Digital government minister: ‘I started off with frustration, but I now see the great examples of work that is happening’


Feryal Clark, who took on the AI and digital public services brief after the election, shares with PublicTechnology her initial thoughts on the role and how this view has evolved

The minister for artificial intelligence and digital government has revealed that, despite having initially been frustrated by examples of slow or manual services, she has since been “super, super impressed” by the skills of the civil servants under her watch and the work they are delivering.

Enfield North MP Feryal Clark was given the digital brief a few days after the general election last summer. Her appointment marked a divergence from her deployment during Labour’s time in opposition, during which she held shadow ministerial posts in the Department of Health and Social Care and, up until the election, in the Home Office.

But earlier in her career – before being elected to Hackney Council in 2006 – Clark gained a master’s degree in the computer science field of bioinformatics, and then worked in the NHS for six years.

At the launch event this week for the new digital centre of government in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, PublicTechnology asked the minister for her initial post-election impressions of her ministerial posting, and how her background and perspective has shaped her work since then.


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“To be honest with you, although I started off studying tech and science, I left that and [went] into politics – and have now spent a long time in politics,” she said. “My impression initially was… I had lots of examples when I came to the department of how unacceptable it was at the moment: if you want to change your name on the Land Registry, you have to download the form…. to change my name on a government document, I have to get a lawyer to verify. So, I had so many examples of all these things [where I thought]: ‘How is it that government is just so slow and backwards?’.”

But, just six months on – and with her boss, secretary of state, Peter Kyle, having asked digital officials for rapid progress on new services including the GOV.UK App and Wallet, and the planned digital driving licence – Clark’s view has shifted significantly.

“So, I started off with a level of frustration – but I am now beginning to see all the other great examples of work that is happening… Peter was talking about some of the timescales and how quickly he wanted some of this work done… I did think he was a little bit ambitious – but it has been done,” she said. “He’d been in the in the role in opposition longer than I had, so he knew exactly what he wanted – and he was spot on. I must say, I am super, super impressed by the capabilities we have within the department: we have fantastic people. And I just always thought: how is it you’ve got these amazing people, and amazing skills… and this is where we are?  So that was my first impression.”

The digital government minister claimed that she had also been pleasantly surprised by the make-up of the Whitehall tech landscape.

“The other thing was, I’d spent about 10 years in transport in local government, which was dominated by men, and I went into tech, [thinking that] it is full of ‘tech bros’,” she said. “But every meeting I went to, I was surrounded by amazing women who were doing tech. So that was the other thing I thought was impressive.”

In a recent interview with PublicTechnology, Clark discussed the new Labour government’s ambition to “completely transform digital government” – and her belief that she and her ministerial colleagues were “very, very lucky to have an amazing set of civil servants who are supporting us to put together our plans for the for the future”.

Sam Trendall

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