a recently appointed Programme Director at the Institute for Government think tank. He was a principal Private Secretary to Sir Jeremy Heywood (head of the Civil Service until 2018) and to the Secretary of State for Health. Asked if Cummings’ views are likely to be manifested he said: “We don’t know yet – but it seems likely that an emphasis on knowledge management and the importance of genuine expertise will feature in his vision for how government should work… On institutional memory in the
January-February 2020
civil service more generally, it absolutely is a problem and if Dominic Cummings focuses on it then that will be a good thing. Some departments are better than others, but overall the record-keeping and knowledge management, as well as the loss of memory created by staff churn, is something where it’s well worth investing more time.”
Alex wasn’t convinced there was a difference of opinion between the PM and his adviser over the value of libraries and knowledge management. He said: “In the end the PM is responsible – advisers advise, PMs decide. So he can have signifi- cant influence but it’s important to look at what the PM actually does.” As for any read across to an improved
profile for public libraries he said: “I think it’s too early to tell and we’ll have to watch DCMS to see what happens there,” adding that “on this sort of issue the Secretary of State will have an important influence too.”
CILIP view
Nick Poole, Chief Executive of CILIP, said: “Do I think this has relevance to our sector? I think the idea that the successful organisations over the next 30 years will be the ones that “know what they know” is absolutely fundamental. In fact, I think it will come to define what our sector is all about. Helping people, businesses and organisations to navigate the kind of post-digital, post-disruptive, knowl- edge-intensive world that Cummings describes is fast becoming the defining purpose of our profession.”
“We can disagree with the Government’s policies and tactics while appreciating the importance of Cummings’ insight”. Nick added that Cummings “takes a strong ‘market’ approach, by proposing that Government needs to be aware of how private enterprise has already solved social issues. I’d argue that public sector innovation is every bit as good as private sector innovation, and often has more lasting impact. But the principle is sound – Government should be aware of the best solutions rather than trying to solve things itself.
“In the economy of the near future, the organisations that have greatest access to knowledge will win. A civil service that is re-configured around real-time access to the sum of all its knowledge could change the world.”
The requirements of the population have changed and “the point is that central Government can neither lead nor keep up with the pace of innovation nor the needs of a connected society. There is too much nuance, too many layers, the pace is too great and too many people are aware of what goes on,” adding “we can no longer be a 21st century economy with n 18th century Government.” Could this vision for government knowl- edge trickle down to local a local level? Nick said: “We need to see how Nicky Morgan in her role as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport including libraries will help connect the public library sector into Cumming’s vision of informed societies.” IP
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