Uncompetitive digital, data and tech salaries are hindering recruitment and retention in the civil service – and the government’s ability to deliver on its missions, according to analysis published today.
A new report from the UKDayOne initiative which focuses on developing science and technology policy ideas, calls on the Labour government to boost pay and other incentives to attract and retain skilled professionals in critical digital, data and technology roles in the civil service.
“Delivering on the new Labour government’s missions requires talent at the heart of government.,” the report says. “However, uncompetitive salaries for digital, data and technology roles hampers the government’s ability to recruit and retain talent.”
The report, authored by Rusi research fellow Joseph Jarnecki and research analyst Natasha Buckley, notes that Labour’s plan to adopt digital and data driven solutions to improve public service delivery relies on having technically skilled people inside the government.
It warns that the gap between salaries in the civil service and private sector is leading to delays in recruitment and vacancies – such as the close-to-three years it took to appoint a chief digital and information officer.
The report comes just one day after the publication of a Department for Science, Innovation and Technology-commissioned review of digital government which warned that limited options to reward “great performance” may be driving top performers to leave the public sector. The DSIT report also quotes a senior central government leader as saying, “We constantly lose highly talented people to the private sector as we can’t compete with salary and flexible working, which digital professionals expect in the modern world.”
Jarneki and Buckley include rough estimates of the gaps between civil service and private sector salaries for the eight role areas listed under the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework. The includes an average pay gap £27,000 for chief digital and data roles and £17,000 for technical architects roles. DSIT’s report found an even bigger gap for tech architect roles – £30,000 per year.
A year ago, the then-civil service chief operating officer Alex Chisholm warned that civil service pay is a "chronic problem" and said pay was the most common reason for“failed” recruitment, particularly for “competitive” digital, data and technology jobs.
As an illustration of the recruitment and retention challenges the government faces, the UKDayOne report points out the slow progress towards the target set by Rishi Sunak’s government in September 2023 for 6% of civil service roles to be in the digital, data and technology (DDaT) profession by 2025. The statistics for 2024 show DDaT roles currently represent just 4.8% of the civil service workforce – up just 0.1 percentage points on 2023.
To address these issues, the report argues the Government Digital and Data (GDaD) Capability Framework – previously known as the DDaT Framework – should be made mandatory for all departments, rather than the current situation where department self select whether to participate.
The framework, introduced by the previous government to help the civil service compete on salary, allows participating departments to identify critical roles, such as data scientists and software developers, and make proficiency-based pay uplifts to help with retention and recruitment for those roles.
The report also says the GDaD framework’s salary incentives should not come out of departmental budgets, and instead by drawn from a central pool, managed by HMT, DSIT’s Government Digital Service and the Cabinet Office. This, it says, would alleviate budget concerns that have deterred departments from adopting the framework, such as trade offs between salary costs and delivering essential functions.
Another suggestion is to introduce a cap on the number of roles each department can recruit using the framework to help to avoid there being “a misaligned incentive for departments to excessively hire GDaD professionals or misclassify roles”, the report says. This would be set on a department-by-department basis and renegotiated periodically.
To attract more candidates, UKDayOne also suggests roles that come under the framework should be assigned a minimum skill level, allowing for actual expected salaries including the skills-based add-ons to be displayed to potential recruits
The authors also recommend expanding the framework to include cyber and data security roles, and annual adjustments to the salary incentives reflecting either inflation or an indexed increase or decrease in comparable private sector salaries.
The report also calls for reform to another incentive scheme – pivotal role allowance (PRA). Introduced in 2013, PRA allows departments to offer bonuses to retain senior officials working in highly specialised roles or delivering major projects who are a “flight risk”. UKDayOne suggests the government should extend the number of technology positions that can receive PRA to include certain technology positions at grades 6 and 7.
There is also an opportunity for the government to learn from its success in attracting experts to the AI Safety Institute, the report says.
By classifying spend on salaries as R&D under capital expenditure, the AISI has been able to offer much higher salaries than the average in the civil service – the top salary for a grade 7 digital role in most departments is £78,000, while in AISI it is around double that figure.
“Clearly, where there is a will to pay technical civil servants more, a way can be found,” the authors say.
“The previous Conservative government’s focus on AI unlocked significant spending. A similar approach from the new Labour government, in a similarly targeted selection of technical roles, could deliver real impact in other areas.”
Other recommendations in the report include reinvesting cost savings from reduced consultancy spending to improve pay for targeted technical roles, and allowing digital, data and technology professionals to sacrifice employer pension contributions for higher salaries.
To read the full report click here