Corporate report

Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Strategy

Published 20 April 2023

Introduction

As the world’s oldest export credit agency (ECA), UK Export Finance (UKEF) has played a vital role in supporting UK exporters for over 100 years, providing finance and credit insurance in helping them win, fulfil, and get paid for export contracts. In doing this, UKEF advances prosperity in the UK, with our work in 2021-22 supporting 72,000 UK jobs and adding a gross value of £4.3 billion to the economy.

The demands on UKEF to respond quickly to emerging economic developments, market trends and deliver high-quality, efficient customer-centric services have become more evident. In ensuring no viable export fails, UKEF will have to be even more effective. The need to embrace innovation and champion change is paramount. DDaT is at the heart of realising this ambition, enabling the department to, in its unique goal of operating at no net cost to the taxpayer (generating a £324 million net operating profit in 2021/22), continue to operate efficiently and manage financial risk to protect the interests of the UK taxpayer while scaling its support.

Successfully delivering on the ambitions of this Strategy will not be without its challenges. As a newly formed directorate, DDaT is having to build its capabilities and fill its skills gap, against the backdrop of a competitive jobs market, budgetary constraints and existing change programmes. However, the Strategy’s high-level principles, and culture it seeks to embed, provides the framework and ways of working to succeed in realising this Strategy’s ambition.

Our purpose

DDaT will enable UKEF to be the best export credit agency by transforming and delivering great, flexible services that meet our customers’ needs and business aspirations as they evolve over time. We will enable UKEF to advance prosperity sustainably, whilst providing value for money in what we do, and ultimately supporting the Government’s Growth Agenda.

DDaT will do this by focusing on four key themes:

1. Create great digital, data and technology services and tools to enable UKEF to manage and grow the business.
2. Build brilliant teams and practices to enable UKEF to put customers at the heart of what we do.
3. Invest in our people to enable UKEF to be the best place to work and grow your career.
4. Drive a digital, data and technology cultural change in the department to enable UKEF to maximise its impact.

Our service vision

Using a range of digital services and technologies to meet the needs of our customers, staff and stakeholders, we will align to the service vision below, ensuring we remain flexible and adaptable to changing needs.

Service vision infographic: A diagram showing how UKEF’s service offering will allow customers to find support and UKEF staff to manage customers, their support and UKEF’s portfolio of business through external and internal facing systems and services.

Our culture

We work to the values in the Civil Service code: integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality.

It means that we: value, respect, and trust everyone; are inclusive and open, and actively make a difference to our economy and society in what and how we deliver. As one diverse and motivated DDaT team, we also embrace:

• having fun
• supporting each other
• sharing knowledge
• collaboration across the department
• learning through reflection
• working in modern and flexible ways
• celebrating our successes
• challenging ourselves

Our principles

Our principles are designed to complement Government standards and Declaration on Government Reform, ensuring we deliver better for citizens, staff and our customers. Our principles are:

1. Create services that meet user needs and anyone can use.
2. Be data-driven to produce rich insights and effective decisions.
3. Adopt a ‘test and learn’ approach to deliver value early and high-quality outcomes for users.
4. Be transparent: share, reuse and collaborate.
5. Provide the right technology to work efficiently, securely, and sustainably.
6. Empower our people, creating an environment for innovation to thrive and change to embed.

1. Create services that meet user needs and anyone can use

Ambition

We are a customer-centric team, developing future-proofed services that make it easier for internal and external users to achieve their goals through the best use of our people, finances and partners. We do this by meeting users’ needs first, challenging assumptions and reducing complexity in our services and processes. We measure our success by the outcomes our users achieve, rather than the outputs we deliver; by conducting research, testing and gathering data from our services; and are committed to continually improving them.

Background

We offer a range of services to enable UK businesses to export, through insurance, credit, or direct lending. Our users are diverse, ranging from: banks, microbusinesses to large global conglomerates; established traders to first time exporters. To ensure these services are useful, they address problems faced by our users and are designed around their needs.

We are committed to providing services that can be used by anyone, regardless of accessibility, need or situation. We need to continually understand who our users are, how they operate and the context in which they are using our services. By learning about, and understanding our users we can ensure our services are designed in a way that is:

• flexible to diverse situations
• efficient for speed of delivery
• robust enough to cover exceptional needs.

What we will do

• consider a user’s whole journey, creating joined-up experiences from end-to-end, front-to-back and across all channels
• engage early in product development and help shape discovery work to ensure products address a real user need
• prioritise working with users with diverse needs early and throughout research and design activities
• monitor the effectiveness of our services so that they continue to provide value for our users, ensuring they are still meeting users’ needs and business aspiration, enabling our customers to get the most out of the services we provide
• adhere to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standards, as a minimum, auditing services before they are released to our customers
• ensure accessibility is taken into account for internal systems and services
• build a culture of accessibility, training staff in best practices and ensuring everything we produce is accessible.

2. Be data-driven to produce rich insights and effective decisions

Ambition

We lead and support an insight-rich and data-driven department with a continuous record of high performance. We do this with accurate, timely, easily accessible data, analysis, and insights from across UKEF that underpin robust strategic and operational decision making. We deliver high-quality services to users by providing the right tools, knowledge, and technology, whilst adhering to the data ethics framework.

Background

The importance of data cannot be overstated. It is the foundation of any organisation’s ability to inform decisions, identify risks, and generate new business opportunities. It transforms how an organisation operates, allowing it to be more effective and targeted. When data drives decisions, we understand the actual effect of services and can identify what does and does not work to improve business strategies.

Systems, processes, and people are key in making the organisation more data driven. We will change UKEF’s approach and culture around data from reactive to proactive. The approach is split into three key areas:

• effective data governance and quality
• management information and reporting to meet need
• ability to create analytics and insights.

What we will do

• become subject matter experts for data standards and the data lifecycle
• lead on creating, implementing, and overseeing UKEF’s data management policy, whilst adhering to The Government Data Quality Framework
• continuously drive honest conversations with data, process, and system owners to review and improve our data, processes, and governance in order to provide accurate, consistent, and timely data.
• build a culture of understanding and care on the importance of data across the department
• treat the root cause of data issues rather than the symptoms by using tools to analyse data quality and engaging with, and supporting, data, process, and system owners
• respond to queries and requests for data and information whilst assessing business needs for future data and information needs
• deliver accurate, relevant, timely and consistent information across UKEF and to external customers
• continue implementation of self-service analytics, empowering our colleagues to use and analyse data relevant to their role and area
• measure the success of our services by baselining what good looks like early on, defining key performance indicators (KPIs) and tracking them over time
• adhere to the Government Functional Standard GovS 010: Analysis to ensure consistency and quality of analysis
• become the centre of excellence for data visualisation, business performance analysis and insight, whilst proactively supporting UKEF in measuring its performance against defined metrics and HM Treasury’s consent
• work closely with our UKEF colleagues to introduce descriptive analytics, using predictive models, forecasting and trends
• using our analytical products, support the senior leadership team and strategy division with defining strategic questions, identifying business opportunities and areas for improvement to drive the business forward.

3. Adopt a ‘test and learn’ approach to deliver value early and high-quality outcomes for users

Ambition

We deliver and maintain high quality services that improve over time, delivering value for users early by starting small and iterating. This will set the foundation to scale at pace, ensuring we are learning from real people as they use our services. We take a service, rather than a project-specific, approach to our products, allowing UKEF’s offering to grow and develop along with users’ needs.

Background

External factors can greatly impact UK exporters’ needs and expectations. It is important UKEF can respond to changes in an agile and adaptable way and our approach to services should reflect that. By taking an iterative approach to building and maintaining services, we continually test with users, ensuring that we learn quickly and apply valuable lessons to inform future development and research.

Adopting an agile approach, which emphasises building quickly, testing, and iterating work based on regular feedback, is pivotal in achieving high quality outcomes. It also reduces risks associated with delivery and ensures services are built that meet users’ needs, business aspirations and deliver value to users sooner. Its core principles are:

• transparency - ensure the team and stakeholders have visibility on what is going on
• inspection - actively look at both what the team is doing and how they are doing it
• adaptation - in light of findings, change the tactical direction and approach accordingly.

What we will do

• run digital services in agile by default and develop governance that allows agile practices to thrive
• based on prioritisation, ensure services are maintained and iterated after they go live
• encourage wider UKEF to adopt and develop digital knowledge and ways of working through ongoing training and internal communication
• align to government policy and UKEF organisational objectives and governance, with activities supporting the UKEF Business Plan
• ensure governance and management frameworks are proportionate and appropriate to the work and the level of prevailing risk
• align to Cabinet Office governance, with spend subject to the Government digital service and technology spend control criteria and the service assessment process.

4. Be transparent: share, reuse and collaborate

Ambition

We celebrate and are proud of our successes while collaborating and sharing openly on things we could do better. Our work, whether design patterns or code, workshop sessions or presentations, is reusable and repeatable where possible and appropriate. We do this both within UKEF and across government, making sure it is consistent with government standards, government strategy and best practice.

Background

Innovation comes from high-quality collaboration, where a culture of experimentation and sharing is actively encouraged across all professions. Sharing designs, data, and technologies, within commercial, security and ethical constraints, is efficient, cost-effective and delivers a better, more consistent service for users by drawing from a larger pool of knowledge and experience to develop solutions to whole problems.

By reusing existing government services, information and technologies from previous work you speed up delivery, create a consistent approach, as well as avoiding duplication and unnecessary spending, providing a more efficient, better value for money service.

What we will do

• use the GOV.UK Design System and other appropriate common pattern libraries, contributing to them and the cross-government community where we can
• adhere to the Open Standard Principles by making services and technologies transparent and leverage expertise from cross-government communities, such as Slack, and encourage integration between common government technologies
• where appropriate, participate in and influence cross-government developments and projects that we can use to better deliver outcomes for our users
• conduct regular reviews to assess services against user needs as stated in the Service Standard and course-correct where they are not meeting it
• align services with the mandatory points of the Technology Code of Practice, and follow as many of the remaining points as is practical
• run show and tells to create awareness and get feedback on work
• publish product, design and technical documentation to encourage re-use and improve interoperability
• actively participate and grow the professional communities of practice.

5. Provide the right technology to work efficiently, securely, and sustainably

Ambition

We run our technology in a cost effective, sustainable way – using open standards and common components – allowing staff to work securely and efficiently. Our services are reliable, secure, meet users’ needs and protects their privacy, while also meeting wider organisation requirements, ensuring value for money across their entire lifecycle.

Background

From offshore wind farms in Taiwan to family cheese exporters in Somerset, the technology and infrastructure that enables these deals to happen – to allow UKEF staff to work efficiently and securely, both in the UK and overseas – is critical to the department’s success.

To enable this, the appropriate tools and technologies need to be used to create and operate high-quality services in a cost-effective way, ensuring the technological and commercial aspects and contractual limitations are considered, with an emphasis on:

• integrated technology – accurately forecast and plan the demand for the digital services and technology
• security and privacy – promote a proportionate, risk-based approach to security within UKEF’s risk appetite and protect users’ rights and personal data
• sustainable technology – support the transition to Net Zero by reducing the carbon and cost of digital services throughout their entire lifecycle.

What we will do

• comply with the UK Government cloud first policy by considering and evaluating potential cloud solutions before other options
• develop a robust Purchasing Strategy to ensure the right solution is chosen, namely when to re-use, build, buy or a combination
• ensure user’s rights and personal data are proactively protected in line with UK Data Protection Act 2018
• maintain legacy infrastructure efficiently, minimising downtimes, and integrating new technology with government’s API technical and data standards so they can communicate in a consistent way
• comply with the principles of good information management and cyber security
• factor fraud security and prevention into design, delivery and adoption of services and technologies
• work with open-source code where possible, without compromising the security of systems and ensure privacy is proactively protected, adhering to relevant standards, guidance and codes of practice
• increase our services’ sustainability by understanding how to measure, manage, and improve sustainability and meeting the outcomes in Greening Government ICT and Digital Services Strategy
• actively horizon scan for emerging technologies to see how they could enable innovation and improve departmental efficiency.

6. Empower our people, creating an environment for innovation to thrive and change to embed

Ambition

We have a highly engaged workforce, built of empowered multidisciplinary teams with the skills to excel in their work. The diversity of the team is a strength that is nurtured, and innovation and inclusion actively encouraged. We embed a culture of learning and continuous improvement, with clear career progression and support for all.

Background

None of the Strategy’s ambitions can be delivered without the knowledge and expertise of our people. Our people are fundamental to DDaT’s success and therefore prioritising their wellbeing and development is vital. To ensure we have the right experience and capabilities to deliver on our Strategy, a balance needs to be struck of attracting talent to bring fresh perspectives, while building in-house capability by offering opportunities for staff to achieve their potential and develop their careers in our DDaT team.

We will seek to: motivate our people to develop into multi-skilled individuals; grow our capabilities by developing and investing in our people; create fulfilling and empowering roles; and have a working environment where learning and continuous improvement are embedded into the culture. We want staff to feel confident to experiment, design creative solutions and empowered to put forward bold ideas.

What we will do

• use DDaT internal praise and recognition to value people’s ideas and positive behaviours
• create a ‘one-team’ approach for collaboration by enhancing communications and engagements between the teams
• take a zero tolerance approach on unacceptable and inappropriate behaviour
• support our people to develop leadership skills, by creating an environment where people are empowered to make effective decisions
• continue to take a transparent and open approach to project and programme prioritisation, ensuring work remains strategically focused, achievable and maximises value for money
• ensure responsibilities are defined with clear lines of accountability
• encourage and provide shadowing opportunities and secondments in DDaT to increase knowledge transfer
• ensure our people (both within DDaT and across UKEF) have the right skills and experience to successfully deliver their objectives using digital, data and technology
• develop clearly defined career pathways and embed this in the personal development appraisal process
• when we do need the support of contractors, make sure knowledge is transferred in a timely way and documentation is consistent and accurate.

Our strategy delivery approach

The DDaT directorate is an integral part of UKEF’s ability to deliver for our customers. This strategy outlines the approach DDaT will take to create great services and tools to enable UKEF to manage and grow the business by building brilliant teams and practices, putting the customer at the heart of what we do.

As with any ambitious strategy, there are risks associated with its delivery, namely that it doesn’t achieve its intended purpose or priorities and that the strategy’s principles aren’t adopted across DDaT and the organisation. To robustly manage and mitigate these risks, we will deliver this strategy through driving a digital, data and technology cultural change across the organisation through the delivery mechanisms outlined below.

Our strategy delivery approach: The hierarchy of delivery mechanisms the strategy will be delivered through. From the top down the UKEF business plan informs the UKEF Transformation and Change Plan which informs the UKEF Operational Plan which informs the DDaT Divisional plans. These are all underpinned by the DDaT strategy and collectively these feed into the UKEF Target Operating Model.