The Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS), which has been without a head since August, is now at a "crossroads" and struggling to provide "business as usual services", the North's audit office has reported.
The critical report by the audit office found that the civil service must transform how it plans, recruits, manages and develops its workforce if it is to successfully address current and future challenges and deliver value for money.
"To function effectively, NICS departments require the right people, in the right place, at the right time," said Kieran Donnelly, the North's comptroller and auditor general in a report published on Wednesday.
“My report has found that at a NICS-wide level there has not been a strategic focus on ensuring this is the case,” he said.
The service, which has a staff or more than 22,000, has come in for criticism in recent years particularly over the mishandling of the “cash for ash” or renewable heat incentive (RHI) scheme.
Unprecedented challenges
Its former head David Sterling stood down at the end of August after announcing his intention to retire last December.
In September, three candidates made it through a competition for the top post but First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill did not appoint any of those candidates.
Their plan now is to appoint an interim head, possibly for a year, although that appointment has yet to be made.
Mr Donnelly in his report referred to how the NICS had faced “unprecedented challenges in recent years” with current and further challenges ahead such as Covid-19 and Brexit.
He also referred to “significant staff attrition” that had seen close to 4,000 staff quit the service between 2015 and 2019 under an early retirement scheme, leading “to an ever increasing reliance on temporary staffing solutions”.
Recruiting staff through agencies increased in cost by 155 per cent in 2018-19 compared with 2016-17.
“Overall vacancy levels subsequently rose to 6.9 per cent at March 2019, with the 1,420 total staffing vacancies exceeding the combined workforces of the three smallest NICS departments,” said the report.
Mr Donnelly reported how temporary promotions had increased in the four-year period to March 2019, from 631 to 1,844, meaning 8.2 per cent of the overall workforce was temporarily promoted at that time.
He also judged that “recruitment processes are cumbersome, slow, and do not provide sufficient assurance that the right people are placed in the right posts”.
Mr Donnelly further queried how, when the service had a staff of 22,300 last year, “that only 19 staff within the overall workforce received an ‘unsatisfactory’ performance management rating for 2017-18, raising questions about the quality and value of this exercise”.
“Shortfalls in workforce capacity and capability have been a recurring theme in reports published by my office, and were also reflected in the recommendations stemming from the RHI inquiry,” said Mr Donnelly.
“The NICS is now at a critical crossroads, struggling to deal with providing ‘business as usual services’,” he added.
Mr Donnelly said a “real opportunity” existed for the next head of the civil service and for departmental permanent secretaries to use his report’s findings and recommendations “to substantially transform the service and its culture and improve outcomes for citizens”.
