British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s top adviser wants to recruit “weirdos and misfits” as part of a drive to overhaul the way the government works.
In a 3,000-word blog post, Dominic Cummings said he is seeking an “unusual set of people with different skills and backgrounds” to work in Downing Street — and that he wants to be made “largely redundant” by the new intake.
Hinting at a wider restructuring of the civil service, he said that there are “profound problems at the core of how the British state makes decisions.”
“It is obvious that improving government requires vast improvements in project management,” Cummings said. “The first project will be improving the people and skills already here.”
Since Johnson won last month’s general election, the British media has been filled with speculation about which government departments might be scrapped, merged or overhauled. Cummings’ blog confirmed that the prime minister’s top team is looking at how to do it.
“One of the problems with the civil service is the way in which people are shuffled such that they either do not acquire expertise or they are moved out of areas they really know to do something else,” Cummings wrote.
The UK’s departure from the EU “requires many large changes in policy and in the structure of decisionmaking,” Cummings wrote, and there are people in government now prepared to take risks to “change things a lot.”
Johnson’s majority means there is “little need to worry about short-term unpopularity while trying to make rapid progress with long-term problems,” he added.
Cummings listed the qualifications he is looking for, and suggested videos and research papers candidates should be familiar with.
He is seeking to hire data scientists, software developers, economists and policy experts, as well as “weirdos and misfits with odd skills.”
Cummings expressed his disdain for political correctness, saying the government needs to hire people with “true cognitive diversity,” rather than “gender identity diversity blah blah.”
“True wild cards” are needed, he said, while the government must also “figure out how to use such people better without asking them to conform to the horrors of ‘Human Resources’ (which also obviously need a bonfire).”
One new hire could serve as Cummings’ personal assistant.
“This will involve a mix of very interesting work and lots of uninteresting trivia that makes my life easier which you won’t enjoy,” he wrote. “You will not have weekday date nights, you will sacrifice many weekends — frankly it will [be] hard having a boy/girlfriend at all. It will be exhausting, but interesting.”
Cummings even hinted at his own departure.
“We want to improve performance and make me much less important — and within a year largely redundant,” he wrote.
At the moment he is required to make decisions “well outside” his “circle of competence,” he said.
“We do not have the sort of expertise supporting the PM and ministers that is needed,” he wrote. “This must change fast so we can properly serve the public.”
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