Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 13
13
Accepted
Defra faces persistent difficulty recruiting digital skills, with 31% of roles remaining unfilled.
Conclusion
There is still a digital skills shortage across UK industry and the public sector and, in December 2022, the NAO found that Defra had found it difficult to recruit and retain people with the right digital skills. Between October 2021 and October 2022, Defra ran recruitment campaigns for 244 digital, data and technology roles but could not fill 31% of these roles.26 CDDO told us that this problem was not unique to Defra: in October 2022, 14% of roles in the digital and data community were vacant across government. In June 2022, CDDO committed to reducing vacancies in the digital community across government departments to less than 10% by 2025.27 We asked the Department what it was doing to fill the digital roles that it had so far been unable to fill. Defra told us it used contractors to fill the gap in its workforce.28 CDDO clarified that using some contingent labour was good for flexibility, but that it can be up to twice as expensive for some roles. Defra explained that it had reduced its reliance on contractors and temporary staff over the last year from 30% to 22%.29
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and states the recommendation is implemented, detailing CDDO's initiatives to address the digital skills gap and reduce reliance on contractors (e.g., pay reform, recruitment campaigns, early talent programs). Defra aims to reduce contingent labour to 25% by end of 2023-24 and 12% by end of 2024-25 through various recruitment and training strategies.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented. The government’s commitment to build digital skills at scale and reducing reliance on contingent labour, is set out in the 2025 Roadmap for Digital and Data. Across government, CDDO is leading a number of initiatives to reduce the overall digital skills gap. CDDO is enabling departments to reform pay via the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Pay Framework, with 32 organisations already signed up and able to recycle funds that would have been used for contractors into funding for capability-based pay progression. CDDO has also facilitated bulk and brigaded recruitment campaigns across government and is working in partnership with Government People Group as part of their broader work to improve recruitment across the civil service. CDDO is enhancing government’s early talent offer: it has delivered a Summer Diversity Intern Programme (54 interns across 16 depts); the DDaT fast stream (175 fast streamers on 2020-22 cohorts and 102 bids received for 2023’s programme); Tech Smart Futures (20 students from low socio-economic backgrounds); Software Developer Graduate Programme (14 graduates finishing in Autumn 2024); DDaT Apprentices (679). In Defra specifically, the department is adopting a range of new approaches to recruit DDaT civil servants. The key ones are: • using digital market analysis and job text analyser tools to develop understanding of the digital recruitment market and to make job roles more accessible to a wider and more diverse audience. • collating evidence to support business cases for higher starting salaries in Defra’s priority ‘hard to recruit’ roles. • working with recruitment partners to target some of the priority hard to recruit roles and building a resourcing pipeline focusing on the development of academies, recruit-train- deploy schemes, and apprenticeships. • minimising the risk of candidates withdrawing by reducing time to hire and improving the candidate experience. • establishing Digital Academies that focus on growing Defra’s own talent to replace contractors. • maximising its use of the DDaT Pay framework. • having dedicated LinkedIn page for its digital team (2,500 followers currently) to post weekly jobs of the week videos, blog posts to sell benefits and what DDTS life is like for candidates to understand Defra’s culture. This has seen an increase in applications from LinkedIn by 20%; and • increasing its use of external websites for DDaT roles (Defra’s analysis shows that 20% of applicants for these roles have applied via LinkedIn and 10% on Indeed). Defra is working towards a target of 25% of headcount being contingent labour (with the remaining 75% being civil servants) for the end of 2023-24; and 12% of headcount being contingent labour (with the remaining 88% being civil servants) by the end of 2024-25.