Calls for civil service reform are frequent, and the criticisms strident, as government institutions have grappled with the extraordinary pressures of a global pandemic and economic crises.
Amidst these challenges, the Bennett Prospect Public Policy Prize 2022 invited early career researchers and policy professionals to answer the question: what is a 21st century civil service for?
Over 50 short essays and films were entered by early career from across five continents for the opportunity to win the first prize of £5,000 and two runners-up prizes of £1,000.
The Bennett Prospect Prize for Public Policy is awarded annually by the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge in partnership with Prospect magazine. It aims to showcase the thinking of early career policy professionals and researchers on some of the big challenges of these turbulent times.
This year’s winner is Walter Pasquarelli—a policy research manager and consultant in the Tech & Society practice of Economist Impact. His short film titled, “Towards a semantic civil service,” argues for a civil service (inspired by the semantic web) that is decentralised, grants personal control of data, and creates more bespoke and better processes.
He says that this modernised civil service would be decentralised (controlled by the user), break down data silos (joining up across departmental services) and be automated through smart contracts (with access granted by the user). To get to the semantic civil service, there is a need to: invest in tech, open data, and infrastructure; develop a culture in which users have more responsibility, and; establish supporting policies for mitigating risks such as data privacy and bias in decision-making.
One of the two runners-up, Oliver Marsh (Demos Fellow & Hon. Research Associate UCL Science & Technology Studies), submitted an essay on “Civil Service and Human Connection.” He argues that a 21st century civil service can, and should, be reconfigured to create much-needed human connections between citizens and government. To explore this idea, he focuses on one practical proposal: linking civil servants to specific constituencies. He draws on his experiences as a former member and current independent researcher of the UK civil service.
The second runner-up, Marc Le Chevallier, a research intern at the Local Trust focussing on the Community Wealth Fund, who wrote about “Serving in the age of crisis: resilience-building as the future of the civil service.” He presents a model of the civil service built on four pillars: foresight and preparation; decentralisation over centralisation; flexibility and innovation, and; leadership and meaning.
The judging panel included two former cabinet secretaries: Sir Gus O’Donnell and Professor Sir Richard Wilson, Prospect's editor Alan Rusbridger, Chair of the Bennett Institute Dame Fiona Reynolds, and Co-Directors of the Bennett Institute Professor Diane Coyle and Professor Dennis C. Grube.
“We were impressed by many of the ideas entered; quite a few of which discussed decentralisation and the digital age. The judges were fairly united on their decision for the three finalists. While we wouldn’t necessarily fully endorse some of their ideas, they delivered well thought-out arguments, creativity, and a strong practical vision for what a 21st century civil service should look like,” says Dennis Grube, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, who leads the Bennett Institute’s research programme on decision-making in government.
For more information about the Bennett Prospect Public Policy Prize visit: www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/prize
