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Civil Service Live
The Civil Service Commissioners have been pleased to participate in every one of the Civil Service Live events that have been held since April 2008. This year we produced sessions on the Civil Service values at Civil Service Live events in London in July and in Manchester in December.
The biggest Civil Service Live event to date took place over three days at Olympia in July 2009. The Commissioners held a ‘Question Time on Civil Service Values’ session on each of the three days of the event.
Janet Paraskeva, the First Civil Service Commissioner chaired each of the sessions with different panel members on each day. Panellists included Sir Gus O’Donnell the Cabinet Secretary; Sir Suma Chakrabarti and Sir Peter Ricketts, Permanent Secretaries; Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, former Head of the Security Service; Baroness Julia Neuberger; Irene Lucas, Chief Executive of South Tyneside Council; Philippa Foster-Back, Director of the Institute of Business Ethics; Elizabeth McMeikan and Anthea Millett, Civil Service Commissioners ; and journalists, David Hencke, Polly Toynbee and Martin Rosenbaum.
Our Question Time sessions continue to be an engaging way of raising and discussing ethical issues that can challenge civil servants in their working lives. The guest panellists bring a variety of views and experiences to the discussions, from inside and outside the service. There was a real sense of audience participation at Olympia, as the audiences had the chance to put questions to the panel in advance as part of the registration process. The panel discussions covered a wide variety of thought provoking subjects over the three days, including speaking up, values and new media, political impartiality and spin, leaks, how to maintain Civil Service values with contracted-out services, freedom of information, and value for money and waste.
A further Commissioners Question Time panel session was included in the programme for the regional Civil Service Live event at Manchester Central in December. Janet Paraskeva again chaired the session and Sir Gus O’Donnell was a panel member. They were joined by Joyce Redfearn, the Chief Executive of Wigan Council; Sir Neil McIntosh, one of Janet’s fellow Civil Service Commissioners; and Martin Wainwright, the Northern Editor of the Guardian.