Ms Forsythe said,
“The Government talking about Civil Service reform is good as it is recognition that one of the greatest obstacles to delivering better outcomes for the taxpayer is a civil service structure which is slow and lacking the requisite skills.
A lack of expertise and senior leadership in the Northern Ireland Civil Service has contributed significantly to the lack of progress in delivering key infrastructure projects in Northern Ireland, such as the York Street Interchange and the A5, in recent years.
There is also a growing catalogue of overspends, most recently in the Belfast Health Trust with the Maternity and Children’s Hospital. The Northern Ireland Audit Office has found that there was £2.4bn overspend in 47 projects and an underspend of £42m in 11 projects. Only 9 of 77 projects considered by the Audit Office are expected to meet their cost and time projections.
The Northern Ireland Civil Service is different to its counterparts in Scotland and Wales. Whereas the civil service in Scotland and Wales remain part of the UK Home Civil Service, NICS is a stand- alone body and as a result has been unable, and at times unwilling, to benefit from economies of scale in terms of skills present in the public sector in Great Britain.
We sought to tackle this during our negotiations with the Government. The Safeguarding the Union command paper sets out a programme for skills exchange between the NICS and the UK Home Civil Service. Encouraging those secondments and movement across all parts of the UK will boost capacity and help bring specific expertise to projects where necessary. This has also been reflected within the Programme for Government where reform is recognised as essential for the delivery of public services.”