Newspaper Article

Whitehall spin machine expanded

Alan Travis and Avi Silverman

2002

Overview

The system's creators now want to extend it to enable Downing Street to tighten its grip over Whitehall by ensuring that civil servants \"get a broader feel of wider departmental and government policies, rather than simply their own area or department\". The development of this powerful briefing system has been taken forward by Frank Dobson's former spin doctor, Joe McCrae, with the backing of the Cabinet Office. Some 54,000 civil servants have access to the database, which was based on the Labour party's Excalibur rapid rebuttal system. It is designed primarily to \"help manage and explain new and existing gov ernment policies\" but the system has so far mainly been used by civil servants to email each other. Five years ago it was almost impossible to send a secure email within Whitehall but there were 12.2m messages this February alone. The Cabinet Office paper says it wants to expand the number of civil servants who have desktop access to the network to 300,000. Those involved include the Downing Street strategic communications unit, departmental briefing units, press officers and departmental parliamentary clerks.

• Publisher: Guardian News & Media Limited
• Subject: Expansion / Government / Internal controls / Public relations