The new CEO will have important roles, but more modest and limited than those of a chief executive as normally understood. He or she will not run the Civil Service or line manage Permanent Secretaries, as a CEO elsewhere would. So what does the job involve? And will it help fix any of the problems identified in previous IfG research? How will it relate to the Cabinet Secretary and others? The new CEO could have been a deputy to Sir Jeremy Heywood, as the second most senior permanent secretary. A more junior permanent secretary has handled some of the management functions for the Cabinet Secretary in the past. Some of the trappings are there, sitting on the Civil Service board (again, not really a board, but an executive management committee), attending Cabinet as an observer (adding to an already packed room), and representing the Civil Service internally and externally, including to parliamentary committees. But the real number two in the hierarchy will be Sir Nick Macpherson, the Treasury Permanent Secretary. Instead, the CEO will be the senior official for efficiency and reform, in ‘executive control’ over the commercial, supplier management, digital, property, HR, project management, shared services and civil service […]
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