Stormont is slow, afraid of new thinking and costly, says report

Reading the latest report by the Belfast-based Pivotal think tank into the operations of the Stormont Executive, Assembly and Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) is like watching an episode of the much-loved 1980s TV series Yes, Minister, but minus the jokes.

Throughout, the fruits of months of conversations with 30 former ministers, senior civil servants, special advisers and some of those who deal frequently with Stormont on policy questions reveals a litany of failures, blockages and short-sightedness. As always in organisations, the principal issues centre on culture.

“Civil servants are broadly committed and enthusiastic, but they are held back by a burdensome system. Risk aversion acts as a brake on progress at every stage,” the report says.

“This seems to have got worse in recent years. Innovation is not always encouraged, and change is often resisted. While delivery is a priority in principle, it doesn’t always translate into practice.”

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Too often, Pivotal says, officials make decisions out of fear of a subsequent Northern Ireland Audit Office report, or a grilling before Stormont’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), or being the subject of a judicial review.

The PAC uses its time and profile to go through departments’ “bad holiday snaps” in search of a “gotcha” moment that will dominate the evening TV headlines, it says.

Even here, it frequently falls short of the mark as a spending watchdog, with one retired civil servant witheringly saying officials “wouldn’t be afraid” of appearing before it given its “poor questioning and scrutiny skills”.

While they are not afraid of audits, or the PAC, they are afraid of the press, something that has got worse since news reporting exposed the “cash for ash” scandal, which has cost NI taxpayers £500 million that they know about, but probably more.

[ Cash for ash scandal: Everybody is to blame, nobody is to blameOpens in new window ]

In an effort to avoid taking responsibility, officials are overly willing to hire consultants and, as a consequence, fail to build up the skills of their staff, the report says. The sums being spent are now causing “alarm” among those interviewed.

A business leader, speaking anonymously, as every interviewee does in the report, believes Stormont is “creating middle-class industries”.

Consultants have become “an ordinary part of working” in Stormont’s hard wiring, according to most of those who contributed. Too often, however, as one retired senior official put it acidly, they “borrow your watch and tell you the time”.

Inside the bureaucracy, things move at “a glacial pace”, according to a former minister, with officials unwilling to quickly change their ways of working or move into new roles.

“Pace is not what civil servants do well. They do process well,” said a business leader.

If it does process well, Stormont does not do outcomes. Interviewees were, Pivotal reports, shocked at the lack of attention given to whether a programme’s aims are achieved, with the focus instead on ensuring all the money allocated is spent.

“The system needs to be turned on its head and see the reason for doing this is not just the pound notes, it’s actually about changing the place,” said one business representative experienced in Stormont’s ways.

Bureaucracy “can thwart change easily”, said one former minister, while a former special adviser believed the system often thought more about “finding their people something to do” than having them do something productive.

Too often, life inside the Stormont bureaucracy is about management rather than change. “Every day a business will ask ‘How do I make my business better – quicker, stronger, better?’ There is very little of this in the NICS,” said one business leader.

If officials like talking to consultants, they do not like talking to anyone else, the Pivotal report states. They are “not inclined to engage in difficult conversation” with outsiders, said a former minister.

The voluntary sector was scathing of the way it feels it is treated by Stormont. Often, according to the report, the sector gets little more than “lip service”, while consultations that do take place are regarded as box-ticking exercises rather than meetings where they are listened to.

Stormont departments operate in silos, the report notes, unwilling to co-operate with colleagues in other departments.

Jayne Brady, the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, enjoys no formal authority over departmental permanent secretaries, the report notes, who are instead accountable only to their ministers for policy, to the NI Department of Finance for spending, and to the Stormont Assembly.

Ministers are said to get bogged down in day-to-day matters rather than the bigger issues, and they are seen as having a preference for making announcements rather than the drudgery of reaching long-term goals.

Their behaviour can delay or even halt delivery, particularly when matters political, or local, get in the way. One former official delivered a backhanded compliment, saying: “I have never worked with anybody who didn’t really care”.

Stormont’s political structures – where the Executive does not operate by collective responsibility and where ministers are appointed by their parties – does not help, the report finds.

“Many interviewees pointed to political disagreements that slowed down delivery of important policies, whether those disagreements were about policy design, who would benefit, or local impacts.”