‘Deliverology’ pioneer Sir Michael Barber returns to advise UK prime minister on national missions
Sir Michael Barber has returned to the centre of the UK government after being named as new prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s adviser on effective delivery.
Barber, who previously served as head of former prime minister Tony Blair’s Delivery Unit from 2001 to 2005, will now advise Starmer on delivering the government’s five national missions.
Labour was elected in July, pledging to focus on five national missions to:
- Kickstart economic growth
- Make Britain a clean energy superpower
- Take back our streets
- Break down barriers to opportunity
- Build an NHS fit for the future
The government has said each mission will be led by the cabinet minister with central responsibility for the policy area, while a mission delivery unit has been established in the Cabinet Office to “remove any barriers to progress”.
These mission delivery boards will be formed “to drive through the change that we need”, Starmer said. He will chair these boards as prime minister “to make clear to everyone that they are a priority in government”.
Read more: Exclusive Global Government Forum research reveals five pillars of a modern civil service
Driving forward mission delivery
Barber will now support Starmer in driving forward the delivery of these missions. This will include coordinating ambitious, measurable, long-term objectives for each.
Announcing the appointment, Starmer said the government needed to “rebuild the public’s trust in our politics and deliver the change Britain needs” through changing how government works.
“I’m delighted Sir Michael will be supporting us to change lives for the better as we fix the foundations and deliver our five national missions,” he said.
Barber said that it was an honour to be asked to take on this role, commenting: “The five missions are vital to the future of the country and I look forward to assisting the Prime Minister with their delivery.”
Register now: How Whitehall Works: How Labour is changing the way government works to focus on mission delivery
The doyen of ‘deliverology’
During his previous tenure in Downing Street, Barber (pictured right) became synonymous with the theory of ‘deliverology’, focused on creating delivery units in the centre of government that can drive results.
A blog on the No 10 website examining the history of Barber’s time in the PM’s delivery unit highlighted that it was created following his success in driving forward reforms in the Department for Education.
Dr Michelle Clement, researcher in residence at No10 Downing Street, highlighted that three key elements of Barber’s original design brief proved useful.
First, that there would be “rigorous and relentless focus on a relatively small number of the prime minister’s key priorities”. This meant that Blair and his government were required to identify and adhere to a clear set of domestic objectives.
Second, Barber decided to keep the Delivery Unit small at around 40 members of staff, which allowed it to be agile when developing a delivery framework. He was also keen to avoid the Delivery Unit becoming a large bureaucratic unit overseeing an even larger bureaucracy.
Third, the initial design tied in the prime minister’s time, the most valued resource in Whitehall, to the delivery of priorities by establishing stock-take meetings. The prime minister would meet with the relevant Cabinet minister, permanent secretary, chief secretary to the Treasury, Treasury officials and the Delivery Unit team led by Barber to discuss the status of each target every two or three months for each policy area.
This ensured that the prime minister was regularly engaged with the work of the Delivery Unit and consistently investing political capital in his domestic agenda. The stock-take meetings proved to be an effective forum for collective discussion and accountability, chaired by the prime minister.
However, Clement also says that the Delivery Unit and wider government approach to targets and delivery were seen as controversial by some, who thought they contributed to an inflexible culture of top-down policymaking, from No 10 to departments. The new performance measurement framework certainly put more pressure on departments and the frontline to be accountable for delivering targets linked to major taxpayer-funded investment.
Following this initiative, Barber has been called on by a number of prime ministers and other senior figures to help improve how government works. He undertook a review of civil service productivity in 2017 that called for the creation of a public value framework to maximise the return on government spending. He has most recently advised the UK chancellor and education secretary on skills policy.
The need for delivery focus in government
Recent Global Government Forum research has identified the importance of getting the structure of government right.
The Making Government Work: Five pillars of a modern, effective civil service report, which is the result of interviews with 12 senior civil service leaders from around the world, highlights the need for collaborative working structures that transcend organisational silos. The report finds that this requires: empowering a strong central authority to oversee and enforce collaborative efforts; integrating political and official decision-making to streamline processes; adequate resourcing to facilitate cross-government working; and maintaining a long-term focus to overcome the transient challenges of political cycles.
Interviewees said that government needed to be able to collaborate, with one official describing this as “one of the most, if not the most, fundamental challenges facing government”.
“We have horizontal problems and we have vertical organisations,” one said. “The question I always like to ask is: whose job is it to wake up every day trying to resolve that fundamental disconnect?”
Governments often try to do this through working groups and committees run by the centre such as delivery units, and many leaders agreed that the terminology around “deliverology” is helpful to focus on challenges across government.
But they also highlight that such systems can simply shift resources to priorities, rather than institutionalising a way of working that improves collaboration.
One chief said the key is ensuring such units are properly funded. “For years, we have tried to do that through working groups and committees and council and I think we need to, at some point, just acknowledge those are not sufficient,” they said. The key, according to this interviewee, is to have full-time officials who are “responsible for the horizontal” – making the joining up between government departments someone’s job.
The logical evolution of the delivery unit movement is to provide the resources to drive this system change. The official noted: “It is not just about the prime minister’s priorities, it’s about a system [and] you have got to have full-time people working on it.”
Read in full: Making Government Work: Five pillars of a modern, effective civil service
About Richard Johnstone
Richard Johnstone is the executive editor of Global Government Forum, where he helps to produce editorial analysis and insight for the title’s audience of public servants around the world. Before joining GGF, he spent nearly five years at UK-based title Civil Service World, latterly as acting editor, and has worked in public policy journalism throughout his career.
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