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Last updated: 27 March 2009
Our people need to keep their skills constantly up to date so that Government can plan, develop and deliver large, technology–enabled programmes.
IT systems are at the centre of transformational government. To successfully deliver major change, to develop flexible services built around the citizen and to ensure this is done efficiently and successfully requires a set of complex, joinedup systems behind the scenes.
To ensure that the changes required for the strategy and the Service Transformation Agreement take place it is vital that government:
Martin Bellamy, Change and Transformation Director, Pension, Disability and Carers ServiceI was excited to be asked to set up the government Delivery Management Competency. It’s good to bring together public sector IT professionals from central and local government to share best practice and explore people development and common approaches to frameworks, mentoring, networking and sharing insight
Building skills
Delivering complex IT–enabled programmes requires the development of a community of skilled individuals with the ability to deliver large scale change and continually build on their competence and expertise. Giving citizens services that make sense to them requires some very complex work behind the scenes. In order to successfully achieve this, there have to be people with the right skills to carry off the complex tasks, who are recognised for the role that they play in large scale programme delivery.
In the 2005 strategy the Government set out its determination to focus on the development of technology skills. The 2005–2006 Annual Report, we reported on the launch of the Government IT Profession competency and skills frameworks. This was based upon the industry standard Skills Framework for the Information Age. 2006-2007 has seen the first phase of ramping up this new IT profession to bring the right skills to bear on the right task across government.
Kate Silver, Business Development Partner, HM Revenue & CustomsThe IT Profession has helped me understand the IT skills I need to be effective in my role and to identify my own development needs. I now have a specific Development Prospectus, created by my Competency Lead, to provide a route for my future career and to help me to grow my skills
These have been broken down into competencies, with a senior professional as a leader for each at a national level. Seven National Competency Leads were appointed in 2006/2007 to build competency groups and create networks to share knowledge, resources and good practice across public sector IT. There is also a network of competency leads within each major organisation. The first 140 Competency Leads started to set the agenda for each group at the inaugural Competency Leads Annual Conference in May 2007.
All seven National Competency groups have:
A very wide range of skills are required across the IT profession. This year, the Government has been working with e–skills UK, the National Computing Centre and other industry partners to map the IT qualifications landscape and develop an industry–wide Qualifications Framework.
The Government IT Profession team provide support to departments to ensure that the right individuals with the right skills are deployed to key roles. This includes large recruitment campaigns and a more formalised brokering role for senior appointments through the Chief Information Officers Council Talent Management Steering Group.
New CIOs have been appointed in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, Ministry of Justice, Identity and Passport Service, The Crown Prosecution Service and Department for Children Schools and Families. The Identity and Passport Service used the IT Profession competence framework to create role profiles for the recruitment of 100 IT posts, attracting over 500 applications to date.
Annette Vernon, Chief Information Officer, Home OfficeUsing the Government IT Competence Framework provides a common language across government, making recruitment more straightforward and transparent..standard role profiles for the organisation make future recruitment less time–consuming.giving staff a clearer direction for objective-setting and skills development
In addition to ensuring that the right people with the right skills are in place, there needs to be opportunity to develop and improve on those skills. 2006/2007 saw the creation of the IT Academy">Government IT Academy. Two senior managers’ workshops (IT–enabled Policy Delivery and Delivery through Suppliers) are now delivered for the Academy by Saïd Business School, Oxford, and we have successfully piloted a new Executive Workshop, in partnership with Impact/Ashridge. In parallel, the Academy seminar and secondment programmes have begun in conjunction with key suppliers and the 'Whitehall and Industry Group' [External website].
The Government comprises 42% of the economy and there are approximately 50,000 people working on information and communications technology. To deliver world-class business change and information and communication technology skills across this landscape is a huge long term task. In the last two years, the Cabinet Office has engaged with 612 organisations in central and local government and the wider public sector that are interested in driving up their IT professionalism. As a result, leading government sectors set up steering groups in 2005-2006 to manage skills development covering tens of thousands of IT people.
The majority of services are delivered locally, so most information and communication technology people work in local government. A Local Government Steering Group for the IT Profession has been set up, providing clear measures of success for embedding cross-sector professionalism. This work is supported by the Society of IT Managers (Socitm), a trade body representing local authority staff. Socitm work with the Cabinet Office to raise awareness of IT Academy events and provides dedicated online space for interactive knowledge sharing across the entire public sector IT community.
As well as local government, a large number of IT professionals work in the health sector. Information technology is becoming intrinsic to modern healthcare, so the Health Informatics Sector Steering Group are drawing upon the work of the Government IT profession to establish a health sector IT skills development programme.
New skills will be needed today, tomorrow, and long into the future, so the public sector is taking a long–term approach to future leadership.
Yvonne Gallagher, Chief Information Officer, Ministry of JusticeThe Ministry of Justice is playing a leading role in embedding the IT Profession. With the IT Profession Team we have developed a pay model that allows us greater flexibility to hire from outside as well as to reward existing staff in specialisms that are key to our success and that attract a premium in the market. The system also allows us to encourage and reward junior team members who want to develop new and existing IT skills.
Technology in Business (TiB) Fast Stream
The Technology in Business (TiB) Fast Stream was launched in September 2006 to recruit talented graduates with the potential to become future CIOs. The scheme has proved popular, with 400 applicants competing for six places. The successful graduates are now with their home departments, embarking upon a tailored two-year foundation programme, the first part of a four–year programme of postings.
Skills Framework for the Information Age
To reassure people that government is taking re–skilling seriously, we need to be transparent about the rate of progress. One way of doing this is to publish the rates of adoption of formal skills frameworks. A framework enables the measurement and benchmarking of an organisation's ICT skills and its processes for managing and developing these. The Skills Framework for the Information Age is the IT Skills Standard in the UK. It provides a common reference framework that can be used by employers of IT professionals to audit skills, plan skill requirements, create development programmes, standardise job titles and functions, and allocate resources.
This table [PDF, 93KB] shows the progress on the use of the skills framework for the information age across central government departments and agencies.
TiB Fast Stream graduates
“Department for International Development (DFID) appointed one of the first TiB Fast Stream graduates because it was a unique opportunity to inject new talent and fresh thinking into our IT activities. I was involved from the outset, providing advice and as a member of the final selection board. DFID has a long and positive experience of the Fast Stream. I am confident that TiB will be a success for us.”
Simon Jones, CIO (DFID)
Jos Creese, CIO Hampshire County Council, Local Government Steering Group (LGSG) ChairThe Local Government Steering Group is working with the Improvement and Development Agency to develop a practical implementation toolkit to encourage authorities to take professionalism forward. The sharing of this resource, on a not–for–profit basis, contributes to the shared services agenda...
The public services that people use go far beyond central government departments and agencies – for instance local government and the NHS.We need to increase skills across the board. The Cabinet Office has grouped these into nine broad sectors. Each sector is expected to devise its own strategy for delivering skills.
The local Government Sector Steering Group will deliver the first implementation pilot during Q3 2008 through a partnership of the Cabinet Office, Improvement and Development Agency and Socitm. The table [PDF, 93KB] shows progress as of 31 March 2008.
Registration and membership strategies
As little work had been done on IT skills in government for twenty years prior to the 2005 Transformational Government strategy, CIOs had to first identify their workforce. This was done initially by inviting people to register an interest in the IT Profession.
Now the programme is more established, there has been a shift from individual registrations of interest and towards Chief Information Officers signing up their entire workforce to the IT Profession. There is an ambition for all of the (approximately) 50,000 IT professionals across the wider public sector to be established as members of the Government IT Profession.
A breakdown of current registrations of interest and membership by sector are shown in the charts below.
