A former Entrepreneur of the Year winner has said that 'significant parts of the civil service are broken' and that 'the machinery of government is not even in the 20th century, never mind the 21st century'. Some people might not understand why this is in the newspaper.
For what it's worth, Cadence thinks that's a bit unfair, but struggles to disagree convincingly when the Observer goes on to say that the civil service was full of fiercely risk-averse people 'because no civil servant ever got fired for doing nothing. They get fired for doing something.'
The good news is that the Government is not unaware of these issues and the recent Innovation Nation paper talked about extending the 'power to innovate'. This leads us to suggest that 'Fans of Yes, Minister will have a field day with such a paper [extending the 'power to innovate'] and there is always the fear that when governments start writing strategy, creativity and innovation are at great risk.'
Again, that's perhaps not very fair, but we do see a lot of time and effort going into quite creative and possibly even innovative solutions to the wrong problem.
Zenna Atkins highlights this issue of shooting at the wrong target when she says, with an open praise sandwich: 'I have never met such bright people who really care about what they are doing but they are working in a machine with a set of customs, cultures, values and practices that are utterly antiquated. A lot of the time the process is more important than the outcome.'
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Reply #3 on : Wed February 01, 2012, 13:23:30
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Reply #2 on : Sun January 29, 2012, 14:55:47
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