More WAP please, we're civil servants

The public sector wiped the floor with the opposition in a survey designed to find out which businesses are using technology to help them become more responsive to change.

Despite their reputation for inflexible management and immoderate love of red tape, the top performing organisations in the public sector were far more agile than their private sector cousins. They led the indices for speed of learning and their success in adopting mobile technology.

The Cranfield School of Management, in association with Microsoft, surveyed 540 UK organisations across the retail, financial services, manufacturing and public sectors, for the survey Creating the Agile Workforce.

The organisations were then divided into top performers, average performers and low performers, with the top-performing government departments achieving the best results.

The elite public sector respondents scored 82 per cent for their ability to use technology to help them develop new skills and competences. Only financial services came close, with an 80 per cent score. Retail scored a woeful 50 per cent.

The same story was repeated across a range of other criteria, including 'moving across projects' and 'assimilating new ways of working'.

Civil servants also stood out for their zealous love of mobile phones, a full 100 per cent of the top tranche embracing the wonderful world of wireless. A staggering 66 per cent even use mobile internet devices, compared to 16 per cent of the top financial organisations.

Dr Karin Breu of Cranfield University, who conducted the research, said: "The coverage of the public sector is always negative and in this research we have found something positive to say about them.

"We think perhaps the public sector is a little more modest than profit-making commercial organisations," she added. "That's maybe why they get such a bad press."