‘Incredibly bold’ UK missions driving a more agile civil service, say speakers at Innovation 2025
The UK government’s missions-based approach is challenging the civil service’s traditionally vertical structure, fostering collaboration across disciplines, and offers an opportunity to regain public trust.
This was the message from the first panel session on day 2 of the Innovation 2025 conference in London. Co-hosted by Global Government Forum, UK Government, the UK Civil Service and the Cabinet Office, the event brings together government leaders from across the globe for discussions on transformation in government.
In the first panel session of the second day – called ‘Making missions happen: rewiring government to deliver’ – senior government figures explored how the UK government is driving its delivery of five key missions.
These missions – kickstarting economic growth, building an NHS fit for the future, ensuring safe streets, breaking down barriers to opportunity, and making Britain a clean energy superpower – have been set to drive the transformation of the country.
Panellists were positive about the missions galvanising the civil service into different ways of working that would, hopefully, lead to better outcomes.
One of these was a greater focus on multi-disciplinary teams, said Alexis Castillo-Soto, deputy director for digital missions and transformation at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
“I’m sure most of us have been in that situation where a policy is created and then handed over for delivery. And I think one of the key aspects about multi-disciplinary teams is having technology, digital and user research actually happening at policy creation, not after.”
Thalia Baldwin, director for strategy and innovation at the Ministry of Justice, said her department is “very happy” with the missions ethos because the focus on collaboration, leadership, preventative approaches and long-term outcomes link with how the MoJ is thinking about the way it needs to deliver public services.
But that isn’t to say there wouldn’t be challenges in achieving the missions.
To give a bit of context, Gillian Dorner, deputy director of the OECD’s Public Governance Directorate said – given her previous 17 years’ experience in the civil service and the reality of cross-government coordination – “what the UK is doing with its missions is actually incredibly brave and incredibly bold”.
The scale of what the UK is doing is “far bigger” than the majority of missions approaches of both OECD member and non-member states, she said.
Read more: Innovation 2025 – day 2 live – Global Government Forum
Building citizens’ trust in government
Dorner also said that UK citizens’ low level of trust in government is “what is causing a number of the problems that we see in terms of being able to deliver on and see success in our policy agendas”.
She noted that the UK ranks lower on all measures relating to complex decision-making than its OECD peers. “This is something that we’ve really been focusing on at the OECD: how on earth do you get that trust back to be able to deliver on some of these really big, complex policy challenges?”
Missions approaches could be the answer to this. One, because at a time of fiscal constraint, they allow government to focus on and prioritise resources. Two, because they enable government to communicate more clearly with citizens. And three, because they offer an “opportunity to reform the civil service and the culture within the service that does need to change”.
Enabling the cross-pollination of ideas
Panellists agreed that better enabling the cross-pollination of ideas was one area that needed work.
Answering a question from an audience member about how you ensure everybody can feed into innovation, Nick Mathew, partner at Q5, said that an organisation needs to be “quite flat” if it is to do things at pace and that there should be a mechanism in place for people to share ideas and information.
A network of change champions and innovation champions can be useful, he said, as well as regular forums where people feel able to share what they’re encountering and what they think could be done better.
Baldwin added: “I’d encourage you not to be shy about speaking if you have any ideas about how to improve, because people should be listening to you.”
Clunky processes and better prioritisation
The conversation turned to the threat of clunky processes holding back progress but Castillo-Soto said that the missions would support the finding and updating of processes that are proving a barrier and help to facilitate a more agile and flexible future for the civil service.
The missions would also enable better prioritisation, said Baldwin. “Prioritisation is a key component of missions – we shouldn’t be asking everybody to do everything all the time” particularly when resources are stretched and capacity for frontline service delivery constrained. “I would hope that missions would enable some clear thinking about what actually are the priorities.”
Q5’s Mathew had the last word: “The very nature of the word mission brings pace, it brings focus, it brings energy, it brings drive.”
And his advice to civil servants: “You need to embrace the achievements you make and learn the lessons when you don’t achieve them as quickly as you want – and don’t forget to take a break and a rest. This [missions-based delivery] is going to be the way of working for the future, because the scale of the challenge in the world right now is huge. So enjoy the ride.”
Ukraine’s digitalisation journey to date
Valeriya Ionan, deputy minister for Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, had opened day 2 of Innovation 2025 earlier in the morning with her keynote address.
The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine is, at five years’ old, the country’s newest ministry and aims to build the most convenient digital state in the world, she said.
In the UN’s latest E-Government Index, Ukraine ranks first in the world for e-participation and fifth in the world for digital services, a huge climb from 102nd place in 2018.
One of the key actions to achieving this meteoric rise was an organisational restructure in 2020 that saw the creation of a new role, that of chief digital transformation officer at deputy minister level, who – along with the deputy prime minister for digitalisation – coordinates digital transformation activities at national and regional level.
Ionan ran through an impressive suite of products that have been launched or improved since, including the state’s “super app” Diia, through which 22 million users have access to 40 different services.
“Ukrainians have been able to pay fines or to pay taxes through Diia even before the full scale Russian invasion, and later, when the invasion started, we had to shift our strategy and we have created services that we had never thought about,” she said.
She gave some examples: When Russian missiles began to hit residential areas for the first time, people went to shelters where they couldn’t access news – so, the government embedded TV and radio into Diia. The government also enabled people who had to relocate from one region to another to receive the ‘special status’ of internally-displaced person so they could receive social financial assistance through Diia. And they could also apply through Diia for compensation for damaged or destroyed property.
Ionan also told delegates about Ukraine’s Online Marriage service, launched last year, which allows couples to sign marriage documents digitally and was TIME’s best invention of the year.
As well as providing convenient services for citizens, digitalisation has a clear economic impact too, she said, noting that US$1.5bn had been saved through anti-corruption and that US$165m had been saved in public procurement.
The event is supported by knowledge partners. See a full list of knowledge partners here, and thanks to our diamond partners Capgemini, Q5, Visa, and CGI, and to gold partners Amazon Business, AWS, Defence and Security Accelerator, Digital Modus, Iron Mountain, Saleforce, Signify, Ten10, Thoughtworks, PA, Qualtrics, Workday, Sullivan & Stanley, Nortal, RedRock, Softwire, Deloitte, IBM, and MetadataWorks.
About Mia Hunt
Mia is a journalist and editor with a background in covering commercial property, having been market reports and supplements editor at trade title Property Week and deputy editor of Shopping Centre magazine, now known as Retail Destination. She has also undertaken freelance work for several publications including the preview magazine of international trade show, MAPIC, and TES Global (formerly the Times Educational Supplement) and has produced a white paper on energy efficiency in business for E.ON. Between 2014 and 2016, she was a member of the Revo Customer Experience Committee and an ACE Awards judge. Mia graduated from Kingston University with a first-class degree in journalism and was part of the team that produced The River newspaper, which won Publication of the Year at the Guardian Student Media Awards in 2010.
Related Posts
