MPs quizzed Gove and his top civil servant over errors in a list of cancelled school rebuilding projects put out after Gove scrapped the £55bn Building Schools for the Future programme.
One night the servant, from an error in judgment teased her with idle expostulations, but she complained of it grievously, and it was corrected".
Civil servants and ministers made "major errors" in the award of the West Coast Main Line franchise which led to the collapse of the deal, a committee of MPs has found.
However, when she asked them to double-check, civil servants reported they had identified one error, but said they were confident it would not have changed the outcome.
Mr Brown distinguishes errors of policy from errors made by individual civil servants; in the latter case, he says, ministers cannot be considered responsible.
An inquiry by Sam Laidlaw commissioned by the transport secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, in the wake of the cancellation found there were serious errors by overstretched civil servants in calculating and assessing financial guarantees from bidders.
And administrative errors, made by junior civil servants, will be reported as catastrophes that justify ministerial resignations.
Public accountability demands us, public servants, to act with almost no margin of error and using the most open and transparent means available to achieve our goals.
And they both tend to look down on other authorities, such as state and local police and the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), as dull public servants.Against this backdrop, the disastrous catalogue of errors leading up to September 11th is less surprising.
Public servants in Baghdad and Basra should not be blamed for fundamental errors in Washington and London.
