Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 18
18
Accepted
Recruitment challenges for digital roles severely impede the vetting transformation programme's progress.
Conclusion
Recruitment challenges have also hampered progress on the vetting transformation programme. In November 2021, UKSV only managed to fill five out of 44 digital roles despite multiple costly, labour-intensive campaigns, with uncompetitive salaries seen as a key factor. In September 2022, despite a partial exemption for digital roles from the Cabinet Office recruitment freeze, UKSV’s resource modelling still showed a shortfall of 68 full-time equivalents (FTE) for digital roles against a total requirement of 108.44 The Cabinet Office downplayed the issue saying “trying to get the right number of permanent and temporary staff and then to train those up, took a bit longer, so we were a bit below our optimum resourcing level”.45 It told us it had recently moved to strengthen the pay scales across digital, data and technology across the Civil Service, but accepted that progress with the vetting transformation programme had been slower than it would have liked and that transformation was still some way off.46 42 Qq 52, 53; C&AG’s Report, para 2.12, Figure 12 43 Q 55 44 C&AG’s Report, para 3.13 45 Q 72 46 Qq 35, 89 16 The performance of UK Security Vetting 2 Transforming national security vetting Governance
Government Response Summary
UKSV has identified a need for and secured funding for a temporary surge of contingent labour for 2023-24 to address backlogs and stabilise performance, making progress on recruitment and training. For the transformation programme, efforts are ongoing to recruit digital professionals, with a discovery exercise to inform the future resourcing model in an October 2023 business case.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
4.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 4.2 UKSV has identified a requirement for a temporary surge of contingent labour and fixed term contracts for the financial year 2023-24 to support the meeting of customer demand and stabilisation of performance through clearance of the backlog of cases. Burden-share partners have agreed to fund this surge. The Cabinet Office has provided UKSV with the necessary approvals. There have been significant efforts over several months to recruit to the levels needed, and although UKSV is operating in a challenging market, good progress has been made. 4.3 In addition to recruitment, the training and deployment of staff into the vetting process is a significant undertaking and UKSV has redirected the majority of its enabling resources to support this activity. UKSV currently assesses that the funding and approvals are appropriate for the demands of the programme but will review this jointly with customers and Cabinet Office approvals teams in September 2023. 4.4 On the transformation programme, progress has been made on recruiting digital professionals to support the existing in-house IT delivery model. This remains a significant area of risk given the competitive market conditions for these skills. The outputs of the ongoing digital discovery exercise will inform the resourcing model and wider delivery approach for transformation moving forward. This approach will be set out in an Outline Business Case for consideration in October 2023.