Dame Sue Owen, whose tenure included the creation of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, believes that the civil service needs to continue growing digital and scientific skills

Government has made patchy progress in building out the technical and scientific skills of the civil service, according to the former leader of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Dame Sue Owen (pictured above), who was permanent secretary of DCMS from 2013 to 2019 – a period when the department was expanded to include digital responsibilities – told PublicTechology sister publication Civil Service World that, during her tenure, one “positive change [was] the growth of the professions”.

In addition to the broad policy and operational delivery groupings, government now has 18 functional professions each allied to one of the civil service’s 13 cross-cutting functions. This includes the digital and data profession and function, which now houses close to 30,000 officials across departments. Whitehall’s careers framework also encompasses 11 ‘specialist professions’, including knowledge and information management, and science and engineering.

During three decades in government, Owen told CSW that she saw an increase in specialised skills in technology and other professional disciplines.

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“We always had, happily, properly trained lawyers. Economists were starting to come in when I joined, and it’s been really good to see the functions grow more recently,” she said. “To have proper training, and only hiring qualified people to do finance, procurement, commercial, project management and so on – all of that has saved the taxpayer a lot of money.”

But, even with such progress, the ex-DCMS chief said that there is still need for additional expertise in digital, data, and other STEM areas.

Owen added: “I think we are only just about getting to where we need to be with digital skills, and the area where we’re not making any progress at all – bizarrely something on which I agree with Dominic Cummings – is that the civil service needs more scientists. I think a lot of scientists fail at those first, online recruitment tests – they get filtered out far too soon so we need to revamp that system. And even when they get in, departments don’t know how to use them properly.”

Civil Service World’s full interview with Dame Sue Owen can be read here