‘Systemic Corporate Failure of Public Administration’: Reflections on the Travers Report

Abstract

The previous Chapter called attention to how enquiries set up primarily into the doings of politicians, showed up appalling levels of contributory incompetence and worse on the part of the public service. Its diagnosis was that the actual task of their departments can never be the primary interest of public servants, and that the few who might act as a leaven no longer have the degree of independence they need for it; the prescription for a partial cure was formal arrangements for going public about wrongdoing – ‘whistleblowing’ – so that these few individuals could deal with evident and serious problems without having to sacrifice their careers. The very existence of such arrangements, it was claimed, would be such a strong deterrent that they would need to be used only very rarely.