A cabinet minister will say the government needs to operate “more like a start-up” to deliver public services more effectively.
Pat McFadden, who oversees the Cabinet Office, will urge the civil service to adopt the “test and learn” culture used by many tech companies.
Under a £100m project, policy officials, frontline workers and data scientists will be asked to come up with “innovative ways” to solve problems.
McFadden will say that “governing as usual” will not be enough for ministers to hit targets in areas like housing and NHS backlogs before the next election.
It comes after Sir Keir Starmer said in a speech last week that too many civil servants were “comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”.
The speech reflected frustration that some in government have expressed, about the civil service’s effectiveness.
Labour adviser Peter Hyman, who came up with Sir Keir’s ‘missions’ but did not follow him into government, wrote in the New Statesman recently that there were “barriers” to delivering the government’s agenda, and that it was “astonishing” how many senior civil servants still relied on old-fashioned processes.
In a speech at University College London’s Stratford campus in east London, McFadden is expected to say the civil service needs to adopt a new mindset and “make the state a little bit more like a start-up”.
He will say that officials will be “empowered to experiment” as part of “test and learn teams” deployed to fine “innovative ways to fix problems”.
Two early projects, to begin in January, will see officials asked to improve the delivery of temporary accommodation to homeless families in Essex and Liverpool, and family support in Manchester and South Yorkshire.
The model will then be deployed to help the government hit new “milestones” set out by the prime minister last week, including ending hospital backlogs and improving neighbourhood policing.
‘Glib platitudes’
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, McFadden said he aimed to replace the “old formula” of producing proposals in Whitehall and “hoping for the best” with an improved application of data to local problems.
The Cabinet Office has also announced a third wave of recruitment for a scheme under which tech workers are encouraged to join the civil service for secondments lasting between six months to a year.
Under the Innovation Fellowship Programme, set up by the previous Conservative government, recruits paid a salary up to £85,000 to help find technology-based solutions to “wicked problems” in delivering public services.
The government says new recruits under the scheme will be deployed to help deliver Labour’s five “missions” for government, although details are yet to be set out.
Shadow Cabinet Office minister Richard Holden said Labour would “swell the size and cost of the state”, adding that it had opposed Tory plans before the election to shrink the civil service to pre-Brexit levels.
“Labour ministers talk tough, but from bitter experience we know that’s all it is – glib platitudes and broken promises with British taxpayers picking up the bill,” he added.
