The Office of the Permanent Secretary (OPS) is a civil service department of the Scottish Government. It was, in the past, headed by the Permanent Secretary Sir John Elvidge, who replaced Sir Muir Russell in July 2003.
The Office was made up of:
- Office of the First Minister
- Ministerial Support Group: Cabinet and Management Group Secretariat, External Support Division, Strategy and Delivery unit, Private Offices
- Analytical Services Group: The Office of the Chief Researcher, The Office of the Chief Economic Adviser, The Office of the Chief Statistician
- Office of the Chief Scientific Adviser for Scotland
- Performance and Innovation Unit
- Change and Corporate Services : Human Resources Division, Communication and Information Systems Division, Facilities and Estates Services, Changing to Deliver Division
Since May 2007, the Departments that made up the Scottish Executive have been abolished. Functions are now delivered by Directorates. The Directorates that broadly mirror the former Office of the Permanent Secretary are:
- Communications
- Cabinet Directorate
- Ministerial Private Offices
- Communications Directorate
- Chief Economic Adviser
Famous quotes containing the words office, permanent and/or secretary:
“So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can’t even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.”
—Russell Baker (b. 1925)
“It was hard for an American to understand the contented acceptance by English men and women of permanent places in the lowest social rank.”
—Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (1877–1965)
“The truth is, the whole administration under Roosevelt was demoralized by the system of dealing directly with subordinates. It was obviated in the State Department and the War Department under [Secretary of State Elihu] Root and me [Taft was the Secretary of War], because we simply ignored the interference and went on as we chose.... The subordinates gained nothing by his assumption of authority, but it was not so in the other departments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)