CustomerFirst is a new unit within GDS learning what conditions help transformation teams succeed through a NewCo approach. Our first partnership is with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency 's (DVLA) Drivers Medical service, which makes licensing decisions when a medical condition may affect someone's ability to drive, with consequences for people's independence, work and everyday life.
When we formed the joint DVLA and CustomerFirst team and began looking at the Drivers Medical service, we were also testing what conditions a NewCo approach requires: creating enough space around the team to pursue change, identify the constraints holding the service back and learn which freedoms actually matter.
In practice, that space is shaped by the organisation around the team because Drivers Medical cannot pause while we change it. Licensing decisions carry on being made every day, established processes still shape how they are made, and people carry years of knowledge about why the service works as it does. So, the way the team is set up, and the support around it, must respond to that context as much as to the methods the team uses.
We are still learning what those conditions need to be. Some of the choices we made at the beginning have already proved particularly important.
Create real capacity for the work
Before delivery began, senior stakeholders across DVLA and GDS agreed a commitment to a shared ambition for the transformation work and to protecting the conditions the team would need to pursue it.
Creating dedicated capacity was part of that agreement. Drivers Medical colleagues joining the joint team came out of their existing roles, with those roles backfilled, so they could work full-time alongside GDS colleagues.
Backfilling sounds like a resourcing detail, but it changes the relationship people have with the work. Transformation asks people to spend time understanding a problem, following evidence, testing ideas and making decisions together. That becomes much harder when the same people remain responsible for keeping their previous part of the organisation running.
Giving people real capacity has helped us build a joint team rather than two organisations collaborating around the edges of existing jobs. Relationships have developed through the work itself, and responsibility for where the work goes is shared. For us this has become one of the clearest NewCo conditions: enough protected capacity to organise around the service problem, rather than being repeatedly pulled back into responsibilities people already hold.
Bring organisational knowledge into the team
The people who know the existing organisation best are also some of the people best placed to help change it.
Drivers Medical colleagues understand why processes exist, how systems depend on one another, where previous attempts have struggled, and which apparent constraints may have more room to move than they first seem. That knowledge is difficult to reproduce through stakeholder interviews or occasional governance meetings because much of it sits in experience, relationships and practical judgement.
The value becomes clearer when the team starts trying things. An experiment may run into a technology constraint that has been treated as fixed for years. A different service model can surface questions about assurance, information governance or policy. Sometimes the team discovers that a constraint is protecting something important. Sometimes it finds an existing arrangement that can be approached differently.
Having that organisational knowledge inside the team helps us understand what we are dealing with before deciding what needs to happen next.
Work in the open, and know where authority sits
Working in the open is part of how we manage the boundary between decisions the team can make and those that need authority elsewhere. We share work and thinking early, so people around it can see what is changing and challenge it where useful. Visibility does not automatically create another approval step. Small tests give the team something concrete to decide against, reducing how much depends on assertion or hierarchy and keeping decisions close to the people doing the work.
When something does need authority elsewhere, the partnership gives us a route to senior sponsorship. We call this "air cover". Leaders have already committed to the conditions around the work, so escalation is about unblocking rather than re-stating the case. The judgement about when to use it matters. Escalating too quickly moves decisions away from the people closest to the work and turns senior sponsorship into part of the everyday operating model.
Each constraint we hit is useful information either way. It tells us where authority sits now, which decisions the team can make for itself, and where a wider organisational change may eventually be needed. For small experiments, the team works with assurance specialists to identify an approach that reflects the scale and nature of the risk. That keeps the team moving safely. It also shows us whether the existing assurance route fits this kind of work, and whether a constraint genuinely needs air cover or can be worked through within the team's own authority.
Learning what NewCo needs through delivery
We are still early in this work, and part of the NewCo hypothesis is that we should learn the operating model through delivery. Understanding why a constraint exists, what it is protecting and how fixed it really is can tell us as much as successfully removing it.
So far, three conditions have proved particularly important: creating real capacity for transformation work, bringing organisational knowledge into the team, and working in the open with clear routes for decision-making. These are conditions we would encourage other organisations to consider when setting up transformation work of their own.
As the work grows, we will keep testing where those boundaries need to sit and which of these conditions transfer to other transformation work across government.
If you are working through similar questions elsewhere in government, we would be interested to hear what you are learning too. You can contact the CustomerFirst team at customer.first@dsit.gov.uk.
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