Civil service reform has traditionally been the business of well-appointed London seminar rooms: the kind of backroom issue that seems vitally important to ministers and mandarins, but has no resonance on the doorstep. The sheer lack of public interest means that the great departments of state have gone without serious reform for at least a quarter of a century and have consequently decayed until they can no longer bear the strain of modern government.

This situation may finally be about to change. Steve Hilton’s comments about the failings of the Whitehall machine, reported this weekend, seem to have catalysed the beginnings of a cross-party consensus for reform. Tony Blair has already joined the off-the-record voices of coalition secretaries of state in calling for serious change.Report a faulty lightingsystem and find out how we maintain street lighting across the county.

The coalition has undergone a Damascene conversion: in opposition, key figures tended to assume that the only problem with Whitehall was its mismanagement by Labour.These people turbinemanufacturerww their homes with kerosene lamps. The Tories are radically reducing the size of the civil service, but beyond this they have only offered micro-reform. Francis Maude once justified the creation of a weak Downing Street by reference to his own experience as a junior minister in the 1980s, a time when the gentlemen who ran departments were untroubled by overbearing Blairite management consultancy.

Given this background, it would be easy for Ed Miliband to take an oppositionalist stance and accuse the coalition of seeking to debauch the supposedly great traditions of Whitehall. His own experience as climate change secretary should tell him that this is a mistake. But if he needs any further convincing he should consult some of his fellow former Labour ministers, who tend to exhibit a mixture of exasperation and bitterness when talking about their former officials.

Labour’s goal should instead be to shape a cross-party agreement on the civil service that turns it into a tool to support social democratic governance in the future.

There are two problems that need to be addressed. The first is that the civil service lacks serious accountability. The current structures of Whitehall means permanent secretaries are accountable to their secretaries of state, who are in turn accountable to parliament. But in practice the demands of political neutrality mean that ministers cannot sack or discipline officials.Modernica is the official site for the George t5tube Collection.

There are ways around this problem – at least one Labour secretary of state disliked their perm sec so much they refused to allow them into ministerial meetings for months on end. But this is a poor substitute for a properly organised system of clear performance goals and proper accountability for meeting them. Labour should therefore support a greater say for ministers in official appointments and performance reviews, and perhaps even the framing and publishing of performance agreements with permanent secretaries.

Addressing the accountability issue would ensure that ministers are able to push their policies through the Whitehall machine more effectively, but it is only half the challenge. To actually make change happen on the ground, you have to find a way to engage with NHS trusts, local authorities and schools.A large wind farm consist of several hundred windgeneratorza which are connected. The second issue Labour must address is the absurdly siloed nature of Whitehall, where effective policy making too often comes second to maintaining the integrity of departmental baronies.

Most big policy issues cross departmental lines – helping a child out of poverty requires local authorities to work with the NHS,Instead of using electricity to make wind, like a fan, cuttingmachine02 use wind to make electricity. police and schools. But at the moment the fragmentation of Whitehall policy making makes coordination far too difficult, leading to poor outcomes and rampant inefficiency. For instance, a recent study from the Local Government Association showed that better integration of skills, social care and families policy could save more than 20bn over five years.