Leaving DWP (but not moving too far)

Today is my last day at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). It has been two and a half years since I joined the department, and I’m excited to be moving on to join the Government Digital Service (GDS).

I’ve loved my time at DWP and will be sad to leave. DWP is an extraordinary place. Not just because of the huge scale of the operation, but because of the dedicated civil servants up and down the country who are totally committed to helping the people who depend on our services. I’ve learned a great deal from many amazing colleagues in the department.

I’m also incredibly proud to have been part of DWP’s transformation journey; a huge team effort that has seen us lead a step-change in our capability by creating the Digital Academy and establishing Heads of Profession, job families and career pathways for project delivery and digital roles. Through programmes like Universal Credit, DWP has a critical role to play in transforming the relationship between citizen and state, and many parts of the department are completely unrecognisable from when I started in 2014.

In my role I set up DWP’s Business Design function, which created the 2020 Vision for the department, putting the customer at the centre of our transformation, with services delivered by a modern and efficient operation which makes intelligent use of data.

Through this we’ve built consensus on some groundbreaking approaches, such as the way we do service design, applying operating model and agile techniques together, designing assisted digital services, and embedding modern security design.

We’ve gone from highest level vision, to the detail of areas such as handling debt and fraud, and we’ve begun to put in place and coordinate the change activities which will achieve the vision across the department to 2020 and beyond.

Most importantly, we’ve championed an inclusive style of work. Working out loud wasn’t easy at first, but it means that our vision is owned by everyone, not just a small team in the corporate centre. The vision is now established right across the department and is at the heart of our Spending Review settlement.

The transformation still won’t be straightforward, though, and as “Business Transformation” becomes “business as usual”, there is still much to do to establish a clear, joined-up plan that’s consistent across multiple parts of the organisation and which helps us to get away from artificial divides between digital and non-digital portfolios. Many ‘small signals’ send out big messages about our transformation, like giving people the right tools for the job, and establishing clarity on decision-making and accountability. These will continue to need improvement for people to really become confident, and for the department to become a great place to work which attracts the best talent.

In many ways the transformation at DWP represents a microcosm of the challenges right across government to make services work better for citizens, making best use of data and modern technology, working in new ways and shifting to a new model of collaboration across traditional boundaries.

I’ve spent much of the last year sharing with colleagues in other government departments. We’ve established a common language about end-to-end business transformation, enabled by digital. This isn’t about technology (though that has to work) and it depends on the connectivity across the community. There’s a real opportunity which comes from joining up across departments, collaborating in new ways, and coordinating beyond the current portfolio of major projects. We need to do more on the ‘Enabling Environment’ in which all our transformations take place. And we still have much to do as we begin to collaborate in new ways with the health sector and local authorities.

The centre of government has a critical role to play in this. I’m excited to join GDS in a new role that’s part of the organisation that delivered GOV.UK, established the spend controls and service standard, created GOV.UK Verify, and championed diversity both inside the organisation and at conferences. GDS is now a much more mature organisation than it was in its start-up phase, but, like many people, I only joined government because of what Mike Bracken and GDS did in those early days.

So for now, a big thank you to the colleagues and friends I’ve worked with at DWP. It has been a privilege to work with you. Keep going! You’re doing an outstanding job and the change is really happening. I look forward to continuing to work with you in the future, as we strengthen and accelerate the pace of change.

And just to set the record straight, this person in the DWP 2020 Vision picture is not carrying a knife. She works for us. It’s a tablet. (Hope that’s cleared up now.)