The dumbing down of the public service continues apace as Ottawa’s appeal to the guru of deliverology underlines. The whole subtext of deliverology is that civil servants exist merely to execute politicians’ will. What tosh. if that were so, why spend so much time in the British parliamentary tradition underlining and celebrating the non-political and independent nature of the civil service? The CS exists to give independent, expert, non-partisan advice to ministers and their authority to do so is in no way dependent on the electoral mandate of their political masters. The failure of governments of all stripes to understand this relationship is poisoning the relationship itself. Of course the CS isn’t helping with its shameful displays of partisanship following the last election, but that is a different topic for another day!
Deliverology is merely the latest false gospel promoted by charlatans to give a semblance of legitimacy to the increasing creep of politics into the CS. And it doesn’t work anyway, as I lay out in some detail in my Globe column for the ROB that appeared on April 29th, 2016.
