Oliver Dowden may not have been the Minister for Implementation – with a brief including the Government Digital Service – for long, but the scale of his ambition is already clear.
At the recent Sprint 18 event hosted by GDS, the Minister spoke of government’s desire to “expand the boundaries of digital” into new realms where one might not think digitisation was possible. Indeed, Dowden pledged to push back the limits so far as to “get to the end goal of a fully digitised government”.
To reach that target will require a lot of innovation – from Dowden and his colleagues in Westminster, from the government’s partners in the private and third sectors and, most of all, from GDS and the rest of the digital community in the civil service.
Kevin Cunnington, the director general of GDS, will continue the momentum by leading a discussion about how to drive collaborative innovation in government when he jointly chairs an exclusive roundtable being held by Civil Service World and Cognizant in Westminster on June 14. Senior digital leaders are invited to come along and hear from a range of their peers about how departments can work with each other and the wider digital and technology world to spread innovation throughout government.
The GovTech Catalyst is one innovative initiative that aims to deliver improved outcomes by bringing together the centre of government, local authorities and the wider public sector, and private-sector innovators. The GDS-led programme has a £20m fund to invest in technology solutions put forward by businesses to key challenges identified by public-sector bodies.
The Catalyst recently confirmed the five challenges chosen for its first round of competitions.
These included issues as diverse as assisting the Home Office in identifying and removing imagery shared online by Daesh, and helping Monmouthshire Council make better use of authority-owned vehicles to tackle loneliness and isolation in rural parts of the county.
The five challenges will be launched one-by-one, with companies then invited to propose technology-based solutions. Successful entries could receive in excess of £500,000 in research and development grants.
The GovTech Catalyst is just one of an array of technology-focused research and investment programmes the government has launched recently.
A month ago, the AI Sector Deal was jointly published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The document outlined plans to invest almost £1bn in the artificial-intelligence sector, with much of the money coming direct from the government. Businesses will also contribute, as will research and academic institutions.
A Fintech Sector Strategy was also published this year, laying out plans to set up a civil service taskforce to lead the government’s use of crypto assets, and committing to the creation of a set of industry standards designed to allow fintech firms to more easily work with traditional banks.
Such examples speak to the government’s stated commitment to not only growing its own digital capability, but ensuring that the UK’s digital economy progresses alongside it. But, while it is increasingly open to contributions from innovative technology companies, there is also plenty of innovation coming from within government. The flagship GOV.UK platform is entering into a period of exponential evolution. Key to this is a step change in service design, driven by a focus on end-to-end user journeys and life events – rather than discrete services.
About five services have so far been redesigned in this way and over the coming months GDS intends to help departments present an ever-more united front, with another 400 services having been identified as suitable for being redesigned as an end-to-end journey.
Of course, driving a pervasive culture of innovation across an organisation as diverse and intricate as the civil service is not without its difficulties.
One key challenge that GDS is aiming to tackle head on is the need for new skills, with programmes aimed at both recruiting new tech talent, and skilling up existing civil servants. In the former case, two new apprenticeships, for software engineers and business analysts, have recently been created.
Alongside which is the launch of the 10-week Emerging Technology Development Programme, in which the GDS Academy will offer civil servants training on AI and machine-learning technologies.
The checks and balances inherent in government procurement processes are also a potential barrier to embracing new technologies.
But, again, steps have already been actively taken to enable innovation. The Crown Commercial Service has worked to reduce its typical supplier contracts to a length of about 20 pages – down from several hundred. CCS is also increasingly making use of dynamic purchasing systems, which are much more flexible and iterative than traditional static frameworks.
The civil service’s potential cultural barriers to innovation – whether real or perceived – are harder to quantify and, consequently, harder to address. These challenges will not be overcome with overarching strategies and schemes, but by an infinite number of tiny changes brought about by the thoughts, deeds, and words of individuals.
There is a long way to go before we reach the destination of a truly digital government, but the journey starts with a conversation. If you want your contribution to be heard, or to listen to and learn from the innovation ideas of others, then we hope to see you on 14 June.
To register your interest in attending the Civil Service World roundtable on collaborative innovation in government – which will be co-chaired by GDS director general Kevin Cunnington – please contact Sophie Feary by emailing roundtables@dodsgroup.com or calling 0207 593 5667.