ACOBA is due to close on 13 October, leaving former ministers and senior Crown servants with the reassuring knowledge that their next application will be handled by a different organisation, provided they first identify which sort of former official they have become.
The government announced that the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments would close, with its functions moving to the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards and the Civil Service Commission. The sensible principle is that appointments after public service need clear oversight. The comic complication is that clarity now arrives as a small administrative treasure hunt.
Former ministers are directed to the Independent Adviser. Specified senior Crown servants and certain special advisers must begin with departmental HR before their applications travel onwards to the Civil Service Commission. Anyone uncertain about the route is advised to contact their department first, which is reassuringly close to being told to ask the building.
Roger Forwarding, Director of Administrative Migration, welcomed the arrangement. “We have reduced one destination to several clearly defined destinations,” he said, in the manner of a man unveiling a roundabout. “Applicants will know exactly where to begin once they have established their status, grade, department, previous department and tolerance for official email addresses.”
The Department of Correct Recipients has prepared a decision tree. One branch is labelled former minister. Another is labelled Crown servant at the required level. A third asks whether the applicant has tried their department, while a fourth leads to a blank page and the quiet realisation that the guidance has become a character building exercise.
There is nothing inherently absurd about dividing responsibilities between the right bodies. Standards need an accountable home, and applications should not vanish into an abandoned inbox containing the phrase “sent from my iPhone” and a committee logo from 2014. But a transition works best when a person can follow it without an archival studies degree.
The old ACOBA inbox is preparing its final automatic reply: “Thank you for your email. Your query has not been lost. It has been promoted to a more sophisticated system of being someone else’s problem.” By Monday, even the out of office message will need to apply for permission to leave.
Real story: Advisory Committee on Business Appointments.
