I joined the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in 2014 and built a new team to lead vision and business design at the heart of the department’s digitally-enabled reform. The job was to describe what the department should look like by 2020 and the practical steps to get there.
The department provides services and support to more than 22 million people, manages £174 billion of government spending, operates with an annual budget of £6.8 billion and employs around 90,000 staff.
In the 2015 Spending Review, HM Treasury funded the plan we proposed to deliver the government’s welfare reform plans and our 2020 Vision. This allowed DWP to complete the reforms started in the previous parliament, and to transform the services it provides, becoming a more inclusive, modern and efficient organisation.
Our vision picture, a one-page illustration of the department in 2020, became widely used across Whitehall as a practical way of describing the future operating model and aligning effort behind it. Although it was never formally published, it shaped internal decision-making for several years.
Selected articles #
What is Digital Transformation? The view from DWP, DWP Digital blog, 10 July 2014
How we’re using principles to guide our transformation journey, DWP Digital blog, 6 August 2014
Business Design for an Agile world, Medium, 27 January 2015
Introducing our Enablers: the most critical parts of DWP’s Business Design, DWP Digital blog, 2 February 2015
DWP’s 2020 Vision, DWP Digital blog, 18 March 2015
Our DWP Business Design work during the last parliament: a retrospective, Medium, 11 May 2015
How we’re keeping DWP’s business transformation on track, DWP Digital blog, 15 December 2015
Leaving DWP (but not moving too far), Medium, 31 August 2016
How we created the vision to transform the Department for Work & Pensions, Medium, 12 June 2018