Today we’re announcing that more than 100 digital and technology experts have been brought into government departments over the last 12 months to drive the digital transformation of public services.
We’ve known all along that if we want to transform government digital services, we need great people in digital and technology leadership roles. It’s meant taking a different approach to getting people, one we’re already starting to see pay off.
Doing things differently
Rather than adopting traditional recruitment processes, we’ve proactively sought out good candidates and successfully placed them into roles throughout government.
We’ve also introduced specialist recruitment agencies into the government supply chain, who have successfully identified high calibre candidates for these roles.
Both of those things are common in the private sector, but it’s something government isn’t traditionally known for – at least when it comes to digital.
Finally, we’ve successfully attracted people who hadn’t thought about working for government before, largely by tapping into candidates’ latent desire to do something for public good. Being able to show them the impact teams like GDS and MOJ digital services have made has been critical; it proves they can make a significant difference to the way government works. We aren’t encouraging these people to become ‘traditional’ civil servants, we’re encouraging them to change the civil service.
Recent hires
At GDS we’ve been joined by the likes of Magnus Falk, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Government and formerly CIO at Credit Suisse, and by Kevin Humphries, Government’s Chief Technical Architect and former CTA at Qatarlyst.
Meanwhile MOJ have been joined by Chief Technology Officer Ian Sayer – former Global Chief Information Officer at Electrolux – and Chief Digital Officer Paul Shetler, who previously co-founded start-ups Burnt Fingers and Digital Proximities and was CTO for Banking at Oracle.
Digital Leadership has been bolstered by the appointment of Chief Digital Officers like Mark Dearnley at HMRC, Kevin Cunnington at DWP, who was previously Global Head of Online for Vodafone and Jacqueline Steed who starts at Student Loans Company next week and was Managing Director and CIO at BT. Office of National Statistics has taken on Laura Dewis, Deputy Director Digital Publishing, who was Head of Online Commissioning at The Open University.
Today's announcement really underscores how valuable the work of Rebekah Ramsay and her team is. Rebekah herself is a senior leader recently recruited to government, now heading up the People and Skills function here at GDS. The difference these appointments are making to government is hard to overstate.
If you want to find out more, email Rebekah’s team.
Onwards!
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