DEMOS

Reorganising a department of state is a nightmare and it can take years to produce results, so why is John Reid announcing such a massive shake up of the Home Office? Could it be because of Ruth Turner or is this a real revolution in home affairs? It is especially confusing given that, according to Whitehall sources, the overarching responsibility for co-ordinating the Government’s counter-terrorist strategy may be given to the Cabinet Office, after a recent security review carried out by Reid.

To understand just how far Reid has come we need to go back to July 2006 when he first went on the offensive. His aim was to transform the dysfunctional Home Office. Not only were some parts of the Home Office ‘not fit for purpose’ but an independent capability study showed that leadership and skills at the Home Office were "too variable", there was not enough "cross boundary working" and systems were "poor".

So Reid’s plans were as follows:  

• Fifteen directors would change - though none would lose their jobs;
• The immigration directorate would become a semi-independent agency;
• The focus of the Home Office would be "sharpened" around key priorities and a new "top team" established;
• All directors face would have their skills assessed by September 2006, with "intensive" efforts to fill any gaps;
• A new strategy to "manage risk" and provide accurate information and statistics would be created;
• The size of staffing at the Home Office's headquarters would be cut by almost a third by 2008 (2,700 posts), with another 600 posts going by 2010.

This was meant to be the biggest shift from the centre to the front line in Home Office history so has Reid failed to deliver on the above plans? 

Reid was looking for improvements – as McKinsey suggests: across multiple dimensions, including operating and financial performance, business and technical capabilities, strength of stakeholder relationships, corporate culture, pace and focus of learning, and ability to renew and enhance strategy.

And Reid’s mantra of ‘mass immigration, organised crime and international terrorism’ demanded a joined up approach by government, shifting the Home Office’s approach of ‘command, control and a focus on communications’ to ‘collaboration, cooperation and coordination.’

Reid’s latest plan is to create a  "national security department" to take control of anti-terror policy as well as the police and immigration. It would be headed politically by a security minister working with MI5 and MI6 on public protection, and would work alongside a "ministry of justice" overseeing prisons, probation and the justice system and cutting reoffending. The justice ministry would take on some of the work currently done by the Department for Constitutional Affairs.

But it seems to have ended in system failure.

So what can be done? Remember Brown’s five economic tests for Britain’s entry in the Euro? Well, I have borrowed five requirements for better collaboration and coordination from a National Audit report in a bid to save the Home Office.  They are:

Goals - working towards clearly defined, mutually valued shared goals.  
If objectives are unclear or not shared, partners may work towards different, incompatible goals and fail to achieve desired outcomes.

Progress measurement - evaluating progress towards achieving the desired goal and taking remedial action when necessary.

Joined up initiatives are no different from other activities in that their progress must be monitored and remedial action taken when performance is less than satisfactory.

Resources - ensuring that sufficient and appropriate resources are available

Without sufficient resources including appropriate skills, a joint working initiative will not be capable of being sustained in the longer term; and value for money and propriety may be put at risk.

Leadership - directing the team and the initiative towards the goal

Joined up initiatives can be difficult to keep on track because of the additional complexity arising from the number of players involved. Good leadership is important as part of the "glue" to hold the initiative together.

Working well together - to achieve a shared responsibility

If organisations do not establish good working relationships, based on mutual support and trust, acknowledging their differences and sharing information openly, then joint working will fail and improvements in public services will not be achieved.

It would be great if the Home Office could be marked on these criteria and not on the political aspirations of individuals. Building new institutions is comparatively easy compared to real, comprehensive reform. Creating two departments will mean a return to the old ways of doing business with Minister’s concerned exclusively with achieving their own specific objectives reflecting responsibilities and funding which they can directly control.

We know that new threats cut across traditional departmental responsibilities and require a co-ordinated and combined response by departments, agencies and other bodies. Reid came to the Home Office arguing that the department was "not fit for purpose, averse to a culture of personal responsibility, technologically ill-equipped for an era of mass migration and led by officials that are incapable of producing facts or figures that remain accurate for even a short period".

At a time when the Government needs a seamless, co-ordinated approach to the now seamless threats facing the UK this is not a time for empire building but of cultural and system change….