Turns out I didn’t get everything off my chest with the post yesterday about the challenges with recruiting and retaining public service technologists!

Again I am avoiding the whole improve the salaries aspect as I think the Centre for British Progress report covers that pretty well but here are five more thoughts on things that could/should happen (some I have written about before for sure!).

1.

Launch a cross Government Digital and Data (GDAD formerly known as DDaT) specific jobs board. Make it comply with the Service Standard, use the Design System, embrace JobPosting structured data format, offer open APIs, subscription by email and RSS. Encourage links to supporting information and allow video embeds. Do some user research to optimise the format of job ads and get some content designers involved to set some standards – then enforce those standards.

Then promote it. Everywhere. Do a full blown campaign – anywhere Indeed are advertising. Shout from the rooftops. This is not a Field of Dreams scenario – we need to fight for those eyeballs.

2.

Break the ‘rob Peter to pay Paul’ model of Civil Service digital capacity building with Departments primarily competing with each other, local government and the service providers orbiting the public sector. At a minimum multiple Departments should collaborate on joint recruitment campaigns, pool candidates, share panel participants and combine investment to promote the roles as widely and deeply as possible.

Coordinating these kinds of collaboration should be a priority for the new Government Chief Digital Officer. As a Permanent Secretary they should have the levers to ‘encourage’ some joined up thinking across Departments.

3.

The ship has sailed on this one for multiple reasons but the Government Digital Service brand is one of the strongest elements we have at our disposal for attracting people into public service digital. It is something that has broken out of the public service bubble and has some cache across the tech landscape but is not fully understood outside of the confines of the Civil Service. The idea that it is just a unit, within a Department that most people have never heard of and that every other Department and Arms Length Body has their own ‘version’ just befuddles folk. I think the pre-DOGE USDS had it right – you might work at the IRS or Veterans Administration or Census Bureau but you were part of the United States Digital Service. That was the hiring hook.

4.

Make engaging in hiring processes – sifting, interviewing, mentoring, speaking at recruitment open days, doing Q and As…whatever – easier, more appealing and better compensated. It should not be a side hustle for people already too busy. Make it a priority and at least make it clearly count towards objectives and performance reviews – for everyone at a certain level and up.

Improve the training and guidance, make it consistent across Departments, align expectations of what a successful candidate looks like, create a library of interview questions (avoiding the old Harrison Ford quote – ‘You can’t say that stuff. You can only type it.’ – which happens a lot!).

5.

Fix the timeline troubles. Empower a team of Service Designers, Business Analysts, Product Managers, Engineers and HR people (and whoever else is needed) to do a deep dive into how you can streamline the current weeks/months long process to make it ‘simpler, clearer, faster’ (as we used to say.) Heck, find a way to throw some ‘AI’ at the problem – that always gets the ‘powers that be’ excited 😂.

Challenge the status quo around ‘vetting’, identify the logjams, recommend approaches to better comms with candidates. Pick a couple of Departments to trial approaches. Test, learn, grow! 

Bonus

This is less about recruitment but maybe retention and definitely building capacity. Bring back the Academy – or something Academy adjacent. Build a General Assembly for Government (Central and Local) with courses for all the GDAD job families, at each level. Wrap the reinstated xGov communities of practice around the courses to help ongoing learning and sharing. Stop Depts spending with 100s of training providers that don’t really align with digital gov ways of working (and find ways to bring the ones who do into the fold).

Have GDAD run its own conferences, with speakers from the community showcasing their work and sharing their challenges – the User Needs First conference in Amsterdam was organised by the Dutch Government and was free for 700 practitioners with a brilliant, diverse agenda over three days!

---

Right – that is definitely it (for today). I obviously need a new hobby!