Emily Middleton, recently recruited to help guide the new government digital hub in DSIT, reveals a range of focus areas for the coming months, including skills, innovation, and commercial strategies
After gathering feedback from civil service tech professionals, the recently created ‘digital centre of government’ has revealed a set of priorities including efforts to “unlock the value of data… [and] develop a sustainable supply of talent”.
Shortly after the general election, the new Labour administration announced that three core Whitehall technology units – including the Government Digital Service, Central Digital and Data Office, and Incubator for Artificial Intelligence – would be moved from the Cabinet Office to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Several ministerial and official appointments have been made to support the new digital hub created by this revamp, including the recruitment of Emily Middleton from consultancy Public Digital as DSIT’s director general of digital centre design.
After several months in post, Middleton said that overhaul had “provided the perfect opportunity to deliver a new and refreshed digital vision for public services”, in a newly published blog post.
To help shape this vision, “a dedicated team” – encompassing representatives from DSIT, GDS, CDDO, and i.AI – was convened to review “what was working, what needed to change or could be better and what new ideas could help shape the vision for the future”.
Feedback was then gathered from more than 300 people across 11 workshops and, from this input, Middleton cites six priorities for the new DSIT-based digital hub to focus on in the coming months and years.
The first of these is to “improve services by transforming end to end service delivery from the perspective of people who use our services”.
Next on the list of priorities are ambitions to “lead and maintain a step change towards an innovative, resilient and interoperable digital government designed for everyone, regardless of their access needs”, as well as to “unlock the value of data to deliver better services to citizens, economic growth and public sector productivity”.
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The digital centre will also focus on work to “develop a sustainable supply of expert digital talent”, as well as efforts to “foster innovation across government – and the broader public sector – by removing blockers and challenges within the system”.
The final item on the list is an objective for DSIT to “take a leading role to build and maintain enhanced and innovative digital commercial strategies, solutions and capability”.
Alongside these priorities shaped by GDS, CDDO and i.AI staffers, the digital centre has also been “heading out to gather views and suggestions from across government”.
“It’s been really helpful to understand what support they most value from the centre, and what needs to change,” Middleton writes. “We’ve also had some good conversations around the trade-offs, for instance between a wide mandate to collaborate beyond central government to help drive systemic change, with being able to be more focused and move faster with fewer partner organisations.”
Further engagement work will take place over the next few weeks, with a focus on hearing from: local government digital and data professionals; civil servants involved in transformation programmes in a non-digital capacity; and representatives from think tanks, civil society and other non-government experts.
Middleton concluded her post by telling readers that “we’d love to hear from you”, and encouraging comments to be left on the blog.
