| 7. In terms of overall staff numbers, the
main bodies to have merged with the Welsh Office/Assembly
over this period are Tai Cymru, (65 staff), the Welsh
Health Common Services Agency (67 staff), Health Promotion
Wales (68 staff), the Farming and Rural Conservation Agency
(100 staff), and most recently the Care Standards Inspectorate
for Wales (204 staff) (see Annex 1). It should be noted
that this latter body is exercising regulatory functions
with associated criminal sanctions.
8. The process of merging organisations into the Assembly
is continuing apace. By April 2003 we shall have incorporated
the Rent Officer Service (57 staff) and, as a result
of the restructuring of the NHS, certain functions currently
exercised by the Health Authorities (approximately 40
staff). The Council of Museums will have been incorporated
by April 2004 (10 staff).
9. In general terms, the baseload of staff in pre-existing
policy areas has increased by some 14% to take account
of the additional administrative work created by the
Assembly. Annex 2 provides some illustrations of the
nature of the associated workload increases. As indicated
in table 1 a similar increase in numbers of staff has
occurred because of the development of new policy initiatives
and the expansion of some existing areas of work considerably
beyond the levels found in the Welsh Office. For example,
Wales Trade International now employs 73 as compared
with 33 spread between the Welsh Office and the WDA
in 1999, and the Wales European Funding Office, the
Assembly’s new in-house agency responsible for
managing structural funds, employs some 200. On top
of all this we are also continuing to employ several
hundred agency and casual staff, some of whose posts
will be converted into substantive civil service posts
in the years to come.
Staff Structure
10. At the time the Assembly was established, I was
determined not to undertake a major restructuring of
the office. With so much change taking place, I considered
it important to maintain as much stability as I could.
And given the extent of the uncertainty about how the
Assembly itself might evolve in terms of the way it
exercised its functions, I did not consider it sensible
to make the official structure of the Assembly symmetrical
from the outset with the Cabinet portfolios.
11. My guiding principle, therefore, was to maintain
as much consistency and continuity as I could at the
very top of the organisation. The difference in weight
in the various Cabinet portfolios in any case argued
against creating separate Departments. The Health and
Social Services portfolio, for example, is supported
by three Departments – the NHS Wales Department,
the Office of the Chief Medical Officer, and the Social
Policy Department. The Finance and Communities Minister
is supported by the Finance Group and the Local Government,
Housing and Culture Department – part of which,
therefore, serves the Culture Minister.
12. In practice, this asymmetry has – from my
perspective – worked pretty well. I have made a
number of fairly marginal changes to structure to take
account of changes in priority (and thus workload) and
political circumstances. Eight new policy Divisions
have been created. The growing intensity of the Education
workload meant that it was no longer sensible to retain
the Culture Divisions in this Department, so they were
switched to the Local Government and Housing Department.
And I have sought to be very flexible in responding
to particular Ministers’ wishes to have free-standing
Directorates reporting more or less directly to them
rather than through Departmental heads. The Housing
and Communities Directorates have been examples of this.
The present structure is illustrated in Annex 3.
13. I have also considered it very important to maintain
and enhance the policy experience that exists at the
top of the office. Fine tuning aside, I have replaced
only two policy Department heads since the Assembly
was established. This means that most of the Department
heads have at least three years experience in their
present jobs and some have much more. The main exception
is the Director of the NHS, who joined the Assembly
through an external recruitment nearly two years ago.
But she is someone who has spent her whole career as
an NHS Manager.
14. I have similarly maintained continuity of employment
at the crucial Head of Division level as well. Of the
current 48 Heads of Division in policy areas, 24 served
as Heads of Division in the Welsh Office, 8 arrived
with organisations merging with the Assembly, 8 were
promoted from within the Assembly, 4 were recruited
from outside, and 4 are secondees.
15. One consequence of this stability at the top is
that the Assembly now has a much greater policy knowledge
and capacity than existed in the Welsh Office. This
- coupled with the existence of the Strategic Policy
Unit, the presence of Special Advisers actively involved
in policy issues, the establishment of a new Research
and Development Group, and our growing experience of
partnership working - means that, in my judgement, it
is no longer true to say that the Assembly does not
have the capacity to develop distinctive policies attuned
to the needs of Wales. There are further improvements
that need to be made, especially in terms of building
stronger relationships with our higher education institutions.
But the string of policy initiatives that have emerged
from the Assembly over the last two years, together
with important and innovative documents such as "The
Learning Country" and our growing reputation as a world
leader on sustainable development demonstrate how far
and how fast the Assembly’s policy capacity has
developed.
16. In contrast to the stability at the top, there
has been very substantial turbulence below. Given the
large number of vacancies which have arisen as a result
of the growth in staff numbers following the establishment
of the Assembly, staff have had an enormous incentive
to move around to broaden their experience or to achieve
advancement. There has also been an unprecedented level
of external recruitment in addition to promotion and
lateral transfer.
17. Whilst unavoidable, this turbulence has been a
source of some concern to Ministers and has meant that
at the lower levels in the Assembly we have been operating
with many staff who have comparatively little experience
of the policy area in which they are working, and in
many cases of the Assembly Civil Service itself. On
the other hand, the quality of new staff that the Assembly
has attracted is very high and they bring with them
a wide range of valuable new skills and experience from
which the Assembly will benefit increasingly in years
to come.
18. As the Assembly achieves greater maturity and stability,
I expect the amount of movement between posts to diminish
considerably. It is very clear to me that the Assembly
Government and the Presiding Office will require an
increasingly specialised workforce. This means that
virtually all staff will have an incentive to follow
a career path within the Assembly which enables them
to build and trade upon a fairly specialised and in-depth
knowledge of a particular subject or area of expertise.
Recruitment
19. We are currently undertaking a major reform of
our recruitment and staff advancement arrangements.
If the Assembly is to respond effectively to the needs
and aspirations of Wales it needs a workforce that reflects
the diversity of its communities. To this end I am committed
to opening up job opportunities in the National Assembly
to a much broader range of recruits, for instance from
among ethnic minority communities, than have hitherto
been attracted to work for us. And I want to ensure
that our employment and recruitment practices meet our
obligation under the Government of Wales Act to have
regard to equality of opportunity in the exercise of
our functions.
20. Work is therefore under way, in consultation with
Trade Union Side and the Equality of Opportunity Committee
(which is taking a keen interest), to develop a process
of recruitment which opens up job opportunities to external
recruits as well as existing staff. The detail has yet
to be finalised, but I wish to see this new policy in
place from 1 April 2003. In doing so I shall want to
be sure that the interests of our existing employees
are balanced with those wishing to join us, and that
we develop and bring on our talent as well as bringing
it in.
21. It is important also to understand that the market
from which the Assembly recruits is largely a Welsh
one. It is a feature of the Assembly – and the
Welsh Office before it – that although we are successful
in attracting good quality people back to Wales, comparatively
few people who work for us have much of a desire to
move out of Wales, or who see their future careers as
taking them to Whitehall. Partly for this reason comparatively
few people have an appetite for taking on secondments
or short term appointments in Whitehall. Amongst other
things, this means that our stock of people with recent
first hand experience of working for the UK Government
is eroding rapidly.
22. One consequence of this is that the Assembly is
in danger of offering too narrow a career path for aspiring
Civil Servants. To counteract this, and to help promote
a healthy infusion of new experience and new blood into
the Assembly on a regular basis, I am currently giving
leadership to what is being described as our "public
service management initiative". This will seek to build
on the fact that the Assembly is very largely drawing
upon a Welsh labour market. If successful it will involve
the establishment of common leadership and management
training for staff working in all parts of the public
sector in Wales – the Assembly civil service, the
National Health Service, Local Authorities, Sponsored
Bodies, and other Civil Service Departments. This should
mean that over time Wales will develop its own cadre
of public servants with experience in and understanding
of different parts of the public sector in Wales. They
should also have an established network of contacts
in different parts of the Welsh public sector. This,
coupled with the policy on open recruitment, should
mean that there will increasingly be a common set of
values and experiences amongst staff in the Welsh public
sector. This in turn should help to reduce the frictions
that currently exist within the policy "delivery chain",
and at the same time broaden and enhance the career
opportunities for those people wishing to pursue a public
sector career in Wales.
Culture
23. Making the Assembly work effectively is not simply
about having the right number of staff, or even having
the right staff in the right posts. The key requirement
is to create a fully motivated workforce who understand
the powers and responsibilities of the Assembly, how
these are exercised, and therefore how each of us can
best contribute to the Assembly’s success. In addition,
any organisation that is to be successful must have
staff who feel valued, know that they are encouraged
to contribute to its development and improvement, are
listened to, and helped to develop.
24. At the same time as the Assembly was created, the
Civil Service was beginning its own process of reform
which was born largely out of a recognition that it
needed urgently to modernise itself. With the establishment
of the Assembly, I faced the challenge of putting in
place our own modernisation programme whilst at the
same time developing a culture within the Assembly which
best suited the Assembly’s needs. The scale of
this challenge is illustrated by the fact that the Assembly
at this time was fast becoming a "melting pot" comprising
a combination of transferred employees from the Welsh
Office, totally new recruits, and the employees of the
ten different organisations (or parts of organisations)
which have merged with the Assembly/Welsh Office since
1999. Many of the staff in these latter two groups,
it is worth noting, probably regard themselves primarily
as Assembly officials and not Civil Servants at all.
Currently the breakdown between these various groups
is approximately: ex Welsh Office 60%, new recruits
25%, former employees of merged organisations 15%.
25. The other unique aspect of the challenge which
I have faced is that the Assembly continues to be an
organisation which is in a constant state of development,
and in which boundaries are continually shifting. As
a result, it is not yet fully clear precisely what the
nature of the organisation is that we are here to serve,
and thus how our roles and responsibilities should be
defined. One illustration of this is the way in which
the Presiding Office has established a near total separation
from the rest of the Assembly, and the adjustments that
have had to be made to our ways of working to accommodate
this. Another is the particular problem that I face
as the Assembly’s statutory head of paid service
in exercising my responsibilities for an institution
which in many respects has divided itself into two.
26. To promote this process of cultural change and
development, I established early in 2000 my own modernisation
programme under the strapline Delivering Better Government.
A large number of changes, innovations and initiatives
have been achieved under this, and it is still evolving
to meet the changing needs of the Assembly. The most
important developments which are worth mentioning here
are:
- The establishment of a totally new Executive Board
(in October 2001) which comprises all the Assembly’s
Departmental Heads. This meets every Tuesday (without
the Clerk) in business mode, and monthly (with the
Clerk) to progress management issues. Over the past
year the Board has been undertaking its own organisational
development programme designed to enhance our individual
and collective effectiveness as leaders and managers.
We have introduced a monthly team brief which is designed
to connect all staff much more closely with management
decisions and developments. And I am currently poised
to appoint two non-executive Directors who will be
providing the Board with challenge and much needed
ideas and experience from outside the sphere of Government.
- The use of the EFQM model to diagnose the need for
change and then drive its implementation throughout
the organisation. All Divisions within the Assembly
are now required to use the excellence model to develop
their own improvement programmes. And this application
of the model throughout the Assembly is also being
used by the Executive Board to identify the corporate
changes that are needed to improve the performance
of and the quality of service provided by the Assembly
staff more generally. I have recently created a new
Business and Information Management Directorate at
the heart of the Assembly which will have the primary
task of delivering a portfolio of improvements across
the Assembly designed both to improve our performance
and reduce overheads. I have also recently announced
the establishment of a new board level post of Director
of Personnel Services. My intention is to appoint
an experienced HR professional who will provide the
strategic leadership that we need to complete the
next stage in the transformation process.
27. In my judgement the Assembly staff have responded
magnificently to the scale and complexity of the changes
that have been imposed upon them over the last four
years. But it is important that the Commission should
have some understanding of the pressures that they are
under and the problems that remain. One of the innovations
of the Better Government Programme has been the introduction
of regular staff attitude surveys. The latest survey
is currently in progress. Table 2 below contains some
key indicators from the recent surveys.
Table 2: Staff Attitude Survey:
December 2001: Key Findings
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