Janina Boughey

Anyone who has worked in a government department for more than a brief period knows how much ministers differ in their interest in their portfolio, diligence, and competence. The best ones (from a departmental staffer’s perspective, at least) are efficient, yet seem to be across all of the important details, which they might demonstrate by asking pointed questions which raise issues the department may not have considered. Others are quick, but one gets a sense that they might not have really engaged with issues in their portfolio—that they are simply doing a ‘tick and flick’. They might, for instance, require all briefings to be less than a page long which, on complex policy issues, means leaving out important details and nuances. Then there are ministers who pore laboriously over every detail of even the most mundane, routine decisions.