The maps of changing Whitehall

Posted on 18 May 2010, 12:28 am, by Public Strategist, under Leadership and change.

Last week I illustrated my post about the mergers and demergers of Whitehall with a very bad picture of a very neat illustration of the timelines of government departments in tube map style.  Steph Gray responded to my plea for help in finding a cleaner version of the picture and linked me up with its custodian in BIS.

So I now have a high resolution version, though it came with a health warning, not guaranteeing complete historical accuracy – which turned out to be important shortly afterwards, when Patrick Dunleavy left a very helpful comment pointing to a  more rigorous treatment of the subject,  albeit one not so visually striking and covering  only the last twenty years.

This is the BIS-produced diagram which was in my earlier post (click on it to see a larger version):

This is the diagram Patrick Dunleavy pointed out to me, taken from Making and Breaking Whitehall Departments: A Guide to Machinery of Government Changes by Anne White and Patrick Dunleavy and published by the Institute for Government just last week – and clearly worth a thorough look in its own right (again, click on the image to see a slightly larger version):

And finally a splendid bonus in the form of a tongue in cheek extrapolation by the BIS team of departmental changes out over the next century and a half:

So now we know where we have been and where we are going.  Nothing can possibly go wrong.

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25 Comments

  1. The changing map of Whitehall | Public Strategist says:
    18 May 2010 at 1:13 am

    [...] The picture below shows how departments have split and merged over the last few decades (it’s a poor quality mobile phone picture I took at last year’s Civil Service Live – if anybody knows a source for a proper version of this image and its pair which projected forward over the next few decades, please do let me know Update: high quality images kindly provided by the good people of BIS and included in a new post here). [...]

  2. Whitehall: the next 150 years | UK | Global Dashboard says:
    18 May 2010 at 10:35 am

    [...] H/t Public Strategist. [...]

  3. Changing seats in Whitehall « Rage on Omnipotent says:
    21 May 2010 at 12:46 pm

    [...] look at the regular reconfigurations of Whitehall departments. I particularly enjoyed the spoof [...]

  4. Changing seats in Whitehall « TRC – Advisory, Consulting, Engagement says:
    21 May 2010 at 12:46 pm

    [...] look at the regular reconfigurations of Whitehall departments. I particularly enjoyed the spoof [...]

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