Guardian article

Civil service damned as 'utterly antiquated'

"A lot of the time the process is more important than the outcome." 

"full of fiercely risk-averse people because no civil servant ever got fired for doing nothing.  They get fired for doing something." 

A damming assessment of the civil service as a 'desperately overpopulated', 'broken' institution which is stuck in the 19th century has been made by one of its most prominent figures.

In an astonishing attack, Zenna Atkins, a director of the Royal Navy Fleet Executive Board, chair of its audit committee and also chair of Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, described the practices of central government as 'utterly antiquated'.