If Nemat (“Minouche”) Shafik thought that being hauled in front of the Government's notoriously tough Public Accounts Committee on her first day as Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Development was bad, she'd soon learn that there was worse to come.

“The second day we had a major lawsuit. The third there was a humanitarian crisis. So I learnt that serenity was an important quality in this job,” she says. Then there are her 1,700 overseas staff, many of whom operate in dangerous circumstances. “At least once a week I have to worry about security in some country or other.”

Ms Shafik is responsible for overseeing Britain's public contribution to the developing world. Her department controls a budget of £5.5billion, which is channelled into 65 countries, and her job is to prioritise which countries will receive funds and how much - and it all requires difficult judgments.

Recently, the department closed its South American offices, which had achieved their aims, to concentrate resources on Africa and South Asia.

“The nature of poverty is changing. It is increasingly focused in fragile states, conflict zones,” she said. While ministers take the credit and the criticism for decisions, the permanent secretary has a less visible, in some ways more responsible, role. Ms Shafik is accountable for every penny spent by the department and every employee is, ultimately, answerable to her, although she admits reluctantly: “I prefer not to think of it like that”.

There can be few people better qualified for the job. Growing up, home was “a moveable feast”, she said. The daughter of an Egyptian mother and a British-born father, she lived in Egypt and saw her mother's village suffer acute poverty. “It was a case of there but for the grace of God go I, but it meant that I grew up being fascinated by development,” she said.

She “could never figure out whether the world was driven by politics or economics”, so studied both, taking a PhD in economics and development at Oxford before joining the World Bank, where she worked until joining DfID four years ago.

She became Permanent Secretary in March. “You don't need to be an economist, but it is a useful discipline for understanding the world.”

The department runs a decentralised operation. Directors in various countries are entrusted with millions of pounds and Ms Shafik is not consulted about many of the decisions they make. However, she must ensure that the underlying systems for accountability are in place.

“Because our customers are abroad, their voices aren't heard as loudly [as those in the UK]. I have to be confident that the way we spend our money is sound.”

Once a month, Ms Shafik travels abroad to see programmes in action. The department is heavily focused on education, with £8.5 billion pledged for the next decade. In Ethiopia, a DfID programme with a focus on helping families to help themselves has put seven million children into school.

“In one village, I remember seeing mothers who had suffered huge periods of hunger and deprivation. But they had chipped in together and hired another teacher for the school so that more kids could get places,” she said.

Field trips re-energise an otherwise numbers-heavy, desk-bound job - every month Ms Shafik or her colleagues must appear before Parliament, or the National Audit Office, to account for their spending in “microscopic” detail.

“Visiting countries reminds me why I'm doing it. There are times when you have bureaucratic wrangles, budget problems, political issues and you can forget why you come to work.”

While she doesn't envy the media scrutiny attached to big domestic government departments, such as the Home Office, their UK focus means that they have more levers to enforce change, she said. “For us to reduce poverty, we obviously have important tools, but in the end it's the Government of Pakistan or Tanzania that is going to decide.”

After accountability, her role is to give policy advice to ministers and to shape the department to enable it to meet challenges, such as climate change, that will affect poor countries disproportionately.

DfID enjoys high levels of public support, but Ms Shafik is worried about the downturn. International support is a sign of “our humanity and morality”, she insisted. “Tough economic times tend to translate into people wanting to be more protectionist. I think that's a terrible mistake. While we are suffering here, those who are suffering most are people in the poorest parts of the world.”

The lowdown

What it takes

Candidates will need strong leadership skills, the ability to manage change, decisiveness and the physical and mental resilience to run a government department

Qualifications

Almost all senior civil servants have a degree and over half of Whitehall permanent secretaries have an additional higher qualification

Earnings

New entrants to the Civil Service earn about £19,000, senior executive officers earn £39,140, while the average salary for a permanent secretary is £167,178

Working life

Hours are typically long and permanent secretaries must respond to events as they arise; at DfID, the job involves frequent long-haul travel

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