And that review will be spearheaded by the incoming States chief executive and four top UK consultants who will be paid between £1,200 and £1,300 each per day for about six months.
Chief Minister Ian Gorst said major change in government was needed – and that money had to be spent on it – if the recommendations of the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry are to be properly implemented.
The inquiry, which presented its report in July, found that there were deep-rooted failures in the way the States of Jersey is run and criticised the perceived ‘Jersey Way’.
The change project will be led by the new States chief executive Charlie Parker, who is to take over responsibility for the public service early after incumbent chief executive John Richardson – who has served the States for more than 35 years – asked to depart sooner than his planned January retirement.
According to the Chief Minister, Mr Richardson, who will be paid as planned until May after which he will receive his States of Jersey pension, asked to leave to ‘avoid any confusion over accountabilities and authority by overlapping with the incoming chief executive’.
Senator Gorst, who thanked Mr Richardson for his service, said the transformation process would help to ‘stimulate the change that everyone agrees is necessary’. He said previous change programmes have failed to deliver at the heart of the system.
‘If we are really serious about delivering what was written between the lines in the inquiry – serving the public, listening, changing our culture – we have to do this,’ he said.
Mr Parker said: ‘Over the next few weeks and months we will develop a plan about how we want to take the Island forward.
‘From what I understand talking to local people there is a view that the civil service is probably top heavy, is fairly bloated, is rather slow at dealing with some of the responses that are needed, and they think our services are not always of the quality that they should be.
‘There will be some streamlining and there will be some opportunities to slim down the organisation.’
