Secretary of the Cabinet and Head of the Home Civil Service

I am pleased to introduce the 47th edition of the Civil Service Year Book.

I feel enormously privileged to lead the Civil Service and am inspired by the commitment to delivering public services I see amongst colleagues every day. We are working in a constantly changing environment continuing to face new challenges and doing more with less. We must be ready to respond to changes faster than ever before.

We will need to change the way we work in our policy making, our operational delivery and all of the other things we do to ensure we are meeting these challenges. We need to look for innovative ways of delivering public services including in the way we communicate and manage information. We also need to do this internally. That is why we are planning to make some changes to the Civil Service Year Book. This will be the last version in its current form. In the future we will use more modern technology to produce the information in a way which is easier to access, search and maintain.

I look forward to this improved approach and the part it will play in ensuring we have a joined-up Civil Service.