## Notes from 06 February 2026 [[2026-02-05|← Previous note]] ┃ [[2026-02-07|Next note →]] Northern Ireland [recently filled](https://www.executiveoffice-ni.gov.uk/news/announcement-senior-civil-service-leadership-appointments) its highest-ranking civil service positions, including three Permanent Secretaries, through open recruitment competitions advertised to the public. These leaders were selected from both internal and external applicant pools to ensure the best candidates were chosen for the executive board. It really shouldn't be that hard to do it everywhere; opening high-level bureaucracy to transparent, competitive recruitment ensures talent is prioritized over political appointments or closed-door promotions. I also enjoyed reading "[The role of relationships in modern government](https://heywoodquarterly.com/the-role-of-relationships-in-modern-government/)" by Shostak, Bell & Robinson in Heywood Quarterly (Feb 2026). Their argument is that empathy and trust need to become the building blocks of the state rather than accidental bonuses, and this shift is already happening in the UK—moving from local experiments into Whitehall through the Cabinet Office's [["Test, Learn and Grow" initiative]]. The examples are striking. Wigan Council redesigned adult social care so staff could have open-ended conversations with residents to understand their lives instead of ticking boxes. The NHS has Community Health and Wellbeing Workers who visit every household in a neighborhood monthly just to build rapport—not to deliver a service, just to create the relationship infrastructure. [[James Plunkett]] calls this "relational capacity," the ability of the state to do things with people rather than to them. In the end, the text is a call arguing these local green shoots of [[Relational Public Services]] should inform the debates on state reform.