Becoming the engine room of delivery

The problem:

The UK Civil Service needs reform, but transformation programmes routinely over sell and under deliver. To most people, buzzwords like innovation, AI and agile are just another way of saying redundancy, which leads people to close down, or become territorial.

The solution:

Minor but meaningful adjustments to operations can make things work better for everyone.

Why it matters:

Public services are struggling to keep up with demand, finances are depleted and borrowing money still costs too much. The government promised change, but they need options that help them deliver in a tight fiscal environment.

Introduction

What will it take for the UK Civil Service to once again become 'the engine room of delivery'? A question many bureaucrats have been asking themselves since Kier Starmer's unveiling of plans for transforming the state back in March.

Behind the scenes, a lot of progress has already been made this parliament, but that doesn't mean more can't be done.

Powering an engine needs technical precision, ongoing maintenance, and a whole lot of hard work. It's practical, not strategic in nature.

The answers to civil service reform will not be found in radical innovation or mass redundancy, but in minor but meaningful adjustments in how we operate.

On their own, minor adjustments are not ground-breaking, but they can be a powerful force once united and rolled out at scale.

Minor but meaningful adjustments for the civil service

1. A workforce with digital skills and confidence

Meaningful adjustments: Taking contractual obligations for knowledge sharing seriously, secondments, reverse mentoring and pair working schemes, investing in multi-channel learning and development, building in-house digital academies

The basic digital skills of the Civil Service need levelling up. It's not ok for people to avoid using business critical software because they don't like it or are afraid of it. Often people's resistance to learning new things comes from negative past experiences. People need to know that this time it's different, and they will be supported.

As low code and no code tools become increasingly ubiquitous, we need operational teams to be able to work with these directly, rather than commissioning expensive consultants who lack domain knowledge. This takes upfront investment in people’s development, but will ultimately save money and lead to better services.

2. Spaces designed for modern working

Meaningful adjustments: Modern furniture (and uniform), do not disturb areas, co-located working, well-being initiatives, well promoted routes for staff to feedback to facilities

Many workplaces are no longer fit for new ways of working. Requirements differ across fields and professions, and spaces need to be designed for the work that takes place within them. We are not always providing for basic needs. For example, when you're at work you should have a safe place to leave stuff overnight, and you should be able to make a cup of tea rather than having to buy it from the canteen.

It's also important that accessibility and inclusion are reflected in the physical environment to make everyone feel safe and welcome. Interior design and uniforms impact how people feel, and well-designed spaces improve behaviours and performance.

3. Empowered to simplify

Meaningful adjustments: Plain English, Service Design, removing duplication, application of replicable patterns, effective triage of change projects, continuous improvement

Installing the latest technology comes with large upfront, as well as ongoing maintenance costs. Often, we over rely on expensive technology, when the biggest gains can come from changing government policy and business process. We need to get better at triaging change initiatives and take a more measured and iterative approach to service improvement.

Simplification can be challenging because it takes people out of their comfort zone and requires them to make a change to something new. Even so, it is worth doing because it leads to efficiencies and improvements. Simpler policies and services take less time to deliver and maintain, they need less resources, they are easier to monitor and change.

4. Safe and secure interoperability across organisations

Meaningful adjustments: Improved awareness and accountability for safe data sharing practice, increased interoperability, transparent working practices

Policies and services are increasingly delivered in partnership across departments, as well as with external partners. Monolithic data platforms are costly to manage and hard to update, but we still need safe and secure ways to communicate and share live data.

The constant need to upload and download documents to share them is an inefficient use of time, it increases error rates and data breaches, and it is not environmentally friendly. Now we need to implement systems that can more easily talk to each other in a networked way, where permissions can be controlled but collaboration is not constricted.

5. More high-quality business support

Meaningful adjustments: Efficient triage using chat bots, on premises support, high quality templates and tools, better pay and more respect for business support, highly paid managers spending less time on admin

A sustained and relentless drive for efficiency has forced business support teams to strip back their services to a minimum and rely on delivery teams to self-serve as much as possible. While this reduces the cost of the support teams, we are not thinking holistically about the overall price to the business of this approach.

Business support deserves greater reward and recognition, and to be viewed on a par with other business functions. Some self-serve is good, but people should also be able to lean on high quality IT, HR, finance and PMO provision. Quality business services have a positive knock-on effect for policy development and front-line delivery.

6. Leaders who show they know what's going on

Meaningful adjustments: Reduce remits of middle managers, streamline governance procedures, promote people with operational experience

Leaders are powerful, they can enable delivery, and they can shut it down. Great leaders don't get stuck in the weeds, or keep their head perpetually in the clouds. Their skill is to zoom in and out with apparent effortlessness.

Delivery stalls when leaders are exhausted, fed up, and holding too much responsibility. Their teams get frustrated when they don't have time to listen and are unaware of how to resolve escalated issues. Leaders need to have manageable remits and some domain knowledge to succeed. Stronger leadership empowers teams and enables faster progress.

Meaningful adjustments to how the Civil Service operates are not highly complex, this does not mean they are easy to implement, but that they are all possible to achieve.