Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 11
11
Acknowledged
Transformative government changes require innovation, learning from failure, and staff empowerment.
Recommendation
Witnesses told us that the transformative changes needed by government will require both large scale projects and day-to-day incremental improvements involving front-line staff.16 We asked how departments will remove the barriers to innovation by creating a working environment that encourages challenge of current thinking. The ODP described the importance of seeing failure as an opportunity to learn rather than share blame, and creating a sense of empowerment and creativity. We were told about how ideas generated from right across DWP were key to it dealing with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.17
Government Response Summary
The Profession will continue to measure take-up of resources Heads of Profession (HoPs) and other stakeholders use to engage their staff in improving services, and will continue to use existing HoP forums to discuss and share best practice. Work is also underway to introduce service standards that will enable benchmarking, collaboration, and shared learning across departments and agencies.
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
2. PAC conclusion: There are examples of innovation happening across government but more needs to be done to harness the ideas of the 290,000 members of the ODP for improving service delivery. 2. PAC recommendation: The ODP should require all its Departmental Heads of Profession to set out how they will ensure that their staff have the time, skills, tools and support to raise ideas, learn from each other, and get involved with improving services. 2.1 The Profession agrees with the Committee’s recommendation Target implementation date: September 2026 2.2 The Profession will continue to measure take-up of the resources Heads of Profession (HoPs) and other stakeholders use to engage their staff in improving services. These include the Professional Skills Framework, Centre of Excellence website and Senior Community of Practice (SCoP). 2.3 The Profession will also continue to use existing HoP forums to discuss and share best practice relating to: • driving continuous improvement activity at all levels in operational delivery; 25 • building operational delivery capability in problem solving and change leadership and management; • use of case studies within the National Audit Office (NAO) report, Smarter delivery - improving operational capability to provide better public services: driving staff to explore solutions to common operational challenges; • championing participation in civil service-wide initiatives such as ‘One Big thing – AI for All’; • supporting operational staff to allocate time to invest in learning, attend cross-government ODP learning events, such as ODP Fest, and webinars; • embedding standard ODP support structures including HoP role profiles and expectations; • leading by example by hosting departmental learning and career development events. 2.4 Work is also underway to introduce service standards that will enable benchmarking, collaboration, and shared learning across departments and agencies, while respecting individual departmental contexts.