Tech experts will be encouraged to enter government on six to 12 month ‘tours of duty’ to help crack problems, Pat McFadden will announce on Monday.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will also say the country needs more people with ‘front line’ public service experience in central government to deliver Labour’s ‘plan for change’.
But it will be seen as another shot across the bows of civil servants, with ministers growing increasingly frustrated in public at poor performance in Whitehall.
Last week, Sir Keir Starmer came under fire after he said ‘too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline’. And Rachel Reeves will this week launch a crackdown on wasteful departmental spending.
In a speech on Monday, Mr McFadden will encourage people from startups and tech companies to enter government as ‘innovators’ on secondments.
They will be asked to put their skills to use to tackle challenges such as criminal justice or healthcare reform and the Government’s five missions.
It is part of the next stage of the No10 Innovation Fellowship Programme – an initiative for bringing technical talent into government.
Mr McFadden will say: ‘For the next phase, I can announce that these innovators will spend their Tours of Duty working on our five missions for government.’
Pat McFadden will encourage people from startups and tech companies to enter government as ‘innovators’ on secondments
People will be asked to put their skills to use to tackle challenges such as criminal justice or healthcare reform and the Government’s five missions
In his speech on reforming the state today, the Cabinet Office Minister will pledge to make the state ‘more like a start-up’.
And he will call for a ‘fundamental overhaul’ of how recruitment is carried out in the civil service.
Blasting the current process as ‘mind bogglingly bureaucratic and off-putting’ for an outsider, he will warn that ‘good external candidates can find it near impossible to jump through the hoops’.
‘We need to go further and faster,’ he will say. ‘And so I will be asking departments across government to roll out simpler processes in their recruitment, using what we know works.’
The minister will also launch a £100 million ‘innovation fund’ to underpin his plans, which will be used to deploy ‘test and learn teams’ in public services around the country.
The test and learn approach is used across the business world, and allows new ideas to be tried out on a small scale to see their impact before being rolled out more widely if they are successful.
Last week, Sir Keir Starmer came under fire after he said ‘too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline’. And Rachel Reeves will this week launch a crackdown on wasteful departmental spending
Under the plans, the test and learn teams will be set a challenge, and allowed to experiment and try new things to meet it.
Mr McFadden will compare these reforms with what he will describe as the ‘pointless distractions’ and ‘headline grabbing gimmicks’ of the previous government.
Two projects on family support and temporary accommodation will be the first outing for the test and learn approach.
These will begin in January 2025, with teams deployed in Manchester, Sheffield, Essex and Liverpool.
While Mr McFadden will acknowledge ‘each of these projects is small’, he will say ‘they could rewire the state one test at a time’.
