Mr. Robert Watt:

It is a pleasure to be here. I thank the committee for the invitation. I have been asked to talk about the role of the Department with regard to general reforms of the Civil Service, public procurement, the overall public expenditure framework, and in budgetary matters. These are quite wide ranging and one could spend a lot of time on each item. I will try to address a flavour of each of these and I look forward to hearing the views of the committee afterwards.

The Civil Service comprises 14 Departments and a number of major offices, including the Revenue Commissioners. It carries out a broad range of functions and roles from developing policy to delivering front-line public services. My Department's role in respect of the reform of the Civil Service is to lead and support changes that will assist Departments and offices to improve how they work so that they effectively deliver on their remits as set out in their statements of strategy. The implementation of the Civil Service renewal plan has increased our capacity and capability to deliver an improved service to the State. The programme was developed to create a more unified, professional, responsive and open and accountable Civil Service.

The fourth report was published in May and is available on our website. I will take a few minutes to highlight some of the reforms for the benefit of the committee. Reforms to make the Civil Service more unified include the development of a common governance standard for the Civil Service. I recall the Chairman raised the lack of a common approach to governance across Departments with me in his previous role as Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts. We have developed a common standard, which should hopefully help to ensure that Secretaries General, leaders and managers in offices and Departments know exactly what their obligations are in respect of governance of organisations.

Another reform is the implementation of the shared services programme, which covers a variety of different areas such as HR and payroll, the public procurement transformation programme, and financial management shared services at the project stage. On the professionalisation of the Civil Service, the launch of the Civil Service people strategy, led by my colleague, Mr. David Cagney, sets out the strategic direction for HR across the Civil Service. This strategy aims to position HR as the driver to enable the delivery of three priorities. We want the Civil Service to be an employer of choice that can attract the best talent to help us to deliver on our services. The second priority is building the workforce of the future, which is critical, given the demographic and other challenges which impact on workforces in the public service and elsewhere. The third is building, supporting and valuing managers as people developers.

The strategy builds on initiatives in place, especially with regard to project management, performance and development, to talent management and open recruitment. Since the end of the moratorium in 2015, more than 14,600 civil servants have been assigned to Departments and Government offices. This is offset by retirements and other departures so it is not an increase in the net number. Approximately a third of the staff complement have been recruited since then. This reflects the enormous demographic changes throughout the Civil Service. Offices and Departments have been dealing with normal demands and having to manage this demographic transition and bringing a new generation of people into the service. The Civil Service people strategy is also strengthened by the establishment of OneLearning, which is a new learning and development service for civil servants. There have been approximately 27,000 attendances to date at the OneLearning course across 25 counties and 45 Civil Service bodies since its establishment in September 2017. A new ICT-based learning management system has been implemented for the majority of public servants across the country. This is an attempt to centralise and professionalise learning and development across the Civil Service whereas in the past we had a somewhat devolved, ad hocapproach where individual offices and Departments did their own thing. We have centralised to maximise the benefits from centralisation and to have a more professional approach.

Over the past few weeks, the Civil Service excellence and innovation awards, which recognise excellence and innovation, were announced by the Minister. Some 90 nominations were received across many different categories. The standard of projects was particularly high, giving a strong sense of the important, diverse and challenging work that is happening across the system. They also showcase the creativity and innovation that is being brought to bear by those on the front line to deliver better services to the public. My colleague, Dr. Lucy Fallon-Byrne, is with us and one of her responsibilities relates to excellence and innovation across the Civil Service. This is an important event to reward innovation and creativity. Having an event such as that can be a great spur. It is not just about people being nominated on the night and winning but about creating a culture of innovation across organisations and recognising those who do the best in their fields.

Reforms have also been introduced to make the Civil Service more responsive. These reforms include the delivery of the public service ICT strategy and the implementation of mobility arrangements. There has been significant interest in the mobility scheme with approximately 4,800 staff members making an application. More than 350 moves have completed to date. When we were developing the first Civil Service renewal plan, one thing we received from civil servants across the country was that there was an unwillingness, in part, for people to be allowed to move to different offices and Departments. Colleagues would be stuck in particular areas when they wanted to move and there was not a sufficient mobility scheme. We have put a scheme in place which is making a difference. The response is encouraging so far. We are implementing a more strategic approach to workforce planning approach across the Civil Service, which Mr. Cagney leads on.

The fourth stream relates to making the Civil Service more open and accountable. We conduct organisational capability reviews to assess the impacts of reforms on Departments. We have developed the national data infrastructure, which I will talk about later on, to improve how we use data across the Civil Service and public service. We hold more open policy debates on a variety of issues to engage with experts and others to allow them to provide input on policy. We have improved communications and engagement with staff, including the implementation of the open data initiative. I do not have time to speak in detail about all of these initiatives. I would like to mention briefly the open data initiative, the Civil Service employee engagement survey and the Civil Service customer satisfaction survey.

The benefits of open data are well documented, including allowing for greater transparency and trust in government and facilitating business innovation and efficiency. Ireland has made substantial progress in its national open data initiative since it was instigated in 2014 and is now leading the way in Europe, having been ranked top in the European Commission's open data maturity survey for 2017 and 2018. I believe we have been at the top for the past three years.