The tech consultancy is part of a consortium, also featuring Blavitnik School of Government and New Local, appointed to help government with a ‘team of experienced digital and data practitioners’
The government has kick-started the £100m Public Sector Reform programme and appointed a consortium led by consultancy Public Digital to fulfil a £5m contract to support the rollout of the scheme.
As part of the programme, the Cabinet Office this week announced the deployment of 10 “innovation squads” of central government officials. These teams will be sent to areas around the country to take part in ‘test and learn’ exercises, intended to explore the efficacy of new and innovative methods of meeting frontline public-service challenges.
The squads will be sent to: Barnsley; Wakefield; Manchester; Liverpool; Sandwell; Northumberland; Essex; Plymouth; and Nottingham. Also included in the programme will be a London borough, to be announced shortly.
To support the delivery of the nationwide test-and-learn activities, on 23 June the Cabinet Office entered into an initial two-year engagement with Public Digital, which will serve as “strategic delivery partner” for the Public Sector Reform (PSR) initiative.
Although the London-based tech consultancy company is the only such partner named in the contract document, PublicTechnology understands that the firm is operating as part of a consortium alongside local government think tank New Local and the Go Lab facility at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government.
At an event in January 2025, the Cabinet Office outlined a vision for the PSR programme and the adoption of its iterative and experimental approach, in a presentation that referenced ‘The Radical How’ policy paper published by Public Digital in early 2024. That report set out the ‘test-and-learn’ approach as one of its three key tenets for public-service delivery, alongside the use of multidisciplinary teams and outcome-led models.
The new contract between the two parties, which offers the option of a further 12-month extension, states that Public Digital and its consortium partners will now “supply a range of services to support a comprehensive programme aimed at enhancing user-centred design, delivery management, digital products and services, change management, strategic storytelling, and experimental design and evaluation”.
The value of the agreement is stated as £5m. The procurement process was not directly led by the Cabinet Office, but by third-party specialist firm Bloom Procurement Services – which, according to its website, provides a “fully managed procurement service [that] seamlessly connects the public sector with professional service suppliers” in the company’s network of pre-approved providers.
It is understood that Bloom evaluated two bids for the deal and chose Public Digital and its partners via a process the government considers to have been fair and independent.
In response to enquiries from PublicTechnology, the Cabinet Office did not comment further beyond a press release about the PSR programme issued earlier this week – which does not mention the £5m engagement or any of the parties in the consortium.
In that release, Georgia Gould, a junior minister at the department, said: “For too long residents and frontline workers have had to navigate fragmented and underfunded public services, people feeling like they have to arm up to battle to get the support they need. We are going to end this. The test, learn and grow programme will bring the centre of government out of Whitehall and into communities, working with those who deliver and use public services to solve problems together, as part of our Plan for Change. We will reform public services from the ground up so people always come first.”
Accelerating work
The text of the contract further reveals support provided to the PSR programme by the consortium will encompass the provision of “a team of experienced user-centred digital and data practitioners who can integrate into multidisciplinary teams working on” test-and-learn exercises.
This will include those with “expertise in policy development, user research, service design, digital product development, data science, behavioural science, and evaluation”.
Working alongside government officials, the consortium is expected to assist with the delivery of an estimated “21 ‘accelerators’… and 14 ‘scaling’ projects” if the deal runs for its full three-year potential term.
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The role of the strategic delivery partners will include “ensuring rigorous evaluation is integrated into each project phase [and] adaptively managing resources and skills required as the project evolves, ensuring the ability to respond to changing demands and outcomes effectively”.
Other duties required by Public Digital and its partners will include “capacity building and knowledge transfer” via work to “facilitate the coaching and support of the in-house team and local partners to enable sustainable application” of new innovations in the longer term.
The consortium will also be engaged to “provide expert advice on ensuring the longevity and ongoing impact of the ‘test, learn and grow’ approach, including assisting with succession planning and reform initiatives”.
Other services in scope of the contract “change management and implementation”, “governance and oversight”, and “risk management”, as well as “strategic storytelling and communication” – which will involve efforts to “craft strategic narratives and communication plans to effectively share programme insights and outcomes with stakeholders and the public”.
Public scrutiny
The latest deal comes following a significant amount of scrutiny last year – from politicians and the media – of the links between senior figures at Public Digital and the Labour Party. In the run-up to the 2024 general election, two senior figures at the company were involved in advising the then shadow government on tech-related issues.
Partner Emily Middleton was seconded to the office of Peter Kyle, in a move classed as a donation-in-kind of £65,000. Immediately after Labour’s victory – and Kyle’s appointment to the post as secretary of state for the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology – the new government announced a major shake-up of Whitehall’s core digital agencies. To help lead this, Middleton was appointed on a two-year contract in the new position as director general of digital centre design, a role based in DSIT. Government has previously indicated that she was hired “in line with the civil service rules on recruitment”.
Meanwhile, in April 2024 one of the founders of Public Digital, Mike Bracken – who was also the founding head of the Government Digital Service – joined a panel of experts convened by the Labour party to advise on how best to “modernise” HM Revenue and Customs.
Six months later, the new government appointed Bracken as a non-executive director of HMRC – a department with which it is understood that Public Digital does not currently work and will now decline from doing so in the future.
This appointment was part of a wider boardroom shake-up of HMRC which included the swift removal of four incumbent non-execs– in a sweeping overhaul which sources told PublicTechnology lacked rigour and transparency, and politicised the board of a non-ministerial department.
Following media coverage of Bracken’s appointment to the departmental directorship, Public Digital’s co-founder and current chief executive Ben Terrett – who was also another senior manager at GDS during its early years – published an online post on the consultancy’s website stating that “as a company, we don’t have a partisan view”.
“Both Public Digital and individual leaders on our team have a proud record of working with the Conservative, Labour and coalition governments in the UK – as well as administrations of a different political mix around the world, from Australia to Argentina via Ukraine and many others,” he said. “We’re often engaged by governments and businesses alike to help with a crisis or solve their most complex challenges because of the clear-sighted focus, expertise and experience we bring. We’ve previously written about our ethics process, but we don’t see working to improve public services delivered by a democratic government as being politically contentious.”
Terrett added: “We have never donated cash to any political party. It is testament to our teams’ expertise and experience that we have had colleagues seconded to Westminster in the run-up to the election – and we declared that openly at the time both through the official channels, and in our own corporate communications.”
