Some £16.5 million was spent on Civil Service training and development in 1999. My examination sought to establish if the taxpayer was getting best value for money for this expenditure in terms of the organisation, management and overall effectiveness of the training provided. It involves surveying and analysing the expenditure on training by all Departments and major offices and examining in particular the role of the Department of Finance as exercised by its Centre for Management and Organisation Development, commonly referred to as CMOD.
As the range and complexity of the administrative tasks of the Civil Service increases, there is a commensurate need for training and development to equip staff at all levels with skills which will enable them to meet the quality of service demands in the changing environment in which they operate. The examination found that there was an unevenness in the quality and quantity of training provided across Departments. While some Departments had a planned and structured approach to training, others appeared to address the function in a more ad hoc way in the sense that there was little or no analysis of training needs and little in the line of meaningful review. Part of the problem might stem from the fact that training was often not high on the agenda of senior management in some Departments.
Looking at the type of training provided, our analysis showed that most training is technical in nature. This is what we might have expected and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but the customer focused approach which underpins many of the new developments in public administration suggests that the extra resources being pumped into this area should be concentrated on roles, attitudes and behaviour of staff, the so-called softer type of skills training.
The report also considers the type and amount of training given to top Civil Service management and suggests there should be a separate development programme put in place which takes account of the specific requirements of top managers. In this regard we can, perhaps, learn from the approaches adopted by leading edge companies and the United Kingdom Civil Service.
One of the negative points in the report is the lack of information held by some Departments and offices on their training activities. Not having this information in accessible form makes the task of monitoring and evaluating expenditure on training difficult if not impossible. I understand this problem is being addressed, as new information system systems are being introduced in the context of the implementation of the performance management and development system throughout the Civil Service.
Last, and arguably the most important, Departments should aim to develop evaluation systems based on measuring the effectiveness of training expenditure in terms of improved corporate performance. This will not be easy and I recognise that, but ultimately it represents the acid test in determining the impact of training and whether good value for money is being obtained. There is much more in the report, but what I have said reflects the main areas of concern.
