Britain: An official handbook > 1977

GOVERNMENT
59
less civil servants and are paid from public funds, to give them advice on policy
matters. Such appointments lapse when the Government’s term of office ends.
Structure Following the report of the Fulton committee which in 1968 assessed the struc¬
ture, recruitment and management, including management training, of the
service, the Civil Service has been undergoing a programme of reshaping and
modernisation to make it more effective in carrying out its changing tasks.
The structure of the Home Civil Service, which before 1968 tended to reflect
the assumption that specific types of work should be allocated to particular
classes of civil servants on the basis of narrow or vocational qualifications, is
being redesigned to provide for a more flexible deployment of staff so that talent
can be used to the best advantage and the highest levels of the Civil Service seen
to be open to people of outstanding ability, whatever their specialist background
or original method of entry to the service. These structural changes involve the
abolition of classes, and are being allied with personnel management policies
designed to ensure that, although work requiring specialist skill is always done
by appropriately qualified individuals, people with the necessary aptitudes are
given opportunities to gain suitably wide experience to fit them for higher posts.
At the top levels of the Civil Service, where staff are predominantly con¬
cerned with higher management and policy, there is an open and unified struc¬
ture, with three grades—permanent secretary, deputy secretary and under
secretary available for all types of posts. Posts at these levels are filled by the
people most suitable for them without regard to their academic background or
to whether they were previously in a specialist or generalist stream.
At other levels the structure is being based on a system of occupational
groups, which are the basic groupings of staff for the purposes of pay, recruit¬
ment and personnel management, and categories which consist of one or more
occupational groups having a common pay and grading pattern. Nine cate¬
gories have so far been created, and the groups of staff that are so far members
of them are shown below.
Categories There are five groups within the General Category. The Administration Group
contains some 230,000 staff. Their functions range from the co-ordination
and improvement of government machinery and the formulation of advice to
ministers on matters of policy to the performance of normal clerical duties
connected with the running of departmental business at lower levels. The
Economist Group contains about 300 staff. They provide economic advice
and undertake economic analysis. The Statistician Group (some 450 staff)
undertakes the collection and analysis of statistics required for government
policies. The Information Officer Group (some 1,350 staff) carries out a
variety of specialised press, publicity, public relations and information work.
The Librarian Group (some 350 staff) carries out the professional librarian
duties in departmental libraries.
The Science Category contains the Science Group (18,000 staff), which is
responsible for conducting scientific research and testing in numerous govern¬
ment laboratories and testing establishments, and for providing advice on
scientific policy. Its members also participate in the planning and management
of advanced technology procurement projects.
There are two groups in the Professional and Technical Category. The
Professional and Technical Group contains some 40,000 staff and includes
a range of professionals—architects, surveyors, quantity surveyors, and
electrical and mechanical engineers—and appropriate supporting staff, whose
main function is to plan and oversee a wide range of government construction