Digital centre figurehead Emily Middleton tells techUK’s annual public sector conference that blueprint released in January has prompted significant interest across civil service disciplines, with support networks now ‘springing up’
The major new government digital strategy published earlier this year has attracted strong engagement from civil service leaders outside “the usual suspects” – including senior policy and delivery figures, according to one of Whitehall’s top tech officials.
Setting out a vision of sweeping transformation across departments, A blueprint for modern digital government was published in January by the new-look ‘digital centre of government’. As director general of digital centre design, Emily Middleton (pictured above) was a key figure in establishing government’s new tech hub, the mainstay of which is the expanded Government Digital Service – in its new home in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Speaking during a panel discussion at the techUK Building the Smarter State Conference, Middleton picked out the need for strong digital leadership as a key theme of the strategy.
“Part of what we set out in the blueprint is an expectation that, by the end of the next year, every public sector organisation should have a digital leader on their board – and a digital non-executive as well,” she said. “We have made really good progress on that, and we will be talking about that more soon.”
Beyond this tech expertise at the most senior levels, the digital DG stressed the critical importance of “getting all our other leaders working in a multidisciplinary way, operating across boundaries – which we know is important for the kind of change we want to deliver”.
There have been promising signs in the past nine months that figureheads from beyond the digital and data realm are engaged in government’s transformation ambitions, according to Middleton.
“Since we published the blueprint, I have been heartened by the level of interest we have had from leaders across the public sector – who have not just been the usual suspects, [and have included] policy director generals, people who are in different kinds of delivery roles. There are all sorts of networks springing up, and the informal networks are as important as the formal networks,” she said.
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Examples of such formalised support groups cited by Middleton include a collective of non-executive directors, and “a really active AI leaders group”, at the most recent meeting of which “every single department was represented at a senior level – and it wasn’t just CDIOs: it was others who are leading change in their departments”.
GDS hopes to build on enthusiasm generated by the strategy with an upcoming plan for implementing digital reform over the coming months and years.
Middleton said: “Where the blueprint set out a long-term vision and ambition for the long-term, we are now following it up this autumn with a roadmap, which will be a delivery plan for the spending review period. That will help leaders get on with these transformative changes.”
The 2025 edition of techUK Building the Smarter State is taking place in central London today. The hosting of the event coincides with the publication of a report from the IT industry body which found that government’s transformation aspirations are being hindered by a “mismatch” between public-sector buyers and technology suppliers.
