Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): We are going to have a brief chat about our inquiry into the performance and culture of the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS). If members are agreed, we will have Hansard record this, because it is part of our Committee inquiry.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): There are a series of papers in the meeting pack. Those include a news article on last week's briefing; the results of the NICS people survey; and correspondence from the Economy Committee regarding the AI strategy for the public sector. Those are all new things. I am sure that the Minister and his officials are expecting us to raise this, as it is clear that it is one of our priority areas. I am asking members for their reflections on the results of the people survey. The correspondence from the Economy Committee is interesting. It was welcome that we had the evidence session last week. However, in the nicest possible way, I have to say that I did not emerge from that evidence session any clearer about what the key priorities are for reforming the Civil Service. I say that with the best will in the world and without trying to be too rude.

Dr Aiken: I echo your comments, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I did not find that a particularly clear or enlightening session, although I understood some of the points that were being made. As a Committee, we will want to interrogate a little bit more some of the points that came out of that session. I had a particular concern about reporting lines and the ownership of delivery of Civil Service change and reform. Some of the concerns that I had going into that session were, in a sense, magnified, or were greater afterwards than they were before.

Ms Forsythe: I agree with your analysis of last week, Chair. Our inquiry is into the performance and culture of the Northern Ireland Civil Service; it is not a review of Civil Service HR. It felt very much as if that was being pushed back on to us. Reference was made to HR officials, who we did have in for a separate session. HR and the people survey are very important parts of our inquiry, but we were trying to get to some of the structures, management and other higher-level things from the head of the Civil Service. I did not feel that it was grasped or taken on board that that was where we were coming from and that it was not all about HR.

I do not know what else we can do in the inquiry to look at the structure of the Civil Service as a whole — maybe some of the external reviews of how the Civil Service is run and what happens in it. From the general tone of last week's meeting, it is clear that some very clear recommendations are coming through. The answer is not just in this people strategy, but in the whole system, its reporting lines and its accountability, and how everything is run. We can add a lot of value by shining a little bit of light on that. Everyone is doing their best, including the HR team. The Civil Service has 24,000 staff, and HR management is a big job and it is important. However, there is so much more that we need to do and say about public-sector delivery. It was good to see our inquiry being picked up by the media, because it shows that we are scrutinising here effectively.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): To be fair to Jill Minne and Catherine Shannon, they have given evidence to us before and have been pretty consistent around some of the —. We will definitely want to interrogate and test, and I am sure that we still have some concerns but, in fairness, there are consistent actions that they are pursuing, and they have never not been up front about some of the structural issues that they have had to deal with. They were, at least, upfront and consistent.

I have one suggested action, members. I have not discussed it in advance with the Clerk, so I apologise for that. Given that some of what we want to look at is the broader cultural stuff — I will ask the Clerk to go away and look at that — it may be that we would benefit from a longer view from people who were, perhaps, in senior roles in the Civil Service. I do not know who those people would be, nor do I have a list of them. They might be able to give a view of how some of that stuff worked in the past. For example, one of the things that we heard was that some of the structures changed post 1998, possibly for understandable reasons. It might be helpful to understand a bit of the historical context. We do not need to agree now who we invite, but if members are content, the Clerk can go and have a look at some potential other witnesses. We have a fair bit of time to do that, if members are amenable. We can agree who those invitees to be potential witnesses might be.

Does anybody else want to reflect on any of that? No? OK. A couple of bits of information that we asked for in last week's evidence session are still outstanding. We had also expressed concern about NISRA data. We still do not have a clear answer as to who is picking that up or whether it will be picked up.

The Committee Clerk: We went back for further detail on that, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Grand, OK. We will hear more about that, and we will have further suggestions about who we can invite to give us evidence and a longer view. The Minister will be in front of us next week, and he might have some views to give us.

Are members agreed that we add the people survey and the evidence base to the inquiry?