Whenever the blame game begins over botched attempts at the radical Whitehall reforms all parties agree are necessary, it is worth bearing in mind that the key departments with oversight for central government have been subject to swingeing cutbacks themselves.
Both the Cabinet Office and the Treasury have signed up to spending round budget cuts of up to 35%, and the Exchequer will have shed a quarter of its staff by 2014/15.
In WB Yeats' oft-quoted poem ‘The Gyres', ‘things fall apart/ the centre cannot hold/ mere anarchy is loosed upon the world'.
In seeking to maintain its grip on the centre, co-ordinating the work of government, enabling its strategic aims to be realised and providing a clear view of how government is operating, the Cabinet Office and the Treasury seek to manage 17 main departments of varying size and complexity.
A National Audit Office report last week analysed how the role of the centre has changed and adapted during the Coalition. The watchdog expressed the view significant tensions within the civil service over the appropriate role of the centre, and that of individual departments.
This situation is clearly unhelpful to the effective management of government projects and programmes, especially given the impetus the climate of austerity has given to greater central control of strategic areas.
Within the Cabinet Office, this has been most in evidence through the creation of the Efficiency and Reform Group, to oversee corporate savings, and the Major Projects Authority, to rein in big ticket items such as the Universal Credit programme.
The Treasury's biggest recent move in strategic management was through the establishment of a new role, the director general for public spending and finance – a post held by Julian Kelly.
Creating consensus on the role these central pillars should play, in fulfilling their unarguable responsibilities as the corporate centre of Whitehall, necessitates both departments articulating a clear operating model for the rest of the civil service.
In practical terms, presenting a united interface to departments could take the form of contractual arrangements for shared services, formal approvals or simply a set of shared expectations.
This itself would imply a greater sense of purpose whenever the Cabinet Office and the Treasury are in alignment with a clear mandate for action.
For this reason, the centre must hold.
