In September last year, Computer Weekly sat down with three of the most senior and influential digital leaders in the UK government to discuss the challenges and opportunities ahead under a new Labour administration.
The three – Rich Corbridge, chief digital information officer at DWP, Gina Gill, chief strategy officer at the Central Digital & Data Office (CDDO), and Craig Suckling, government chief data officer, were largely optimistic, but realistic about the difficulties too.
Less than six months later, all three have left the civil service, following after former government chief digital officer Mike Potter’s departure in September. In January, Laura Gilbert, head of i.AI, the government’s artificial intelligence (AI) incubator team, left as well.
And now, the most senior civil servant in charge of digital policy – Sarah Munby, permanent secretary at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, is leaving in the summer too.
The “new” Government Digital Service (GDS) – which combines the CDDO, i.AI and the rest of the “old” GDS, is currently led by Joanna Davinson who, while an experienced government digital leader, is only in the role on an interim basis, after previously leaving in late 2022.
To lose one or two digital leaders just as Labour was creating and publishing its new digital strategy may seem unfortunate. To lose three or four, perhaps careless. To lose six or seven – well, it makes you think, doesn’t it?
Pretty much the entire senior leadership team in charge of the government digital strategy is in the process of being replaced. Rumours point to a recently emerged figure as the most significant influence going forward – Emily Middleton, currently the temporary director general for digital centre design at DSIT.
What does that grand but also short-term job title mean? In essence, Middleton was the driving force behind the new digital strategy, brought in using special civil service exemptions for an urgent but interim role created as a result of machinery of government changes that saw GDS, CDDO and i.AI moved from the Cabinet Office into DSIT.
According to a freedom of information (FoI) request enquiring about her appointment, Middleton’s temporary role should last no more than two years.
It’s long been assumed that she would, eventually, move into a permanent role, possibly as the new leader of GDS. But with Munby’s impending departure, is she set to take the top job at DSIT instead?
According to her biography on Gov.uk, Middleton “has worked with governments around the world to develop digital strategies and to design, scale and reboot digital and data units.” Sounds like an ideal CV for the first fully digital permanent secretary, maybe?
The FoI revealed that Middleton had been on secondment to the Labour Party before the 2024 general election, advising the party on its digital policies. Her previous “day job” was a partner at Public Digital, the digital government consultancy established by former GDS founding chief Mike Bracken and his then deputy Tom Loosemore.
Indeed, DSIT secretary of state Peter Kyle told Computer Weekly at the digital strategy launch in January that he had consulted with Bracken in the hope of learning from the mistakes and missed opportunities of the past.
Looks like the new GDS is perhaps more like the old GDS than anyone anticipated – including among people at GDS, where some eye rolling is believed to have taken place.
Kyle and Middleton’s digital strategy has been largely well received – hitting most of the hot buttons identified in the comprehensive and brutally honest State of digital government report commissioned from consultancy Bain & Company.
The strategy also included some smart PR – leading on the launch of a digital driving licence, a concept easily understandable to national newspapers who covered Kyle’s announcement with some glee.
But next, whether it’s Middleton in charge or not, and whoever makes up the new leadership team at DSIT and GDS, they have to deliver.
According to one of those tasked with delivering over the past few years, that’s not going to be as easy as a shiny new strategy. Writing for Computer Weekly after her departure from the civil service, former CDDO executive director Gina Gill identified five critical challenges that DSIT will need to overcome if it’s to achieve its digital goals:
Embed digital thinking in policymaking from the start
Better data to understand the cost and performance of services
New approaches to funding, appropriate to digital change
Much greater flexibility around procurement
Better digital understanding among senior civil servants outside the digital and data profession
You can read in more detail about Gill’s recommendations here.
While it’s encouraging to see a roadmap to better delivery expressed in this way, it’s also somewhat depressing – pretty much every digital leader that Computer Weekly has talked to after they’ve left the civil service over the last decade or more, described similar and sometimes identical problems.
Everyone knows what needs to be done, but the civil service has proved incapable of the systemic change needed to make it happen.
The digital transformation of government remains a necessary goal. We have new political leadership in Kyle, new digital leadership in Middleton, and as good an understanding of what needs to be done as there’s likely to be.
But the question remains as to whether the civil service is truly willing and able to deliver.