Recommendation 4

Digital skills shortages, including those self-inflicted through headcount cuts, risk costing government much more in the long run because opportunities to transform are foregone, and delays increase the risks of prolonging legacy systems. Government estimates it has under half the number of digital, data and technology professionals it needs, when benchmarked against comparable organisations. Yet departments are constrained in what they can pay and, while they try to offer more for specialist roles, cannot fully compete with the private sector in hard-to-recruit roles such as data architects and cyber security experts. Despite offering interesting opportunities, and the new possibility of digital career progression to executive committee level, departments are vulnerable to trading on the goodwill of staff if pay is consistently lower than outside the civil service. Departments are also rationing digital headcount, such as apprenticeships, when they are struggling to recruit and retain the skilled people they need. Such shortages are a risk to achieving the Roadmap’s aims. Digital transformation in government: addressing the barriers to efficiency 7 Recommendation 4: a) CDDO should support departments to avoid counter-productive digital headcount cuts when they are seeking to double the size of the digital, data and technology profession in the civil service. b) Departments should, as part of its Treasury Minute response, quantify the impact of the under-resourcing of digital skills both on their ‘business-as- usual’ operations and change programmes, and take action to address these such as by scaling back programmes and being explicit about delays and missed opportunities.