Innovation ‘key to getting government operating at the best of its ability’, Little tells civil servants
Civil servants in the UK must foster an experimental and “risk-smart” culture, Cat Little, the chief operating officer for the UK civil service and permanent secretary to the Cabinet Office, said in her keynote speech at Innovation 2025.
“We might get things wrong, I can guarantee it, and that’s okay because it means we get to an innovation destination faster.”
Taking place in London today and tomorrow, the Innovation conference – co-hosted by Global Government Forum, UK Government, the UK Civil Service and the Cabinet Office – brings together government leaders from across the globe for discussions on transformation in government.
Kicking off the first session of a packed agenda, Little said that the civil service needed to trade off risk and opportunity in order to achieve the government’s missions and fix problems fast and effectively, and added that the civil service workforce offered the prospect of “harnessing the ideas of half a million people”.
The missions of the Labour government – which came to power last summer after 14 years of opposition – include making streets safer, making Britain a clean energy superpower, and building an NHS fit for the future. “These are things that people come into public service to get behind,” Little said.
She referenced a speech by prime minister Keir Starmer, who last week set out the role for what he called an “active government”, and how the civil service would rise to the challenge of the government’s missions.
The civil service rises to challenges continually, “but now it really, really matters because we can’t achieve those missions if we don’t have the civil service and the public sector operating at the very, very best of its ability,” she said. “Now I get excited by that, and you can sum that up in one word, and that’s innovation.”
Read more: Innovation 2025 – day 1 live
‘Fixing the problems in front of us’
Throughout the public service, problems are solved every day – whether it be ironing out teething problems with a public service, trying to prove something, or working on a knotty policy issue at the request of a minister, Little said. “I need everyone in the civil service to be thinking about: how can we fix the problems in front of us in the fastest and most effective way”.
She also called on fellow civil servants not just to say they are going to do things, not just to prepare things, but “to follow through”.
“I passionately believe that we can solve problems and we can follow through and not let the inefficiencies in the system slow us down, and we can achieve great things every single day, but there are trade-offs.”
The biggest of these, she said, was the trade off between risk and opportunity and that while the civil service shouldn’t be risk averse, it should be “risk smart” and “set the appetite at the level that maximises the opportunity in front of us”.
There would need to be culture change if the civil service was to move at pace, including stopping “getting in the way of ourselves” and allowing more room for experimentation.
Those who work in digital ‘test and learn’ and embrace agile every day, but “we don’t have six months [to] work out what a policy is and run pilots… we might get things wrong, I can guarantee it, and that’s okay because it means we get to an innovation destination faster,” she said.
In concluding her speech, Little said: “It really is an exciting time. I hope, despite all the challenges, despite all the really complex things we’re doing every day, that you’re excited too because it really, really matters. It’s a team effort… we’ve got to break down our departmental silos, our functional silos. This is one team in the public sector getting great things done.
“We’ve got opportunities right here and now, and permission from the prime minister to grasp what is ahead and to own the future of the civil service,” she said.
“Let’s hold our heads up high. I’m really proud of what we can achieve.”
Read more: UK PM says government needs to be ‘happier with innovation’ as he sets out reform plan
Capitalising on the technologies of today – and tomorrow
In her speech, Little touched on the setting up of a digital centre of government with Sarah Munby, permanent secretary of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, who was next to deliver a keynote to a room packed with delegates.
Munby said that for civil servants working in digital and data, this was “the most exciting moment we’ve had for really quite some time” with the prime minister and cabinet putting digital and data-led transformation at the centre of the state “to really capitalise not just of the technologies of yesterday, where there is still work to do, but on the technologies of tomorrow”.
Doing this, Munby said, was a “critical priority for everybody in this room”.
Tasked by Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, to undertake a fact-based review into where the government stands on digital and data, Munby said that while there were “absolutely incredible people” driving the programme across the service, the review highlighted some “really concerning problems”.
Processes are under-digitised – about half are digitised and half aren’t – data is fragmented and under-used, and public satisfaction in digital services has fallen by about 10 percentage points in a decade, she said.
So, despite an “incredible team, we are not delivering in the way we want to” and the root causes of that would need to be tackled to get to a “long-term picture of a transformed system and a transformed state”.
Read more: New UK digital services plan aims to ‘transform the relationship between citizen and state’
Expanding the digital and data profession
One of the most pressing problems, Munby said, was that there are “far too few” digital and data specialists in the civil service – about 5% of the whole, far below the private sector average of around 20%. The prime minister, she noted, hoped to increase the number of digital and data specialists to 10% by the end of the decade.
As part of achieving this, the government was expanding its TechTrack apprenticeship programme and had introduced new training programmes to upskill both digital and data specialists and civil servants outside the profession in AI, for example.
Change would be needed at the top too. Munby said the civil service had not historically done enough to put digital at the top table in a leadership context and that while two women – she and Little – were kicking off the conference, “we’re not diverse in some of the ways that really matter”. She referred to there not being enough people with experience of transformative change and technology in leadership positions.
“So I really want everybody in this room today… to think of yourself as a missionary and an evangelist for this work.
“To everyone here who’s currently in digital and data professions across government, to everyone who sees themselves as innovator, who are you bringing in and who are you bringing on?”
Fighting the fragmentation
Another problem that would need to be solved was fragmentation, with any aspect of the government’s innovation agenda “highly fragmented”, including procurement with multiple contracts for essentially the same thing costing taxpayers.
A fragmented system is difficult to maintain and understand and means “citizens have to navigate through all sorts of different services”, Munby said, noting that there are more than 40 different ways of proving your identity to government.
“The whole point of mission-based government is to work as one and solve problems for the system, not just as individual teams or siloes… There’s a really big opportunity for operating together.”
She asked session attendees whether they were “as good at being a follower as you are good about being a leader? It’s not always about striking out on an individual path. Sometimes it’s about fighting together and being prepared to do things one way, consistently, designed around the system”.
Read more: UK government issues AI playbook to repair ‘broken public services’
Simplifying the castle and not just ‘building new turrets’
On legacy technology and digital investment, Munby said the goal was to invest in a system that could evolve, iterate, improve and grow over time. “Think about where you’re simplifying the castle as well as building new turrets upon it… because we’re falling into this approach of setting something up with excitement and enthusiasm… but not setting it up to be long term, sustainable, improving over time.”
None of the challenges she had talked about would be easy to fix, she said, and no one person in the room could do it alone – it would require collective action across the whole service.
“These are thoughts I would like to see across the system so that we can have not just fantastic, important programmes but a far more impactful change that’s driven by the behaviour and actions of every single one of us right across not just this room, not just the civil service and the public sector, [but across] virtually the whole UK technology community, because that’s what’s going to drive best results for people.”
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 has been editor of globalgovernmentforum.com since 2019. She has 15 years’ experience as a journalist and editor and specialises in writing for civil and public servants worldwide, including covering sustainability policy and related issues. She has led the Global Government Women’s Network since it launched in 2023. Previously, she covered commercial property having been market reports and supplements editor at Property Week and deputy editor at Retail Destination. She graduated from Kingston University London with a first-class honours 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.
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