Any good books on civil service successes, eg WW2 rationing?

[bigbadbernard]

I work in the civil service and really enjoy it. I'd like to find out more about big successes civil servants managed to have - I'm thinking genuine foresight and planning, public service and Doing Difficult Things Well. It's not exactly that its a dead art but, well, I could use some inspiring reading.

So what would count and are there good books about it? I'm thinking that rationing in WW2 was done well, especially after the near famine of WW1 on the home front. What can I read about the practicalities of stocking up on enough food, moving it about and getting a budget for it well in advance?

What other examples are there?

I think driver and car safety is a pretty good one, seatbelts have saved a huge number of lives.

Also - council housing! There's a great book called Municipal Dreams that outlines the great 20th century council housing project.

Ooh, added to my list, thank you!

I'm not sure it is quite what you need, but I really enjoyed Margery Allingham's The Oaken Heart. It was her contemporaneous account of life in her village in the early years of WW2. I was impressed at the the role of local goverment, eg gas masks arrived early on, evacuees were found homes. It was all organised at local level but of course the local council were responding to the central civil service preparations. There must have been a few years of stockpiling supplies, all done to a plan.

Typo government

I read a fantastic book on the development of the NHS. Unfortunately it was about 20 years ago.

The blunders of our governments is an enjoyable if the opposite of what you’ve asked! I SCS told a conference every CS should read it.

I came here to recommend the same book! It is about failure rather than success but the common themes of what led to the failures were very illuminating.

If you are in the policy profession, they often have great seminars about policy successes. There was one last year with David Blunkett talking about how they set up Sure Start and it was so interesting.

That sounds great, kind of the same thing from the other direction. I like books more than work talks (busy job just now, no time. But v interesting so all good).

The* *Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Woolton by Woolton, Frederick James Marquis 1st Earl of, 1959, Cassell is really readable, by the man who organised Britain's wartime food response. Lizzie Collingham's TheTaste of War is a global overview.

A couple of Irish ones I enjoyed but don't have the exact titles of were the memoirs of James Deeny, Chief Medical Advisor in the mid 20th c and a recent biography of Ken Whitaker, the civil servant who transformed the Irish economy in the 1960s.

i think The End of Innocence: Britain in the Time of AIDS by Simon Garfield could give you some things in the right area.

Thank you, I now have a long list to order from the library and follow up on. Particularly looking forward to the Woolton book.