THE Strategic Management Initiative is potentially the single most important development in the Civil Service since the foundation of the State the report, Delivering Better government, which was launched recently as the next step in this initiative, sets out a framework for the development of a more customer oriented Civil Service, with emphasis on quality, accountability, performance and a reduction in red tape.

As such, the report has been widely welcomed and will, no doubt, "be the subject of considerable discussion."

Sceptics will ask why this reform initiative should succeed when the folklore says previous ones have all failed and why this report should not join others on a dusty shelf somewhere. Some of the reasons being given include the much stronger pressure from an increasingly competitive environment, including Maastricht and EMU, as well as the high level of political commitment to the reform process which has continued across different political administrations.

Pressure for change, however, is not all from outside the system. Civil servants, including the lower paid staff at the public counters, have a stake in the reform process and the SMI has raised a number of expectations among staff.

For example, the staff who deal directly with the public in employment exchanges, agriculture offices and other public offices want to know when and how the promise of making their roles more responsible and when better levels of training and reward will be delivered. Rhetoric alone will not carry this reform process forward.

The public sector is seen by governments of the industrialised world as a critical factor in the achievement of national competitiveness. It has a direct impact on the competitive sector through legislation, regulation and services in areas such as transport, energy and communications, as well as providing for the education, health and welfare needs of society.

The funding of the public sector depends on the success of the private sector and it is both as a consumer of funding and as a provider of regulations and services inextricably linked into the new competitive order.

Recently there have been unprecedented levels of change in the private and semi state sectors, including changes in the structures of companies, the organisation of work and efforts to move industrial relations away from the "them and us" adversarial model to a more partnership oriented co-operative model. Such changes, it is generally agreed, have been a necessary response to the globalisation of competition and to massive technological change.

While there has not been the same competitive pressures on the public service, there have been other powerful forces for change. These have included pressure to control public spending, to improve the influence of the sector on economic growth through education and training, consumer pressure for higher quality service and pressure from staff for better pay, training etc.

The Civil Service has changed significantly over the past number of years, as anyone who has been in the new style tax or social welfare offices will know. There is a much greater awareness among staff of the importance of customer service. The SMI is aimed at building on these changes.

The context in which this report appears is, unfortunately, one of poor staff morale and conflict over issues such as low pay and staffing levels. Written by a group of top managers, the report reflects thinking at this level rather than any wider consensus about the reform of the Civil Service or the concerns of the staff who actually deliver services directly to the public.

It is also unfortunate that public discussion has tended to focus on the more controversial issues such as dismissal and performance pay, neither of which is likely to be important in any successful reform programmes. They emphasise a fairly simplistic "stick and carrot" approach which takes little account of what will motivate employees to support or oppose change.

The report accepts the idea of a unified Civil Service and stresses the essential public service values of integrity, equity, impartiality and accountability. While the Civil, Service is an inheritance from the British Empire, this report does not recommend the Thatcherite approach which has devastated the British civil and public service for the past two decades.

IT WILL be interesting to see whether the Government will legislate for the transfer of power from Ministers to top managers which is proposed in this report. This would represent a considerable, change in political culture, with Ministers, in future, being responsible for policy and Civil Service managers being responsible for implementation. How this critical issue will be handled in our client list political culture remains to be seen.

The report is weak on proposals for staff involvement in the change, process, although it does propose a participative approach. The lesson in recent years from the private and commercial state sectors is that the earlier the involvement, the better.

Ultimately, the successful delivery of services to the public rests on the shoulders of front line staff and not on managers. This lesson has been well learned in the private sector but in the Civil Service there is no tradition of involving or developing front line staff. The report promises welcome change in this respect.

There needs to be a stronger recognition that front line staff having direct contact with the client are the key to the success of quality initiatives and that their skills and status require upgrading to improve service quality. It is clear that successful organisational change requires action both from the "top down" (i.e., leadership from the top) and from the "bottom up" (i.e., empowerment of and action by operational staff).

The report implicitly challenges managers to change their ways if a genuine customer oriented approach is to be developed and sustained.