The government plans to recruit start-up workers from the tech industry to embed a more innovative culture and help it run more efficiently.
Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden is set to announce a £100 million innovation fund for the scheme, which he hopes will engender a “test and learn” culture across government. He will also look at how to overhaul recruitment across the civil service.
The announcement comes after prime minister Keir Starmer last week said that “too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”, as productivity in the civil service was revealed to be 2.6% lower than it was this time last year.
Teams will be set up around the country, given a challenge and allowed to experiment with new ways to try and solve it – an approach often taken by digital start-ups.
Civil service
The test and learn programme is part of a wider effort to reform the “mind-bogglingly bureaucratic and off-putting “ application process for civil service jobs, McFadden will say today as the scheme launches in London.
As part of the scheme, tech experts will be encouraged to apply for six- to 12-month “tours of duty” to tackle “big challenges” such as criminal justice or healthcare.
The test-and-learn teams will be made up of a mix of people with data and digital skills, policy officials and frontline workers. “Instead of writing more complicated policy papers and long strategy documents, the teams will focus on projects set by government,” he will say.
The first two projects will begin across Manchester, Sheffield, Essex and Liverpool from January. These will look at how family hubs can increase the number of disadvantaged families they reach and how to reduce the cost of temporary accommodation.
McFadden will say: “Test it. Fix the problems. Change the design. Test it again. Tweak it again. And so on, and so on, for as long as you provide the service. Suddenly, the most important question isn’t, ‘How do we get this right the first time?’. It’s ‘How do we make this better by next Friday?’
“That’s the test and learn mindset, and I’m keen to see where we can deploy it in government. Where we can make the state a little bit more like a start-up.”
After the first wave, these test and learn schemes will be expanded to other parts of the country and other projects.
As part of the drive for innovation, the government also wants to attract more front-line public sector workers to take up secondments in central government.
“Prison governors, social work heads, directors of children’s services – they are the ones on the ground who can see how things are working, where the obstacles are, and where a policy won’t survive contact with reality,” he will say.
“They have stared the issues and the people that depend on us in the eye, seen how the system has been broken – they have taken the frustrations home with them each week. Now we want them to be part of the solution.”
The whole scheme will also consider how to “fundamentally overhaul how recruitment is carried out across the civil service”.
“Right now, if you’re an outsider, the process can be mind-bogglingly bureaucratic and off-putting. Applications can take days to fill in, and if you don’t understand the civil service process, good external candidates can find it near impossible to jump through the hoops,” McFadden will say.
“We need to go further and faster. And so I will be asking departments across government to roll out simpler processes in their recruitment, using what we know works.”
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