From ideas to impact: how government can move the dial on innovation
The barriers to driving innovation in government are often discussed – but not so often what needs to be done to overcome them. During a roundtable supported by PA Consulting and held at Global Government Forum’s Innovation 2026 conference, participants talked about possible solutions – and why the word ‘risk’ might be part of the problem
There is no shortage of diagnosis when it comes to innovation in government. The harder question – and the one that animated this roundtable discussion, convened as part of Global Government Forum’s Innovation 2026 conference, and held in partnership with PA Consulting – is what it would take to move from insight to implementation.
The discussion drew together senior officials from across Whitehall and the wider public sector, alongside academic experts and private sector practitioners. What emerged was a frank, energetic and at times sharply self-critical conversation about the structural, cultural and financial barriers that continue to frustrate innovation in government – and the conditions that make it possible.
The familiar barriers – and why they persist
Several participants voiced their thoughts on the barriers to deploying innovative approaches.
One attendee highlighted five fundamental barriers that, taken together, tend to block innovation before it begins: a lack of shared understanding of what innovation actually means; an absence of the right to fail; no institutional licence to spend money on things that might not work; the inability to run old and new systems simultaneously; and the reflex tendency to demand that any new solution address every problem for every user from day one.
These barriers, several participants noted, are not new – yet they endure.
They discussed why.
As one attendee put it, “I have a fear that we’re asking people to buy the future with tools to purchase the past”. This attendee works with many government departments and said that issues also included a lack of record on what works and what doesn’t, while other speakers spoke about the need to convene and enable innovation.
“I absolutely want to see us shifting the dial of innovation – and for me, that is about getting out of the way of the way. We’ve spoken a lot about the barriers, not enough about what we’re doing about getting over them.”
Indeed, broad concerns were raised about knowledge management in government, and the sharing of such insights.
Because many innovative ways of working are essentially workarounds, it is difficult to learn what works, because there are not formal processes to share insights.
“Because we do it as a workaround, it’s quiet – other people don’t see it. You never get that opportunity to learn what’s worked, because it’s not spread,” one attendee said.
To help address this, participants highlighted that communities of practice have been formed around procurement innovation, and there are pockets of hard-won expertise. But the infrastructure to sustain and spread that knowledge is largely absent. One attendee noted that communities of practice tend to be organic, unfunded and vulnerable to being absorbed back into business-as-usual at the first sign of pressure.
“The culture of crediting people who are doing that extra work should be there.”
Risk and the innovation paradox
A recurring theme in the conversation was around whether the word “risk” may itself be doing damage – and that reframing the conversation around opportunity, exploration and learning might help.
The point was made that progress can be constrained by a mindset focused too heavily on potential problems and not enough on the opportunities offered by innovation to transform outcomes for people.
Achieving goals requires experimentation and learning, and isn’t helped by a “false choice” between risk or innovation: the challenge, it was argued, is to balance risk while creating the space for necessary innovation.
As participants discussed, this starts with alignment on goals that resonate across the UK and beyond, continues with active inclusion of all parties required to scale, and is sustained by a “relentlessly iterative” approach that recognises learning as a necessary precondition for success.
The ‘From ideas to impact: how government can move the dial on innovation’ roundtable, supported by knowledge partner PA Consulting, was held at Global Government Forum’s Innovation 2026 conference on 25 March.
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