Training Journal interviews David Spencer
By Jo Young (October 2005 Issue)
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Since the launch of the National School of Government in June this year – replacing the Centre for Management and Policy Studies, which in itself took over from the earlier Civil Service College – David Spencer has been a very busy man.
Spencer was appointed as the principal for the National School to help lead the organisation in its remit to ‘develop leadership in the public service, increase professionalism, deliver outcomes and improve efficiency’. ‘I don’t know why they wanted me, but I guess the issue is simply that they wanted a someone with a new perspective for the organisation, since they were implementing a new strategy,’ he says.
Before joining the civil service, Spencer worked in HR. Starting his career at now-defunct airline Dan Air, he worked as Group HR Director thereafter for Smiths Industrial Group, the global engineering company. At the time he was approached by the National School of Government, he was working as a consultant, but, as he says, ‘that wasn’t really what I wanted to do’.
Spencer is the first to admit that there were problems with the Centre for Management and Policy Studies that the National School was established to try and clear up. ‘It had ended up as an executive agency chasing its own bottom line, and was very revenue focused. It wasn’t plugged into the government agenda, not properly,’ he says. ‘At the point that the Civil Service College was operating, if I’m honest, nobody did anything with it. The National School of Government is the vision of me and my team, gaining the support of the Cabinet Secretary en route.’
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