The second centre is to open in Leeds during June. Speaking in an interview with CSW, Cunnington said the course – taught by a mix of Government Digital Service (GDS) staff, DWP civil servants and external experts – delivers “quite an intensive foundation in how to do digital”.
DWP’s new director general of digital transformation, Kevin Cunnington, has already opened one academy in a Fulham jobcentre. It takes 15-strong groups of DWP staff for an eight-week training course. The course also includes one week in another civil service body, such as the GDS or DVLA, “to see how they do things”, he said.
Asked why he can’t use Civil Service Learning to train his workforce, Cunnington – who took the idea of a digital academy from his previous work at Vodafone – said: “There isn’t a CSL package that does what we need it to do.”
Asked the cost of the academy, a DWP spokeswoman pointed out that the department is using its own property, and that the main costs are “our staff time and travel/accommodation for those that need to travel to attend the academy”
See more: Interview, Kevin Cunnington