2: A workforce for digital transformation
Chapter Contents
Estimated read time: 2 minutes
When OECD Digital Government Reviews reflect on how to support and equip public servants as the engine for digital transformation they do so using in-country interviews, organisational surveys, peer insights, the OECD Framework for Digital Talent and Skills in the Public Sector and the comparative data drawn from the relevant parts of the OECD Digital Government Index. That Framework uses three pillars that look at 1) building the right environment, 2) equipping the right skills, and 3) maintaining the right workforce. The Framework offers up a series of questions and areas to consider that help to paint a comprehensive and holistic picture of digital talent in government.
The successful digital transformation of the UK’s public sector hinges not just on technology and policy but critically on the people who drive these changes. Building and nurturing digital talent within the government is essential for creating services that meet the evolving needs of citizens. This chapter explores the strategies and challenges related to cultivating a digitally skilled workforce capable of leading transformational change.
It’s not enough to complement existing IT capabilities with added digital, data and technology and call it a day. There needs to be a revolution in thinking about digital talent. The ambition was to shift the balance—not through sheer weight of numbers by adding more digital professionals but by making sure that understanding of digital isn’t an outlier but a core competency of every modern civil servant.
As with other parts of this review I am not drawing on the extensive interviews, surveys and comparative data which the OECD team would access in conducting a similar exercise. As a result, some of these opinions might be better informed than others but all of them are my own, and my own only, so where I am drawing the wrong conclusion or making the wrong point I look forward to being corrected. Some of that might be subjectively wrong, some of it objectively so – in either event please educate me, and in particular share excellent examples where existing strategy, practice and impact are demonstrably having a fantastic impact that I am unaware of and have overlooked.