Central government's digital agenda is being undermined by "a lack of effective leadership right from the very top of the civil service", according to the former head of digital recruitment at the Department for Business.
The Government Digital Service was set up in the last parliament in a bid to radically improve the government's handling of IT contracts, boost the digital skills of civil servants and overhaul the user experience for the state's online services.
But its centralising apporach has seen it clash with some departmental teams, and the exit of GDS boss Stephen Foreshew-Cain over the summer – soon followed by a series of high-profile departures from the unit – has prompted fierce debate about the future of government digital.
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Labour raised fears of a "Whitehall coup", while former Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude – who was instrumental in setting up GDS – told CSW that any moves to dismantle the team would be a "black day" for government digital.
Other commentators have been more sanguine about the changes, however, saying they will help foster more collaborative relationships between the centre of government and individual departments.
Ann Kempster, who oversaw the implementation of GDS's Digital Marketplace – which allows public sector organisations to source staff and technology for digital projects – has now become the latest senior figure to warn that the GDS mandate is under threat.
Kempster left her latest central government role – as head of digital talent at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy – last week, and took to her personal blog to fire a parting shot at the civil service's recent approach to digital.
"I thought that we’d won the fight between the old and the new after the creation of GDS," she wrote. "For a while we did. But then the civil service did what the civil service does and closed ranks."
The former BEIS official said Whitehall had been struck by an "unprecedented period of paralysis" over the past 18 months, and claimed she had witnessed the "slow dismantling of GDS and all it's strived to change".
"I’m seeing a lack of appetite in departments for real, meaningful transformation," she wrote. "I’m seeing a lack of effective leadership right from the very top of the civil service.
"There is a lack of vision, lack of ambition and lack of any sort of a plan anywhere. There is a lack of interest."
Kempster claimed that Whitehall continued to be "ruled by a cadre of senior civil servants and politicians who don’t understand technology", accusing top officials of being "more concerned with building empires than delivering good services to the people of the United Kingdom".
"Many civil servants lack even basic skills," she added.
"Things as fundamental as knowing how to type – let alone the more advanced things they need to know to work in the 21st century. This makes them resentful of 'digital' and resistant to the change that it means."
GDS's new director general, Kevin Cunnington, has denied that the team's mission is under threat, and has said GDS continues to have "a clear mandate to lead digital, technology and data" from the centre of government.
Cunnington, who was drafted in from the Department for Work and Pensions to replace Foreshew-Cain, has pointed to the £450m of investment secured by GDS at the last Spending Review, and has also detailed plans to create an official profession for digital, data and technology staff. The DWP's digital academy is also set for a national expansion in a bid to improve the training offered to civil servants.
However, Cunnington has also hinted that GDS's spending controls – introduced by Maude in 2010 – are in line for a rethink, with the GDS director general saying they are now "just too low for most of the digital projects that government wants to carry out".
In her parting blog, Kempster said she believed there was still no "widespread plan to upskill" civil servants and ready them for the digital era, as she hit out at the pay, reward and performance management systems used by the organisation.
"Creative thinking, innovation and new ways of doing things are not recognised or rewarded," she argued.
"And while the civil service is in this period of retrenchment I can’t do any more of the exhausting fights to gain even an inch of ground."