Skills For Government

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“Skills for Government”, the aspirant Sector Skills Council for central government, held its first two board meetings on 29 June and 12 July.

The board’s membership is set out at annex 1. Anne-Marie Lawlor of the Cabinet Office is acting Chief Executive of the SSC and staff input to its work is provided primarily through the Cabinet Office’s Leadership and Development Strategy Directorate. 

Both meetings to date have focused on preparation of papers required to comply with Sector Skills Development Agency licensing requirements for all SSCs. These are lengthy and detailed but, in summary, comprise:

· Market assessment
· Strategic plan (including vision and mission statements, work programme and priorities)
· Business case.

Provisional work programme themes are:

· Professional Skills for Government
· Standards and qualifications
· Workforce data
· Skill needs, development and deployment
· Cross sector development

These are set out in draft outline terms in annex 2, but are likely to be amended and further refined in the coming weeks.

In contributing to the board’s discussions, CCSU representatives have reflected and built on CCSU’s response to the Cabinet Office consultation paper on developing the full business case for the SSC. A copy of this response is attached at annex 3 for ease of reference.

Key issues arising and to be addressed in further work include:

· Widening the scope of the “Professional Skills for Government” programme beyond the Senior Civil Service and feeder grades, but in doing so to ensure its relevance to all staff across all grades and functions.
· Improving understanding of skill sets and requirements at sub-sectoral level e.g. for professional and associate professional staff.
· Greater emphasis on opening up career development opportunities, rather than simply meeting the employer’s immediate demands.
· A strong equality dimension across each of the SSC’s work programmes.
· Accreditation of transferable skills.
· Managing interactions with other SSCs with remits relevant to central government.
· Integrating work by Heads of Profession into departmental PSG programmes.

As the next stage in taking this work forward, the Cabinet Office have agreed to consult on a revised strategic plan. Along with a draft business case, this will be considered further at the SSC’s next board meeting in September.  

Cabinet Office are working to a timescale that seeks to achieve full licensed status for the SSC by the end of the year.

SKILLS FOR GOVERNMENT

“Skills for Government”, the aspirant Sector Skills Council for central government, held its first two board meetings on 29 June and 12 July.

The board’s membership is set out at annex 1. Anne-Marie Lawlor of the Cabinet Office is acting Chief Executive of the SSC and staff input to its work is provided primarily through the Cabinet Office’s Leadership and Development Strategy Directorate. 

Both meetings to date have focused on preparation of papers required to comply with Sector Skills Development Agency licensing requirements for all SSCs. These are lengthy and detailed but, in summary, comprise:

· Market assessment
· Strategic plan (including vision and mission statements, work programme and priorities)
· Business case.

Provisional work programme themes are:

· Professional Skills for Government
· Standards and qualifications
· Workforce data
· Skill needs, development and deployment
· Cross sector development

These are set out in draft outline terms in annex 2, but are likely to be amended and further refined in the coming weeks.

In contributing to the board’s discussions, CCSU representatives have reflected and built on CCSU’s response to the Cabinet Office consultation paper on developing the full business case for the SSC. A copy of this response is attached at annex 3 for ease of reference.

Key issues arising and to be addressed in further work include:

· Widening the scope of the “Professional Skills for Government” programme beyond the Senior Civil Service and feeder grades, but in doing so to ensure its relevance to all staff across all grades and functions.
· Improving understanding of skill sets and requirements at sub-sectoral level e.g. for professional and associate professional staff.
· Greater emphasis on opening up career development opportunities, rather than simply meeting the employer’s immediate demands.
· A strong equality dimension across each of the SSC’s work programmes.
· Accreditation of transferable skills.
· Managing interactions with other SSCs with remits relevant to central government.
· Integrating work by Heads of Profession into departmental PSG programmes.

As the next stage in taking this work forward, the Cabinet Office have agreed to consult on a revised strategic plan. Along with a draft business case, this will be considered further at the SSC’s next board meeting in September.  

Cabinet Office are working to a timescale that seeks to achieve full licensed status for the SSC by the end of the year.

 
Annex 1

Skills for Government Board Membership

Sir Gus O’Donnell
Alice Perkins Cabinet Office
Anne-Marie Lawlor Cabinet Office
Bernard Galton National Assembly for Wales
Carol Moore Northern Ireland Office
Chris Bones Henley Management College
David Pocock MOD
Hugh Lanning PCS
Ian Magee  Department for Constitutional Affairs
John Taylor ACAS
Kate Priestly Leadership Centre for Local Government
Paula Higson Home Office
Sally Carruthers Scottish Executive
Sir Brian Bender DEFRA
Sir Kevin Tebbit MOD
Sir Richard Mottram DWP
Sue Ferns  Prospect
Susan Thomas DFES
Vanessa Lawrence Ordnance Survey

Annex 2

Proposed Work Programmes

Work Programme Description Key Activities
Professional Skills for Government To work with employers and with educational and other stakeholders to ensure the successful delivery of Professional Skills for Government, driving the benefits across the Civil Service (with a particular focus on the resonance the programme has for more junior staff) and, where appropriate, across the whole sector. Ø Strategy for roll out across the sector and across gradesØ Communicating PSG across the sector and the Skills for Business NetworkØ Monitoring progress
Standards and Qualifications To boost professionalism and enable the workforce to deliver effective performance by working with Standards-setting bodies and other Sector Skills Councils to develop the necessary professional and occupational Standards and qualifications and in the longer term, developing a standard setting function to address the sector’s unique requirements. Ø Identify and promote existing relevant standards and qualificationsØ Identify areas where new standards and qualifications may be neededØ Develop and implement a Standards and Qualifications strategy
Workforce Data To provide authoritative workforce intelligence and information to provide the evidence base that will underpin the SSC’s business plans and ensure we enable more junior staff and those in under-represented groups to have fair access to training and development. Ø Build the capacity of the SSC to collect and analyse enhanced workforce dataØ Carry out primary research to underpin the Sector Skills Agreement (see below)Ø Use data to develop diversity strategy
Skills Needs, Development and Deployment To work closely with employers to ensure that, in addressing skills needs, development and deployment, they are able to address and achieve best value from the wealth of good sector practice and thus mitigate the impact of sector downsizing. Ø Analyse data and consult with employers to develop better understanding of skills gaps and shortagesØ Develop a Sector Skills Agreement that has employer support
Cross Sector Development To work with other public service SSCs and the Skills for Business Network to address common skills needs, recognising those areas where we may lead on behalf of other SSCs (e.g. on excellence in public administration) and areas where others may lead (e.g. ICT Skills). Ø Build our profile in the Skills for Business Network Ø Establish partnership agreement with other SSCs on common needsØ Work with other SSCs on public service delivery Ø Identify issues on which we should lead on behalf of the network.

Annex 3

Developing the full business case for the Central government Sector Skills Council – CCSU response to Cabinet Office consultation paper

Introduction
CCSU welcomes the progress towards formation of the Skills for Government. We believe that SSCs and the Skills for Business Network will have a key role to play in taking forward the skills strategy and it is appropriate that central government, both as a major employer and policy driver, should have a dedicated SSC. Skills for Government will need to prove its credibility, accessibility and effectiveness on the same basis as every other licensed SSC.

Vision
CCSU does have reservations about the very strong emphasis given in the draft vision to meeting employers’ needs. We generally support a greater focus on meeting demand for skills but our view is that, rather than concentrating mainly or only on needs identified by employers, there needs to be a broader focus on demand-side engagement. From the perspective of service users, quality of provision will be just as important as productivity and performance. From the perspective of staff, it needs to be recognised that not all employers are best placed or equipped to assess skill needs in the workplace and many restrict their scope to immediate job-related tasks. If Skills for Government is genuinely to reflect a partnership approach to skills development, account must be taken of the contributions of all "demand side" stakeholders. Among these, trade unions are uniquely placed both to articulate workforce needs and to contribute, through established relationships with employers and individual members, to delivery of programmes to meet identified needs. These must include broadening individuals’ skills base and developing transferable skills.

Governance
CCSU welcomes the allocation of a second trade union seat on the board of Skills for Government. Nonetheless, the task of addressing the very broad range of functions and specialisms across central government will be extremely demanding. It is entirely appropriate that the SSC should face up to these challenges and, as trailblazer SSCs have done, that it makes early progress towards improving the evidence base for its decision-making. This piece of work should provide opportunities to widen involvement in the SSC’s work beyond board level and it will be vital that it is undertaken on an inclusive basis. It is likely that much of this work will be done through structures below board level, which must fully reflect the role and contribution of CCSU representatives. As is the case in other sectors, CCSU representatives involved across Skills for Government structures hope to be able to call on support from the SSC as well as from union resources in facilitating communication and networking. Non Departmental Public Bodies should not be artificially excluded from the scope of Skills for Government’s work.

Funding
CCSU will contribute to the work of the SSC through Departmental and local trade union structures. We expect Union Learning Representatives to play a key role as part of established representative structures.

Strategic Needs
CCSU is broadly supportive of the six strategic needs identified in the consultation paper, though it is clear that further work needs to be done both to clarify the scope of Skills for Government and to address areas of potential overlap with other SSCs. For example, scientists in government and higher education could potentially fall within the scope of the Science Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies Alliance and, both in terms of their specialist knowledge and broader government policy on science and innovation, there are good reasons why they should. On the other hand, as the Professional Skills for government programme envisages, there are aspects of the public sector science role – and the competencies it demands – that are clearly distinct from that of commercial science. To ensure that the PSG model operates across government, it is important that scientists are able to develop these skills within the same framework as other government employees. This is an important issue that requires early clarification.

CCSU unions have commented previously on the PSG programme. We believe that it provides the basis of a core competence framework for the civil service and to the extent that this allows for identification of criteria that all civil servants can use as the basis for progression, thus opening avenues for career development, we welcome it. As the programme develops, it will be critically important that:

· Early progress is made in driving down the PSG agenda to more junior grades. There is a real danger that, if confined to staff already at senior level, the PSG programme will be seen to devalue the contribution of others.

· The framework is sufficiently flexible to take account of a wide variety of operational circumstances and demands – including for specialist skills.    

· Development opportunities are demonstrably open to all staff and that promotion procedures fairly reflect the range of skills and competencies actually required in higher grades.

· Professionalism and issues for professional groups are more closely defined: Although we are aware that some steps have been taken to progress these matters through the Heads of Profession forum, we believe that much more needs to be done to advance this work on a properly resourced basis.

· Tensions between the desire for central co-ordination on professional skills and maintenance of delegated responsibility for terms and conditions of employment are resolved since these currently constitute a major barrier to movement.

Standards and Qualifications
CCSU supports the development of appropriate professional standards and qualifications. A key purpose of work in this area must be to provide accreditation for transferable skills and competencies. However we are also aware that there is a vast proliferation of standards and qualifications currently, not all of which are highly valued, and that development of new standards and qualifications can be an extremely time consuming and resource intensive exercise. It is therefore important that resources for work in this area are focused to ensure maximum added value for employers and employees. In this connection we would like to see explicit acknowledgement of the importance to employers and individuals both of Skills for Life and of qualifications at level 3 and above.

Workforce Data
CCSU strongly supports the need for authoritative workforce intelligence and information and believes that this must be a key task for the SSC. This is one area where there may be lessons to be learned from the approaches adopted by pathfinder SSCs. Greater emphasis should be given, both in terms of data collection and programme delivery, to addressing diversity requirements. To ensure that the equality and diversity agenda is addressed in a meaningful way, clear guidance is needed to specify these “requirements” and on potential approaches and actions.

Skills Gaps and Shortages
CCSU agrees that this work needs to address the whole sector. It is important that due priority is given to:   

· The development of higher skills and in particular the need for higher skilled staff to develop new, and often broader, skills to ensure their employability not simply channelling them into enhancing their existing knowledge base.

· The general need to improve management, project management and leadership skills.

· Achieving parity of esteem and priority for vocational education and training routes and addressing entrenched patterns of stereotyping on the basis of gender, race, disability or atypical working patterns

· Skills gaps and problems attracting new entrants into SET areas where there are very real dangers that unless urgent action is taken to renew the skills base.

Improving Career Development
Work in this area will be key to demonstrating the value of the SSC to staff. Skills for Government should work with unions, and in particular through Union Learning Reps, to:

· Increase demand for skills, in part through assisting individuals to realistically assess their own career development options.

· Establish and assist access to PSG gateways.

· Carry out diagnostic work to identify and improve access to provable and accredited transferable skills. In the current climate this may prove of particular value in managing redeployment and relocation processes, though there are clearly wider potential benefits that should also be promoted.

· Develop the skills of particular groups, for example in support of equality and diversity objectives. CCSU unions already have valuable experience of successful initiatives with women and BME workers, including through the Union Learning Fund, and are uniquely placed to take this agenda forward.

Promote Effective and Efficient Skills Development
Skills for Government should wherever possible encourage employers to learn from best practice and to work collaboratively. To the extent that economies of scale can be realised, savings should be directed to improving training provision for groups that currently have less access to employer-funded training.