Leading Questions

This special episode of Leading Questions shares the results from the 2023 Responsive Government Survey . Report author Richard Johnstone shares the headlines from the research, while contributors to the report - Grete Kvernland-Berg , the managing partner and country head for Norway at PA Consulting Group ; Alexander Evans OBE , professor of practice in Public Policy at London School of Economics...

In the first of our Leading Questions podcasts to feature an American federal government leader, Noreen Hecmanczuk reflects on a long and diverse career which has seen her serve in the White House twice.   She took her first job in Washington D.C in the early 1990s – inspired by her WW2 veteran uncle – and hasn’t looked back.    The senior adviser on strategic engagements...

Phindile Baleni was appointed secretary to South Africa’s cabinet and director-general of the presidency – the first woman in the country’s history to hold these roles – amid the pandemic in April 2021. It’s a good thing she likes a challenge. With a background in maths and law, she joined the public service in 1994 just as South Africa was transitioning from the old apartheid regime to a new demo...

To mark International Women’s Day, we bring you a special edition podcast in which two top civil servants discuss their experiences as women in government, their public service’s journey towards gender parity in the highest ranks, and what more needs to be done to break down the barriers women face on their way to the top. Sarah Paquet , director and chief executive of FINTRAC Canada , has won awa...

In this bonus podcast in the Leading Questions feed, GGF executive editor Richard Johnstone and GGF event moderator Siobhan Benita set out the top trends affecting government in 2023, setting out insight on key topics including economy and finance, sustainability, resilience, digital government and transformation. Listen now to get the inside track on what governments will be working on in 2023. H...

“It really was an adventure. But I was ready for it.” Gertrud Ingestad – now director general for human resources and security at the European Commission – had been a language teacher in her native Sweden for 13 years before she decided to take a leap into the unknown. Joining the Commission (the “friendly monster”) as a translator in 1995, Gertrud rose up the ranks, holding a variety of roles in...

“You don’t really understand your own system until you compare it with someone else’s.” Professor Colin Talbot of Manchester University and the University of Cambridge took an unconventional route into academia, having spent time in the private sector and local government before landing his first academic role. A seasoned researcher and author who specialises in public services and public manageme...

“Talent comes in every shape, colour, size and we have to be able to tap into that.” Yazmine Laroche had a varied 30-year career in the Canadian public service, rising to become public service accessibility chief, and the first person with a visible disability to be appointed deputy minister in the bureaucracy’s history.  In this episode – recorded shortly after she retired from the public se...

“Any kind of meaningful career is going to experience setbacks and defeats. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a successful career.” Michael Wernick spent nearly four decades in the Canadian public service, rising to become the country’s most senior official before his retirement in 2019. In this episode he reflects on some of the many lessons of his long and varied career, its supreme highs and its crus...

“You should never pick me for any job which is business as usual… I am my best or worst, depending on your point of view, when dealing with change.” From helping to establish the UK Department for International Development (DFID) after its separation from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to managing a prisons crisis as justice department permanent secretary, Suma Chakrabarti has never been afra...

“I’m really kind of glad I didn’t know all the rules because if I’d stuck to the rules, we would never have done it.” Stephanie Foster had been in defence for 23 years when she volunteered to take responsibility for a floundering AUS$1bn stimulus package for local government. Despite facing public criticism over the scheme that she feared might end her career, she says breaking the rules – albeit...

“You have to flex your leadership and you don’t really know how to do that until you’ve really understood the culture of the organisation.” Minouche Shafik was the youngest ever vice president of the World Bank. In 2008, she became permanent secretary of the Department for International Development, before moving to the International Monetary Fund as deputy managing director in 2011 only to find h...

GCHQ is an example for the rest of the public service… here is a case where civil servants have made technology sing.” In 1996, David Omand faced his first major leadership challenge: he had become the director of GCHQ and was charged with continuing the intelligence agency’s post-Cold War programme of technological transformation and reform. In this episode David discusses his experience of being...

The idea that in any sense I planned my career is completely wrong.” Lord Gus O’Donnell’s long career in the civil service started in 1979 in the Treasury and included stints as a diplomat in Washington, press secretary to prime minister John Major and cabinet secretary, head of the civil service and permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office under three prime ministers – Tony Blair, Gordon Brown a...

“The worst piece of leadership advice I got was: ‘be an authentic leader.’” Of course be true to yourself and your values, says Ciaran Martin CB , professor of practice in the management of public organisations at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government . “The bit I interpreted wrongly, which made it the worst piece of advice, was to just act yourself at work,” he adds. In this e...

“On the one hand, the cabinet minister has to understand that nature of the civil service role and the role of the permanent secretary as a leader alongside you… “But I think the permanent secretary also has to respect that the cabinet minister is not necessarily someone to be shaped in content or style to the previous way of doing things.” In this very special episode, Sir David Bell and Ed Balls...

“Did I feel equipped to become a permanent secretary? I thought I was, but I was very quickly disabused of the notion.” In this episode, Sir Peter Housden reflects candidly on his first permanent secretary role at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. He talks about how he prepared in all the wrong ways, what he learned from the experience and the coping strategies that kept him going. In 2010,...

“I have used the term over the years of ‘having running away money’. That doesn’t mean having a stash of savings, but it does mean all the time thinking to yourself, ‘If this job doesn’t work, if I can’t stand this a moment longer… what would I do?’” Dame Helen Ghosh enjoyed a long career in the civil service, becoming permanent secretary of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs i...