This Is Guernsey

Confirmation by the States chief accountant that the standards used for preparing government financial figures are out of date and need modernising is a further indication that the reforms of the machinery of government have started rather than finished.

While the process that led to the changes introduced in 2004 concentrated on the number of States members, streamlining the committee system and trying to improve coordination, there is much more – less glamorous – change required.

The just-published report into the role of the States of Guernsey as employer is a case in point.

While the demands over the last 20 years have been to modernise public services and provide better health, education and welfare facilities, that has arguably been done at the expense of improving the underlying systems that run them.

During the years of budget surpluses, there was little impetus to look at management and accounting processes – dull in comparison to running big capital processes – but the island is now in different circumstances. That means Guernsey has to be, to use a phrase coined by Nigel Lawson in 1981’s Thatcherite Britain, more efficient, leaner, tauter, fitter and more productive. In turn, that means political and civil service leaders will not only have to embrace and drive change, but have the vision to see where doing things differently can mean achieving more with less.

The past four years have seen a focus on the inherent ability of the ‘new’ States structure of departments, ministers, Policy Council and chief minister to drive progress in what remains a consensual system.

The new House and, in particular, the new council members will want to have a fresh drive at making work what is already in place and islanders will wish them all success, for doing so will remove much of the criticism of the last administration.

In tandem, and largely behind the scenes, there has to be a fresh impetus to the initiative to reform and modernise the civil service and to change the attitudes of departments towards each other and eliminate sometimes conflicting interests.

Much can be achieved with a quiet revolution – if the will is there.