Recommendation 18

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