Corporate report

GDS business plan April 2014 to March 2015

Published 4 July 2014

About GDS

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is leading the digital transformation of government. GDS was set up following Martha Lane Fox’s report, Directgov 2010 and beyond: revolution not evolution, to make sure the government provides world-class digital services that meet people’s needs.

We have 4 main objectives, which are to:

  • provide simpler, clearer, faster access to government services and information through GOV.UK
  • transform 25 of the most used government transactions into simple digital services
  • develop the skills and expertise so government can achieve its digital and technology objectives
  • change the way government procures digital and technology services

GDS has 11 business units that deliver those objectives. They fall into 3 categories: delivery programmes, supporting business units and business management.

The delivery programmes are:

  • Identity Assurance (IDA)
  • GOV.UK
  • Transformation
  • Performance Delivery Unit (PDU)

The supporting business units are:

  • Digital Policy and Departmental Engagement (DPDE)
  • Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO)
  • People and Skills (PAS)
  • Digital Commercial Programme (DCP)
  • Digital Engagement and Design (DE and D)

The business management units are:

  • Operations
  • Office of the Executive Director

Our aim is to make world class digital services based on user needs and create digital platforms fit for the civil service of today.

Priorities

Digital services so good people prefer to use them

Our priorities are to:

  • transform 25 important government services by March 2015
  • make sure exemplar teams have the skills to continually improve services
  • move 75% of agency and arm’s length body websites, including HM Revenue and Customs’ (HMRC) website, to GOV.UK by July 2014, and 100% by December 2014
  • continually improve GOV.UK for users
  • publish clear usage data including dashboards for all major government departments
  • create a new simple and secure way for people to sign in to digital services
  • help service providers move from Government Gateway to identity assurance by March 2016
  • improve technology in government through the technology leaders network
  • create a central architecture function, define open standards, and manage contracts
  • create a new Crown hosting service for non cloud hosting to provide IT systems and data centre services
  • help departments leave unsuitable IT contracts, improve technology departments, spend less, and get better value for money
  • find new ways to hire staff to make sure we get the best people quickly and easily
  • build a new digital marketplace for the public sector to buy digital products and services
  • improve the G-Cloud and Digital Services frameworks
  • increase awareness and use of the G-Cloud and Digital Services frameworks
  • publish guidance on the new marketplace
  • publish a new G-Cloud supplier accreditation process that meets the new government security classifications
  • work with public, private and voluntary sectors to help people go online, so that by April 2016, the number of people lacking basic digital capability is reduced by 25%
  • maximise use of government digital services so it reflects the proportion of UK adults that are online and able to use them
  • make sure that people who can’t use digital services have the help they need
  • make sure that misleading websites mis-selling government services are minimised so that concerns about scamming and phishing don’t stop people using GOV.UK
  • start a campaign to promote GOV.UK as the best place to find government services

Milestones

April to June 2014

April

  • Apprenticeships Applications - alpha
  • Publish GOV.UK proposition
  • Digital by Default Service Standard comes into force
  • Produce savings figure
  • Standardise pipeline
  • G-Cloud accreditation submission backlog cleared
  • Publish Digital Inclusion Strategy and UK Digital Inclusion Charter
  • Publish first iteration of Digital Inclusion scale
  • Government Digital Strategy - quarterly progress report
  • Publish GDS security policy
  • Annual staff performance assessments complete
  • Review and report on final year end accounts

May

  • Lasting Power of Attorney - live
  • Patents Renewal - live
  • Digital Self Assessment - public beta
  • Business Tax Dashboard - public beta
  • Prison Visit Bookings - public beta
  • Land Registry - discovery
  • Release 37 GOV.UK content dashboards on the Performance Platform
  • Launch GDS user research lab
  • G-Cloud 5 framework live
  • Digital Marketplace - alpha
  • Publish cross government assisted digital user personas in the Service Design Manual
  • Publish guidance on how to make sure services are built to help people go online
  • E-petitions accreditation complete
  • Virgin migration - improve broadband capacity in Aviation House
  • Completed audit for year end savings

June

  • Electoral Registration - live
  • Waste Carriers - live
  • Visas - public beta
  • Passports - alpha complete
  • Begin reporting on overall performance of GOV.UK
  • Departments able to independently connect services to Performance Platform
  • Audited Savings published (financial year ending March 2014)
  • Proposal to Civil Service Commission on new approach to permanent recruitment
  • Organisational design - discovery complete
  • G-Cloud Security process guidance - alpha release
  • Digital Marketplace Strategy - alpha release
  • Publish draft service complexity assessment for all 25 exemplars
  • GOV.UK quarterly IT health check (ITHC)

July to September 2014

July

  • Prison Visit Bookings - live
  • View Driving Record - live
  • Rural Support - release 1 beta
  • Savings figure for financial year ending March 2015
  • Engagement/operating model between Common Technology Services and departments published
  • Recruitment: test tools with departments
  • Skills: evaluation of Senior Civil Service (SCS) masterclasses
  • Skills: publish alpha version of digital and technology skills matrix
  • Digital Marketplace public beta release
  • G-Cloud process guidance published in public beta
  • Final annual report on government websites published
  • Government Digital Strategy - quarterly progress report published
  • Assurance of new Content Delivery Network (CDN) for GOV.UK
  • Publish GDS July to September 2014 objectives

August

  • Land Registry - alpha complete
  • HMRC will transition to GOV.UK
  • New GOV.UK functionality to meet specialist needs
  • Pan-government directory service in place
  • Hosting accreditation in place
  • Iterate recruitment tools and roll out
  • Issue Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) notice for Assisted Digital
  • Setup ITHC call off - switch to suppliers to do health-checks instead of IT team
  • Performance Platform - beta release

September

  • Redundancy Payments - public beta
  • PAYE for employees - public beta with IDA
  • Registered Traveller - public beta
  • Migration to new GOV.UK platform
  • Launch ‘stub’ dashboard for every (700+) government service
  • Identity assurance for individuals - public beta
  • Design and technology fast stream to Civil Service (CS) Fast Stream
  • Government Digital Strategy - quarterly progress report published
  • Digital Marketplace Strategy published live

October to December 2014

October

  • Vehicle Management - live
  • Apprenticeships Applications - public beta
  • Publish contracts/pipeline on Contracts Finder
  • IT Savings figure for April to September 2014
  • Cabinet Office desktop IT live
  • Senior GDS reviews of recruitment requirements for 5 departments
  • Publish beta version of digital and technology skills matrix
  • G-Cloud goes live in Digital Marketplace
  • Digital Services framework (DSf) 2 live
  • Sprint Technology Leaders conference
  • Publish full list of GOV.UK domains
  • Mid year personal performance review
  • Business Plan and budget six monthly review

November

  • Claim Carers - live
  • Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) desktop IT - live
  • Roll out new approach to permanent recruitment for new campaigns

December

  • Civil Claims - live
  • Prison Visits live
  • Registered Traveller - live
  • Redundancy Payments - public beta
  • Complete transition of ALBs to GOV.UK
  • Beta of DSf in Digital Marketplace
  • Government Digital Strategy - quarterly progress report and ‘2 years on’ report published
  • GOV.UK quarterly ITHC
  • Winter estimates (SUPPS) - supplementary from start of year

January to March 2015

January

  • Rural Support - release 2 live
  • Savings figure for April to December 2014
  • Assisted Digital Commissioning Vehicle - live (subject to ongoing discussions with departments)
  • Sprint 15
  • GOV.UK annual accreditation
  • January to March 2015 objectives and update on delivery against October to December 2014

February

  • Apprenticeship Applications - live
  • Redundancy payments - live

March

  • Business Tax Dashboard - live
  • Digital Self Assessment - live
  • Passports - live
  • PAYE for employees - live
  • Improved integration of blogs and services with GOV.UK
  • Release read Application Programming Interface (API) for all GOV.UK content and write API for third parties
  • 150 service managers trained through development programme
  • Achieve £710 million of savings by year end (pre-audit)

Benefits we’ll deliver

Award-winning public services

Twenty-five of government’s most important services will be digital by default by March 2015.

GOV.UK has been live since early 2012, and gets over 1.5 million visits per day, saving at least £50 million per year.

We’ll deliver at least £700 million in efficiency savings and improve user experience by:

  • building GOV.UK, a single place for government information and services, and shutting down old government websites
  • changing services so they meet user needs not government needs
  • helping departments to have better, more cost-effective IT
  • improving the way government buys technology and digital services, creating a more open and competitive marketplace
  • helping departments and agencies find the digital professionals they need
  • giving service providers data on how their services are performing

Transformation Programme

The bulk of government transactions are handled by 7 departments. They are:

  • HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)
  • Department for Transport (DfT)
  • Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
  • Ministry of Justice (MOJ)
  • Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)
  • Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)
  • Home Office (HO)

With Cabinet Office, these departments found 25 important services to improve first. These are known as exemplars.

We estimate that annual recurring benefits from the exemplars could be around £607 million.

Annual recurring benefits from other transactions related to the exemplars come to £372 million.

That’s a total of £979 million from exemplars and associated services.

Across these 8 government departments, we estimate that by digitising all transactional services we could save £1.4 billion every year.

At the exemplar level, benefits are shared almost equally between government and users – ie people and businesses. As the scope extends, benefits go mainly to government. By financial year ending March 2016 we estimate that the exemplars will have achieved about 70% of their potential benefits. These early benefits are influenced by certain benefits such as increasing tax collection and reducing EU fines.

These benefits depend on:

  • extending the depth and breadth of transformation
  • planning for people using non-digital services less
  • re-using digital platforms which services are built on
  • increasing in-house digital skills
  • putting necessary governance in place
  • securing political support for transformation

Transition of arm’s length body websites to GOV.UK

Publishing for all central government departments was moved over to GOV.UK in 2013. Agency and arm’s length bodies are following, and around 300 will be moved by December 2014. Assuming a 50% cost saving, this will achieve a 5 year saving of around £50 million.

G-Cloud

The G-Cloud programme encourages use of cloud computing in the public sector and transforms the way IT services are bought. It benefits from the cost savings and flexibility of cloud computing. We estimate that G-Cloud will achieve savings of 50% for services bought through it. At the current rate of spending (£16 million per month), savings of around £200 million could be achieved in the financial year ending March 2015 by:

  • buying products and services at lower prices
  • reducing procurement costs for buyers
  • using the benefits of agile delivery methods
  • creating deflation in the market

Benefits are not purely financial. G-Cloud has also delivered:

  • a much broader range of supplier
  • an improved procurement process
  • better public services

Government technology now comes from suppliers all over the UK

G-Cloud has helped to grow the UK economy by creating new jobs. A survey carried out in May 2014 showed that 29 suppliers have created 356 new jobs as a result of work gained through G-Cloud.

IT spend controls

We’ll continue to help departments reform by helping them leave their current IT contracts, improve their technology departments and design better technology programmes which control spending.

IT projects will be assessed using the Technology Code of Practice with rules and limits to maximise value for money.

Each department has a GDS account manager who’ll work with Cabinet Office when considering a case. We’ll scrutinise and challenge all technology-related spending over a certain amount. No public commitment or spending should be made above these amounts without approval.

This will significantly contribute to the £700 million in efficiency savings mentioned above.

Budget and headcount

The business units of GDS

The structure at GDS has the Executive Director at the top, with the following units or programmes underneath:

  • Transformation Programme
  • Office of The Chief Technology Officer
  • GOV.UK
  • People and Skills
  • Performance and Delivery Unit
  • Digital Policy and Departmental Engagement
  • ID Assurance Programme
  • Digital Engagement and Design
  • Digital Commercial Programme
  • Operations

At the last Spending Review it was agreed that the GDS budget would reduce from £21.1 million to £16.12 million between financial year ending March 2012 and the financial year ending March 2015.

Since then:

  • £12.6 million was agreed with HM Treasury for the successor to businesslink.gov.uk
  • £2.125 million was transferred in when the Office of the Chief Technology Officer joined GDS
  • £17.5 million from the Reserve at Supplementary Estimates has been agreed for the digital exemplars
  • £10 million has been agreed for the IDA programme by the National Cyber Security Fund

This gives a total GDS budget of £58.345 million for financial year ending March 2015.

Breakdown of budget by business area

Here’s how that budget is broken down:

Business unit People costs Non-people costs Total
Transformation Programme £7,910,805 £2,109,196 £10,020,001
GOV.UK £12,917,700 £4,191,253 £17,108,953
Performance and Delivery £3,183,136 £594,000 £3,777,136
Digital Commercial £2,280,328 £1,650,565 £3,930,893
ID Assurance Platform £3,400,000 £6,600,000 £10,000,000
OCTO £3,172,124 £2,070,142 £5,242,266
Digital Engagement and Design £2,349,560 £284,725 £2,634,285
Operations £1,519,235 £5,571,720 £7,090,955
Digital Policy and Department Engagement £2,321,210 -£101,802 £2,219,408
People and skills £1,989,358 £0 £1,989,358
Executive Directors’ Office £349,936 £0 £349,936
Adjustment     -£6,018,191
Total £41,393,392 £22,969,799 £58,345,000

Headcount by business unit

The number of staff needed to meet the plan is 425 civil servants and 210 interim staff. New hiring will normally be through fixed-term appointments. The number of interim staff will be continually reviewed to make sure they’re filling short-term roles that couldn’t be filled by fixed-term appointments.

Total Interim CS SCS2 SCS1 BandA* BandA TIS BandB2 BandB1 BandC
Transformation 78 40 38 0 4 7 20 0 4 2 1
GOV.UK 106 10 96 0 2 1 77 4 7 4 1
P and DU 44.5 7 37.5 0 3 1 28.5 0 5 0 0
Commercial Programme 38 16 22 0 1 0 9 0 8 3 1
ID Assurance 91 20 71 0 1 2 62 0 6 0 0
OCTO 73 21 52 1 5 6 34 0 4 2 0
DPDE 38 3 35 1 2 1 14 0 14 3 0
DEAD 44 11 33 0 3 0 20 0 1 8 1
Operations 29 4 25 1 0 2 5 0 8 9 0
Exec Directors Office 4 0 4 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0
People and Skills 21 10 11 0 1 0 5 0 5 0 0
Total 566.5 142 424.5 4 22 20 275.5 4 63 32 4

Risks to the plan

1: We have insufficient funding, which could mean we’re unable to hire the people with the skills we need.

We will address this by reviewing the business plan and budget quarterly so that the GDS Operations Board can take action if required.

2: We have difficulty hiring and keeping skilled staff.

We will address this by:

  • making plans and processes to attract and keep the best digital and technology people
  • defining clear career paths
  • identifying development opportunities for staff
  • reviewing compensation and reward packages to meet market expectations

3: Identity assurance isn’t accredited for public beta in time to meet plans.

We will address this by making sure the requirements are understood and planned for.

4: Performance Platform: there’s the risk that the demand for custom development may be too large for the GDS team to meet.

We will address this by managing demand for transactional services data rigorously.

5: GDS fails to meet savings targets set out in the Cabinet Office – Efficiency and Reform Group business plan.

We will address this by reviewing the projected portfolio benefits each quarter so that:

  • the business plan will be monitored to track progress of each benefit and saving milestone
  • where benefits and savings may not to be met, this will be raised with the GDS Operations board
  • any new benefits and problems will be assessed and considered during quarterly reviews

And by:

  • assessing development plans for transformation projects identified in departments’ digital strategies
  • making sure baseline budgets are set at the start of each project to measure savings against
  • reviewing spending controls to find further savings

Annex A – Detailed plans for business units

Transformation Programme (Exemplar Services)

Mission statement

Our mission statement is to:

  • make 25 important government services digital by default
  • improve digital skills and expertise in the departments and agencies responsible

Our goals

Our goals are to:

  • identify the main user needs to be met by the digital exemplars
  • put in place user-focused people and processes to deliver secure, high quality digital services
  • deliver digital services so good that all who can use them prefer to

We will:

  • review digital capability of exemplar teams
  • work with departments to make plans to develop digital capability
  • support the management of exemplar teams who ask for help
  • publish management guidance in the Service Manual

Exemplar milestones

April to June 2014

April
  • Apprenticeships Applications - alpha complete
May
  • Lasting Power of Attorney – live
  • Patents Renewal - live
  • Digital Self Assessment - public beta
  • Business tax dashboard - public beta
  • Prison Visit Bookings - public beta
  • Land Registry - discovery
June
  • Electoral Registration – live
  • Waste Carriers - live
  • Visa exemplar - public beta
  • Passports - alpha complete

July to September 2014

July
  • Prison Visit Bookings - live
  • View Driving Record - live
  • Rural Support - release 1 beta
August
  • Land Registry - alpha complete
September
  • Redundancy Payments - public beta
  • PAYE for employees - public beta with IDA
  • Registered Traveller - public beta

October to December 2014

October
  • Vehicle Management - live
  • Apprenticeships Applications - public beta
November
  • Claim Carers - live
December
  • Electoral Registration – live
  • Civil Claims - live
  • Prison Visits - live
  • Registered Traveller - live
  • Redundancy Payments - public beta

January to March 2015

January
  • Rural Support - release 2 live
February
  • Apprenticeship Applications - live
  • Redundancy Payments - live
March
  • Business Tax Dashboard - live
  • Digital Self Assessment - live
  • Passports - live
  • PAYE for Employees - live
  • Visas - live

Budget and people

Budget

Budget name Amount
Permanent staff £2,636,009
Interims £3,376,377
Suppliers (the bench) £1,898,419
Expenses £307,620
Agile coaching £1,036,800
Capability building £194,400
Bridging finance £200,000
Miscellaneous eg kit, training £370,376
Total £10,020,000

People

Civil servant grade Headcount
SCS1 4
Band A+ 7
Band A 20
Band B 6
Band C 1
Total 38

There’ll also be 40 interim members of staff.

Organisation

The structure of the Transformation Programme

Transformation and the Deputy Director are at the top of the Transformation Programme.

The Exemplary Support and Delivery Teams are in Transformation.

Engagement and Events, and Programme Management are underneath the Deputy Director.

Risks

1: We’re unable to hire skilled digital people in departmental teams.

We will address this by:

  • using the People and Skills business unit to help departments recruit
  • helping departments hire interim staff to fill skills gaps
  • developing the skills of permanent staff
  • using agile coaches to develop agile digital skills within teams
  • opening up the GDS service manager training course to a larger group of trainees

2: The governance framework is put in place too late in an organisation to release exemplars on time.

We will address this by:

  • piloting the alpha framework with Defra and Home Office in early 2014
  • re-prioritising the programme according to need
  • re-prioritising resources to make sure frameworks are in place early

3: Procurement methods don’t allow small, fast or flexible contracts.

We will address this by:

  • continuing to help departments to procure for digital exemplars
  • Promoting G-Cloud and the Digital Services framework to encourage the right procurement approaches and contracts and giving buyer support to departments

GOV.UK

Mission statement

Simpler, clearer, faster access to government services and information.

Our goals

Our goals are to:

  • move all government, agency and arm’s length body websites to GOV.UK
  • achieve excellent levels of operational service for the GOV.UK platform

Objectives

Our objectives are to:

  • move 320 agencies and arm’s length body websites, including HMRC’s website, to GOV.UK by the end of 2014
  • improve GOV.UK to meet the specialist needs of the users of HMRC, agencies and arm’s length bodies
  • continually improve mainstream content, page design, search, navigation, publishing tools and the licensing service
  • support government users of the publishing platform by publishing the GOV.UK proposition and providing more standards, guidelines, training and technical support
  • publish regular reports on the performance of GOV.UK and trial new performance dashboards for every user need met on GOV.UK
  • simplify GOV.UK’s architecture to help integrate with external publishing tools and APIs

Milestones

April to June 2014

April
  • Scheduled publishing for mainstream content
May
  • HMRC contacts app - alpha
  • Specialist navigation - alpha
  • New navigation modules for organisations homepage format
  • Improvements to GOV.UK site search
June
  • First complete GOV.UK proposition statement published
  • Manuals format - alpha
  • Improved security model for publishers accessing

July to September 2014

July
  • Location and support type filters added to Business Finance and Support Finder tool
  • All agencies and ALBs (except those with complex specialist needs) complete transition to GOV.UK
August
  • External link tracking enabled
  • Changes to shared parental leave content and tools
  • Reporting on the key performance indicators for GOV.UK
September
  • HMRC manuals app - live
  • Second content delivery network for GOV.UK - live
  • New GOV.UK homepage

October to December 2014

October
  • Performance dashboards based on user needs - alpha
November
  • Formal training programme for content designers in government
December
  • All agencies and ALBs complete transition to GOV.UK
  • Improved integration of blogs and services with www.gov.uk

January to March 2015

January
  • Improved navigation on transaction done pages
February
  • Automated quality checks for content within publishing tools

Budget and people

Budget

Budget name Amount
Civil servants £5,322,600
Interims £7,595,100
Agency and Arms Length Body (AALB) Transition: Delivery Management £19,900
AALB Transition: Content £339,900
AALB Transition: Specialist Platform Build £475,600
GOV.UK team: Programme and Proposition £417,853
GOV.UK team: User Formats £365,000
GOV.UK team: Licensing £215,000
GOV.UK team: Infrastructure £2,358,000
Total £17,108,953

People

Civil servant grade Headcount
SCS1 2
Band A+ 1
Band A 77
Technical Information Specialist (TIS) 4
Band B2 7
Band B1 4
Band C 1
Total 96

There’ll also be 10 interim members of staff.

The headcount forecast is based on the situation after moving to GOV.UK.

Risks

  1. The size and complexity of moving HMRC to GOV.UK makes timescales more uncertain.
  2. Specialist platform development has only just started, so scope and timescales are hard to gauge.
  3. Budget forecast depends on many roles switching from interim to full-time contracts.

Performance and Delivery

Mission statement

We aim to deliver services that let the civil service use data and user research to make sure that all services on GOV.UK meet the Service Standard.

Our goals

Our goals are to:

  • make sure all new or redesigned services meet the Service Standard
  • extend the scope of the Service Standard if necessary
  • connect all major government services to the Performance Platform, and show the value of dashboards to departments and agencies so they choose to use them
  • put user researchers into every digital project and demonstrate to departments and agencies the value of user research so they choose to use them
  • put data analytics into every digital project and demonstrate the value of data science by using prototypes
  • build a government-wide data science network

What we do

Performance Platform

We:

  • provide dashboards for all major government departments
  • fix broken connections within 7 days
  • publish our code, raw data, documentation and blog commentary
  • provide a collector library for common data sources
  • improve the Performance Platform

User research

We:

  • run the in-house user research lab
  • encourage service teams to do agile user research in-house
  • maintain the design pattern library, informed by user research

Data analytics

We:

  • build analytics prototypes
  • develop a community of product analysts
  • coach digital teams in using analytics

Service Standard

We:

  • run assessments to make sure no service goes live that doesn‘t meet the Service Standard
  • return assessment reports in 3 days
  • publish all assessment reports
  • raise awareness of the Service Standard
  • help departments build the capability to meet the Service Standard and to run self-certification for smaller services

Milestones

April to June 2014

April
  • Digital by Default Service Standard comes into force
  • Secure PEX(ER) mandate for the Performance Platform
  • Performance Prototype: Future Fire Risk (DCLG and Fire Brigade)
May
  • Release 37 content dashboards for departments and editors on GOV.UK
  • Release around 80 dashboards for every major government transaction
  • First service assessment to pass the live Digital by Default Service Standard
  • Launch the GDS User Research Lab
June
  • Review scope of Service Standard
  • Publish documentation for departments to connect their services to the Performance Platform
  • GOV.UK data and user research priorities agreed
  • Passports - alpha complete

July to September 2014

July
  • Pattern library for services within the Service
  • Design Manual established
  • Reboot product analyst community
  • Develop strategy for coaching and supporting digital teams in analysis and performance measurement
August
  • Beta release of the Performance Platform
September
  • Process for on-going assurance of Service Standard ready
  • Launch a stub dashboard for every government service (700+)
  • Comparisons tool
  • Start Business As Usual (BAU) process for coaching and supporting digital teams in analysis and performance measurement

October to December 2014

October
  • Dashboard for Performance Platform
November
  • Alerts and notifications available for dashboard
December
  • Review self-certification process for Service Board
  • Mid year review of Service Standard

January to March 2015

January
  • Maps available on dashboards
February
  • Better capture of feedback on Performance Platform
March
  • Annual Review of Service Standard
  • All major services connected to dashboard
  • Live release of the Performance Platform

Budget and people

Budget

Budget name Amount
Civil servants £2,287,136
Interims £896,000
Infrastructure £120,000
User research lab £114,000
Performance Platform SMEs £360,000
Total £3,777,136

People

Civil servant grade Headcount
SCS1 1
Band A+ 3
Band A 28.5
TIS 2
Band B2 3
Band B1 0
Total 37.5

There’ll also be 7 interim members of staff.

Risks

1: The Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) programme relies on departments paying connection costs of bespoke data collection software. There’s a risk they won’t all do this.

We will address this by talking to service providers about connecting useful data to the platform. The first cross government event is planned for 17 June 2014.

2: The volume of Service Standard assessments is forecast to be constant. There’s a risk that this forecast is wrong.

We will address this by monitoring the level of assessments so peaks can be spotted early and work re-planned.

3: Recruitment and retention of suitably skilled staff.

We will address this by working with GDS operations to fill vacancies quickly and effectively, and prioritising keeping and developing staff.

Identity Assurance Programme

Mission statement

We aim to establish GOV.UK sign-in as the default way to access government services.

Our goals

Our goals are to:

  • create a new default way for people to sign in to digital services
  • publish standards for identity assurance
  • stimulate a market of identity services
  • build a federated identity assurance service with departments

What we do

Developing products

The identity assurance programme is responsible for 4 products:

  • identity assurance for individuals
  • identity assurance for organisations and agents
  • document-checking service
  • standards (5 good practice guides published to date)

Commercial role

Cabinet Office is the sole government authority for identity assurance services. Centralised contracts are developed and paid for by the programme.

Supporting the Digital Transformation Programme

Identity assurances services will be provided for the 25 exemplars.

Services are planning to start using identity assurance in financial year ending March 2015.

The View Driving Record (DVLA) service started using identity assurance in the April to June 2014 quarter.

Services using identity assurance from the July to September 2014 quarter are:

  • CAP (Rural Payments Agency)
  • Magistrates’ common platform (MOJ)

Services using identity assurance from the October to December 2014 quarter are:

  • Passports (lost/stolen/renewals)
  • Single Tier Pension (DWP)

The Self Assessment first tranche service started using identity assurance in the January to March 2015 quarter.

Milestones

April to June 2014

April
  • Transaction monitoring discovery complete (Standards)
  • Prior Information Notice [PIN] launched Market engagement event (Programme)
May
  • Verizon connect to the IDA hub (Identity assurance for individuals)
  • Network connections migrate from Government Secure Intranet (GSi) to Public Service Network (PSN)
  • Alpha complete (Identity assurance for organisations and agents)
  • £10m Cyber funding approval from HM Treasury (Programme)
June
  • View Driving Record connects to the IDA hub in private beta (Identity assurance for individuals)
  • Publish Good Practice Guide 45 (Identity Proofing and Verification) v 2.3 (Standards)

July to September 2014

July
  • CAP service connects to the IDA hub in private beta (Identity assurance for individuals)
  • Beta service available to identity providers (Document checking service)
  • Publish Good Practice Guide 44 (Authentication) v2.0 (Standards)
August
  • IDA Programme governance and engagement refresh complete (Programme)
September
  • Magistrates’ common platform (MOJ) connects to the IDA hub (Identity assurance for individuals)

October to December 2014

October
  • Allowing selected relying parties to go into public beta (Identity assurance for individuals)
  • Procurement II (OJEU launch) (Programme)
November
  • Document Checking Service (DCS) goes live (Document checking service)
December
  • Passports (lost/stolen/renewals) connects to the IDA hub (Identity assurance for individuals)
  • Single Tier Pension (DWP) connects to the IDA hub

January to March 2015

March
  • Self Assessment first tranche (HMRC) connects to the IDA hub (Identity assurance for individuals)
  • Procurement II (Programme)
  • Contracts signed

Budget and people

The programme is funded by the UK National Cyber Security Programme.

Budget

Budget name Amount
Civil servants £1,900,000
Interims £1,500,000
Infrastructure and services £6,600,000
Total £10,000,000

People

Civil servant grade Headcount
SCS1 1
Band A 57
Band B2 7
Band B1 0
Band C 0
Total 65

There’ll also be 20 interim members of staff.

The programme’s structure is changing as emphasis moves from development to service delivery and improvement.

For each deliverable, a team is created from the workstreams within the programme. For larger projects, or when there are several products in development, more temporary resources may be needed. This lets people work on several products and features at different stages of development, making better use of resources and expertise and letting us deal with priorities.

Given the expansion of the service, the programme will replace interims with civil service staff.

Risks

1: The identity assurance service isn’t accredited for public beta on schedule.

We will address this by working with identity providers and others to make sure that the requirements for accreditation are understood and planned for.

2: The programme’s operations team may not be in place when the service goes live if the skilled personnel needed haven’t been found, or staff leave before a replacement is hired.

We will address this by making sure spending has been approved and a Head of Operations hired. We’re also hiring more staff, with new members of the operations team joining during 2014.

3: Users may be unable to complete the transaction. This could happen if the user journey is too complicated, or if users don’t have the documents or identity profile to meet the standard.

We will address this by:

  • encouraging Identity Providers to make their registration process user friendly
  • getting Identity Providers’ reasons when people don’t meet requirements, and revisiting Good Practice Guides where appropriate
  • making sure users are aware of what’s needed from them and when they’ll be able to join the service

4: The Hub service doesn’t meet user needs because it lacks features or doesn’t adapt to support the volume of users.

We will address this by building the hub service from small applications that can adapt quickly to variable demand. Increases in demand will need to be anticipated to adapt the service ahead of any peaks.

Office of the Chief Technology Officer

Mission statement

We aim to equip government with the technology to deliver world-class digital services.

Our goals

Our goals are to:

  • lead technology in government
  • establish OCTO as the best place for technology advice and direction
  • create a common architecture business unit to make an affordable and flexible platform for the delivery of government digital services
  • create a set of common technology services for government to use
  • help departments make the best decisions about the technology they’ll need to maximise value for money
  • sustain our technology capability

What we do

Tech leadership

We will:

  • convene the technology leaders network, setting standards and agreeing modes of procurement, architecture, security and services
  • provide a centre of expertise, including published guidance in the Service Design Manual
  • define open standards through the Open Standards Board

Common Technology Services

We will:

  • continue to roll out common technology services to improve IT for staff in Cabinet Office, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and UK Financial Investments
  • set up a Crown hosting service to manage existing hosting arrangements and phase them out as departments adopt cloud hosting
  • develop services so civil servants can share documents and use calendars and collaboration tools
  • develop government network policy including the future of the Public Services Network (PSN) strategy and integrate the PSN team into Common Technology Services

Architecture

We will:

  • build and operate an integrated service for technical architecture
  • lead a community of architects to oversee the service

Reform

We will:

  • continue to help departments reform by helping them leave their current IT contracts
  • reshape technology departments and design better technology programmes which have spend controls
  • deliver and measure savings

Milestones

April to June 2014

April
  • Produce savings figure (Reform)
  • Understand Priority 1 datasets in the Home Office (Tech leadership)
May
  • UK Borders alpha complete (Reform)
  • PSN transition to GDS - inception and discovery
June
  • Audited savings published (financial year ending March 2015) (Reform)
  • 2nd set of open standards published: Document Format (Tech leadership)
  • Cabinet Office beta begins (CTS)
  • Hosting OJEU published
  • Architecture discovery complete (Architecture)

July to September 2014

July
  • Map of EU regulations and directives (Tech leadership)
  • Engagement/operating model between CTS and departments published (CTS)
  • Benefits statement for measuring success complete
  • Start Cabinet Office Information Technology rollouts (end of beta for majority of services)
August
  • Standardise pipeline with departments (Reform)
  • Service Manual drop 2 (Tech leadership)
  • UKFI Live (CTS)
  • DCMS beta begins
  • New compliance structure agreed
September
  • Standards Hub meets Service Standard (Tech leadership)

October to December 2014

October
  • Publish contracts/pipeline on Contracts Finder (Reform)
  • Savings figure for April to September 2014
  • Automate pipeline creation info tool
  • Cabinet Office - live (CTS)
November
  • Service Manual drop 3 (Tech leadership )
  • DCMS - live (CTS)
  • Common Networks service - alpha

January to March 2015

January
  • Savings figure for April to December 2014 (Reform)
  • Hosting roll-out (CTS)
  • Hosting accreditations in place
February
  • Service Manual drop 4 (Tech leadership)

Budget and people

Budget

Budget name Amount
Civil servants £2,508,298
Interims £663,826
Tech leadership non-people £44,400
Tech architects £2,025,742
Total £5,242,266

People

Civil servant grade Headcount
SCS2 1
SCS1 5
Band A+ 1
Band A 38
Band B2 4
Band B1 2
Band C 0
Tech Arch 12
Total 63

There’ll also be 28 interim members of staff and 10 of them will be technical architects.

Organisation

Structure of the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO)

The following teams are underneath the Chief Technology Officer:

  • Reform
  • Technology Leadership
  • Architecture
  • OCTO and Programme
  • Common Technology Services

The Cabinet Office IT Team sit beneath Common Technology Services.

Risks

1: Common Technology Services: delivery of Cabinet Office technology transformation is at risk due to difficulties in getting the business case signed off quickly.

We will address this by:

  • working with senior leadership in the Cabinet Office
  • getting budget sign-off from the Cabinet Office finance director
  • enhancing commercial capability within the team

2: Common Technology Services: the scope is likely to change without clarity on staff numbers and budget.

We will address this by getting scope and budgets quickly before committing to more work.

3: Common Technology Services: future needs may be too much for current staff numbers.

We will address this by:

  • working closely with the Reform team to determine needs
  • talking to departments early on
  • making sure forthcoming needs are visible

4: Common Technology Services: CTS and Programme Leadership remain overstretched.

We will address this by:

  • establishing future needs as early as possible
  • confirming budget and staff numbers needed to do the extra work

5: Reform: Departments can see OCTO and GDS as a blocker rather than enabler and therefore don’t want to cooperate. Issues within departments may take time, affecting other work. There may not be resources to support all cases.

We will address this by:

  • talking to departments early, before cases are submitted to the controls process
  • securing budget to fill current vacancies

6: Reform: Savings may need to be more transparent

We will address this by putting the right people in place to gather evidence.

7: Technology Leadership: there is the potential for litigation on Open Standards.

We will address this by:

  • making sure the Open Standards process is transparent
  • documenting all decisions made

8: Technology Leadership: Direction and guidance isn’t clear. It isn’t clear ‘what good looks like.’

We will address this by:

  • refreshing the format of the Tech Leaders network
  • continuing discussions between users and Tech Leaders through workshops and Civil Service Live
  • retiring old ICT strategy documents and updating the Service Manual

9: OCTO programme: there may be a lack of resources to deliver objectives

The Government Chief Technology Officer will address this by gaining funding at the executive level.

People and Skills

Mission statement

We support departments in recruiting the best people and skills to meet the digital and technology objectives of government. We do that by helping where possible and acting when necessary.

Our goals

Our goals are to:

  • develop new approaches for hiring digital and technology people
  • support recruitment of digital and tech specialists
  • give training and support to digital and tech specialists in government
  • continue to improve the digital and technology fast stream

What we will do

We will:

  • hire the best digital and technology people for departments in transition, or in need of a lot of help
  • develop new ways to hire people to make sure the best people are hired as quickly and easily as possible
  • train service managers to better manage digital services
  • give development paths for digital and technology fast streamers

We will give advice on:

  • how to recruit the best digital and technology people for government
  • how to make the most of current recruitment processes
  • which specialist headhunters to speak to
  • how to reorganise a department’s digital and technology management to work more effectively
  • how to integrate digital and technology into learning and development curricula

We will offer the following tools:

  • skills matrices and assessment tools
  • sample job descriptions, salary data and interview questions
  • market data and trends

Milestones

April to June 2014

April
  • Business development: perform tests on agencies’ ability to source specialist candidates via Non Medical Non Clinical (NMNC)
May
  • Business development: NMNC tests to place roles in MOJ
  • Digital and Technology (DaT) fast stream: finalise model for delivery of scheme
June
  • Recruitment: develop preliminary set of tools and guidance on salary, market trends etc
  • Business development: proposal to Civil Service Commission on new approach to permanent recruitment
  • Communication of DaT completed
  • Business development: tests to place NMNC candidates in 2 more departments
  • Organisational design: discovery completed
  • Skills: 1 day digital specialist foundation course - alpha (with DWP)
  • Skills: Evaluation of SCS masterclasses: Alpha in a half Day, Digital landscapes

July to September 2014

July
  • Recruitment: test tools with departments
  • Skills: run and evaluate the Civil Service Live digital skills sessions at the 5 event
  • Skills: Evaluation of SCS masterclasses: Service Design
  • Skills: community management framework and playbook published
  • Skills: publish alpha version of digital and technology skills matrix
August
  • Recruitment: iterate tools and roll out
  • Business development: finalise timetable for adopting new approach with Civil Service Commission
September
  • Business development: test new approach with selected campaigns
  • DaT fast stream: handover to CS Fast Stream
  • Business development: proposal to CCS to agree NMNC rollout and agreed with COERG Executive Committee
  • Organisational design: alpha models tested

October to December 2014

October
  • Recruitment: conduct senior GDS reviews of recruitment requirements for 5 departments
  • Skills: publish beta version of digital and technology skills matrix with added competencies and learning pathway
November
  • Business development: roll out new approach to permanent recruitment for new campaign

January to March 2015

March
  • Skills: 150 service managers trained through the service manager induction and development programme

Budget and people

Budget

Budget name Amount
Civil Servants £604,972
Interims £1,384,386
Non-people costs Nil
Total £1,989,358

People

Civil servant grade Headcount
SCS1 1
Band A 5
Band B2 5
Band B1 0
Band C 0
Total 11

There’ll also be 10 interim members of staff.

Organisation

Structure of the People and Skills unit

Business Development, Recruitment, and Skills are within the People and Skills business unit.

Risks

1: There may be issues between GDS and some pivotal influencers such as Civil Service Learning and HR professionals.

We will address this by talking openly to resolve difficulties.

2: There’s the risk we fail to meet increasing demands due to resource limits, causing frustration with the People and Skills business unit or GDS.

We will address this by managing expectations so that the business unit’s scope doesn’t spill into low priority work.

3: Government has difficulty adapting its approach and processes to a candidate-led market.

We will address this by giving compelling evidence and rationale for change so that we can persuade government to work differently.

4: Government may be unable to attract and retain talent due to Civil Service restrictions on compensation and reward.

We will address this by reviewing compensation packages for digital and technology staff to make sure we’re meeting market expectations to attract the necessary talent.

Digital Commercial Programme

Mission statement

We will transform the way the public sector buys IT and digital services.

Our core purpose is to create a more open and competitive market that gives access to quality suppliers through frameworks like G-Cloud.

This programme lets government buy what it needs and will change the way that government and the public sector buys digital services and technology.

Our goals

Our goals are to:

  • transform the way the public sector buys IT and digital services to make sure user needs are met
  • deliver the exemplar services using agile IT and commissioning
  • identify and understand the IT and digital needs of government, and the products and services to meet them
  • make public sector buying of IT and digital simpler, clearer, faster
  • encourage innovation in the market
  • make government an intelligent customer in digital procurement
  • make sure users understand how to buy from and sell to the public sector
  • continually improve by engaging with users
  • give a better understanding of buying across the public sector, using data

What we will do

We will:

  • deliver a new digital marketplace built on user needs to replace the Cloudstore and Digital Services Store
  • publish a Digital Marketplace Strategy
  • deliver the second iteration of the Digital Services framework
  • deliver the fifth and sixth iterations of the G-Cloud framework
  • publish guidance for buyers and suppliers to provide technical support, education and awareness for the new marketplace
  • carry out a market engagement and education programme for stakeholders and buyers
  • publish new G-Cloud security principles and processes
  • give support to users through Zendesk and analyse data to make improvements based on live feedback
  • provide commissioning and procurement support for GDS and other government departments

Milestones

April to June 2014

April
  • OJEU for G-Cloud 5 framework published
  • Project initiation for Digital Services framework 2 (DSf2)
  • First rounds of lab-based user testing for Digital Marketplace
  • G-Cloud accreditation submission backlog fully cleared
May
  • Complete scoping for Cloudstore retirement
  • G-Cloud 5 framework live
  • Digital Marketplace alpha
  • Digital Marketplace beta scope and solution agreed
  • Confirm policy outcomes for DSf
  • Finalise roadmap showing process matrix, priorities, blockers and dependencies for DSf2 release deadline
  • First rounds of lab-based user testing for Digital Services Store
  • Cloud Security Principles Implementation guidance alpha
  • G-Cloud Security process approved
June
  • Cloudstore Digital Marketplace data model alignment agreed
  • Complete feedback analysis from alpha user testing of Digital Marketplace
  • Agree on interoperability of any new tools and evaluate tool prototype
  • Data import tool built for Digital Services Store / Digital Marketplace
  • DSf2 Self-assessment: evaluation tool prototype
  • Digital Services Store - SID4GOV removed
  • G-Cloud ‘potential savings’ report to be posted on blog with case studies
  • Panel and demo at Civil Service Live events
  • Release alpha Digital Marketplace strategy
  • Agree security questionnaire for inclusion in G6 Framework
  • Cloud Security Principles developed into G-Cloud processes
  • G-Cloud Security process guidance published in beta

July to September 2014

July
  • Digital Marketplace public beta release
  • Support contract for Digital Marketplace awarded
  • DSf2 OJEU publication opens for submissions
  • Publish supplier guidance for DSf
  • Build ‘Direct Award’ functionality for Digital Services Store
  • Build E-Auction tool for Digital Services Store
  • Iterate Digital Marketplace Strategy based on stakeholder feedback and evaluation
August
  • Cloudstore retirement plan published
  • Discovery for how Digital Services framework transitions into the Digital Marketplace
  • Publish plans for live release of DSf2
  • Start of evaluation and QA of Suppliers Cloud Security Principles Statements
September
  • Publish live Digital Marketplace Strategy

October to December 2014

October
  • Decommission Cloudstore
  • G-Cloud goes live in Digital Marketplace; G-Cloud 6 OJEU Notice published
  • DSf2 live
November
  • Dynamic framework development
  • Issue cloud Security Principles questionnaire to G4 and G5 suppliers
December
  • Beta of Digital Services framework in Digital Marketplace

January to March 2015

January
  • G6 goes live
February
  • G7 Scope and Technology approach agreed (dynamic framework)
  • Publish guidelines for content for G7
  • DSf2 fully live in Digital Marketplace

Budget and people

Budget

Budget name Amount
Civil servants £972,431
Interims £1,307,897
Cloudstore £400,000
Security accreditation £100,000
Digital Marketplace £1,100,565
Engagement £50,000
Total £3,930,893

People

Civil servant grade Headcount
SCS1 1
Band A 9
Band B2 7
Band B1 3
Band C 1
TIB 1
Total 22

There’ll also be 16 interim members of staff.

Organisation

Structure of the Digital Commercial Programme

The Director heads up the Digital Commercial Programme. Underneath them is:

  • Engagement
  • Security and Accreditation
  • Commissioning
  • Strategy
  • Digital Marketplace

The Digital Services Store, Cloudstore, and Digital Marketplace are within Digital Marketplace.

Risks

1: Poor assessment of workload puts deadlines in jeopardy.

We will address this by:

  • prioritising the scope of the beta release
  • planning achievable sprints
  • improving efficiency, including automating quality assurance

2: There are inconsistent interpretations of what’s possible (such as constraints of EU regulations and framework terms and conditions). These affect the advice we give to customers and the business change programme, causing delay.

We will address this by:

  • working more closely with partners and stakeholders
  • prioritising commercial outcomes
  • improving management and advice given during the controls and approvals processes

3: Policy strategy is inconsistent and unclear.

We will address this by:

  • seeking clarity on dependencies and ownership of risks to make sure that proper planning takes place
  • improving communication and understanding in all workstreams
  • encouraging visibility and honesty around blockers – and dealing with them

Digital Policy and Departmental Engagement

Mission statement

We aim to be the link between GDS and other parts of government, leading on cross government strategies and policies.

We will support senior digital and technology leadership, and provide prompt and accurate briefing on the government’s progress in providing digital services and information.

Our goals

Our goals are to:

  • make sure that take-up rates of government digital services reflect the proportion of UK adults that are online and able to use them (82%)
  • make sure that people who can’t use digital services independently have support to complete transactions
  • work with the public, private and voluntary sectors to help people go online, so that by April 2016, the number of people lacking basic digital capability is reduced by 25%
  • provide a cross-government decisionmaking framework to make sure decisions are acted upon effectively and on time
  • monitor and report on progress made on the commitments set out in the Government Digital Strategy, and report issues promptly
  • make sure all correspondence, freedom of information and other briefing requests are dealt with promptly and accurately

What we do

Digital take-up (Action 8 in the Government Digital Strategy)

We:

  • share digital take-up techniques that have proved most effective
  • help service owners set digital take-up targets, and challenge low targets
  • help service managers increase digital take-up through user research support
  • support cultural change by encouraging service managers to think about digital take-up early on in development
  • support the creation of digital take-up plans and assess them rigorously during Service Standard assessments

Assisted Digital (Action 9 in the Government Digital Strategy):

We:

  • make sure assisted digital guidance in the Service Design Manual is maintained and reflects good practice
  • maintain the Digital by Default Service Standard for assisted digital, enforced from April 2014
  • pilot the cross-government assisted digital model (summer 2014)
  • set up the assisted digital commissioning vehicle (to go live by January 2015)

Digital Inclusion (Action 15 in the Government Digital Strategy)

We:

  • work with government departments and public, private and voluntary sectors to complete the actions of the digital inclusion strategy
  • add guidance on offline users to the Service Design Manual and Service Manager training by June 2014
  • work with exemplar leads to publish the digital inclusion scales for each exemplar by June 2014
  • establish and extend digital capability support for Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprises (VCSEs) and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) alongside Go ON UK’s regional programmes by September 2014
  • run a research project on offline users of government services funded by relevant departments by October 2014
  • support people’s voluntary efforts on digital inclusion by setting up a digital champions network by autumn 2014

Secretariat, scamming and phishing and domain controls

We:

  • put meeting support for all boards in place
  • will host Sprint Digital Leaders in summer 2014
  • will host Sprint Technology Leaders in autumn 2014
  • make sure that misleading websites are minimised so that concerns about scamming and phishing don’t act as a barrier to using GOV.UK
  • chair the .gov.uk naming committee to agree domains
  • recommend GOV.UK exemptions, keeping a master list of government websites

GDS parliamentary and reporting

We:

  • will publish Government Digital Strategy quarterly progress reports and a comprehensive ‘2 years on’ report in December
  • will refresh the Government Digital Strategy in light of new developments and lessons learned, publishing in December
  • give briefings on digital strategy progress to Civil Service Reform Team, Civil Service Board and others on request
  • deal with correspondence, freedom of information requests and other requests to civil service deadlines

Milestones

April to June 2014

April
  • Publish Digital Inclusion Strategy and UK Digital Inclusion Charter
  • Lloyds to publish SME/charity digital maturity index (repeats April and Sept)
  • Publish first iteration of digital inclusion scale (including guidance on how to use it) in Service Design Manual
  • Review all existing digital take-up case studies, start to add private sector case studies to Service Design Manual
  • Government Digital Strategy - quarterly progress report published
May
  • Cross-government Assisted Digital (AD) model agreed by departments with requirements for telephone and face-by-face support
  • Complete AD field research
  • Publish cross-government AD user personas in the Service Design Manual
  • Publish guidance on building services that help people go online
  • Digital Inclusion (DI) Delivery Plan first draft produced
  • Start misleading websites comms campaign with departments and partner
June
  • Proposal developed for piloting and testing elements of the cross-government AD model
  • Complete analysis of AD field research and finalise cross-government AD user personas and journeys, and main AD user and provider needs
  • Establish common definition of basic digital skills
  • Publish draft service complexity assessment for all 25 exemplars (as mapped against the DI scale) on the Transformation Dashboard
  • DI Delivery Plan agreed with Charter partners and departments

July to September 2014

July
  • Develop and conduct a small scale test of Assisted Digital messaging on GOV.UK with an exemplar service’s existing contact centre
  • Demonstrate cross-government phone triage centre to AD leads/ Digital Leaders/ front-line staff from across government
  • Final annual report on government websites published
  • Government Digital Strategy - quarterly progress report published
August
  • Issue OJEU (Official Journal of European Union) notice and start AD Commissioning Vehicle tender period
September
  • Support Go ON UK regional rollout in the North West of England
  • Government Digital Strategy - quarterly progress report published

October to December 2014

October
  • Support people’s voluntary efforts on digital inclusion by establishment of a digital champions network
  • Run a research project on offline users of government services funded jointly by relevant departments
  • Sprint Technology Leaders conference
  • Publish full list of GOV.UK domains
  • AD Commissioning Vehicle tender period complete; start evaluation of supplier proposals
November
  • National awareness campaign on Digital Inclusion (TBC)
December
  • AD Commissioning Vehicle - complete evaluation of supplier proposals and award contracts
  • Update/refresh of Government Digital Strategy published
  • Government Digital Strategy - quarterly progress report and ‘two years on’ report published

January to March 2015

January
  • AD Commissioning Vehicle goes live
  • Contribute to Sprint 15
March
  • Digital Inclusion embedded in departmental business plans for 2015 to 2016

Budget and people

Budget

Budget name Amount
Civil servants £1,997,258
Interims £323,952
Digital take-up £50,000
Assisted Digital £120,030
Digital Inclusion -£293,872
Secretariat £22,040
Total £2,219,408

People

Civil servant grade Headcount
SCS2 1
SCS1 2
Band A+ 1
Band A 14
Band B2 14
Band B1 3
Total 35

There’ll also be 3 interim members of staff.

Organisation

Structure of the Digital Policy and Departmental Engagement (DPDE) business unit

The following teams are in the DPDE unit:

  • The Director’s Office
  • Digital Takeup
  • Assisted Digital
  • Digital Inclusion
  • Secretariat, Phishing, Scamming, Domain, Control
  • GDS Parliamentary and Reporting

Risks

1: Demonstrating the value of the digital inclusion team can be difficult. There’s a risk of our partners taking the credit.

We will address this by regularly reporting how the team has helped and encourage others to talk about our role.

2: There may be difficulty providing cross-government assisted digital support acceptable to digital leaders and ministers, and there’s a risk of failing to meet the assisted digital strategy.

We will address this by:

  • continuing hands-on work with exemplars
  • showing how cross-government assisted digital provision might look
  • continuing assisted digital pilots
  • regularly briefing ministers on progress

3: Digital take-up could be damaged by public concerns about scamming and phishing.

We will address this by:

  • working with search engine providers, Advertising Standards Authority, National Trading Standards Board and others to deal with misleading websites
  • launching a campaign to make sure the public knows to use GOV.UK

4: Hiring and keeping skilled staff could be difficult.

We will address this by:

  • working with GDS operations to hire quickly and effectively
  • prioritising keeping and developing staff

5: There’s a lack of internal and external profiles of Digital Policy and Departmental Engagement work.

We will address this by:

  • setting up assisted digital and digital inclusion blogs, and using them
  • presenting DPDE programmes at all staff meetings, show and tell and Digital Leaders meetings

6: There’s a risk of falling behind departments’ plans so we become irrelevant or less useful.

We will address this by:

  • responding quickly
  • giving regular reminders of work plans and timescales to deal with problems early

Digital Engagement and Design

Mission statement

We’re here to help design and explain world-class digital services.

Our goals

Our goals are to:

  • help design world-class experiences for users
  • help people who need to understand the work of GDS
  • build awareness, understanding and trust of GOV.UK

What we do

We:

  • handle communications, including internal comms and media relations
  • run social media and blogs for GDS and GOV.UK
  • run the Civil Service website (though this is moving to GOV.UK), social media and blogs
  • embed digital engagement leads into necessary GDS business unit
  • handle events, visits and important meetings
  • design the 25 exemplars
  • design GOV.UK
  • create video, design, print, words and presentations
  • front end development for creative tasks
  • other miscellaneous tasks

Milestones

Our milestones include:

  • H2 event (June 2014)
  • CS Live (June to July 2014)
  • Sprint Beta (September 2014)
  • Sprint 15 (January 2015)

Budget and people

Budget

Budget name Amount
Civil servants £1,461,420
Interims £888,140
Non-people costs £284,725
Total £2,634,285

People

Civil Servant grade Headcount
SCS1 3
Band A 20
TIS 1
Band B2 8
Band B1 1
Total 33

There’ll also be 11 interim members of staff.

Risks

1: The loss of people from important roles and difficulty replacing them.

We will address this by:

  • creating a retention strategy for important roles which may be limited by Cabinet Office compensation and reward structure
  • creating the ability to attract and recruit quickly for specialist skills
  • developing succession plans for important personnel
  • making career development plans for important personnel

2: Demands on the team outweigh the resources available.

We will address this by:

  • prioritising demand and allocating resources where they’re most useful
  • escalating to operations board for contingency funding where there aren’t enough resources to meet all demands made of the team
  • recognising that some requests will be denied during this financial year unless more resources or funds are made available

3: The reputation of GOV.UK could be damaged by factors beyond our control.

We will address this by monitoring external sources and escalating matters to the GDS operations board if necessary.

GDS Operations

Mission statement

We give GDS the infrastructure, people, and management information it needs to be a world-class organisation.

Our goals

Our goals are to:

  • give excellent operational support to GDS
  • make sure the GDS business plan is delivered on time, on budget and at sustainable speed
  • give staff the support to achieve their objectives, including the software and hardware they need

What we do

Internal GDS operations

We provide:

  • the service desk and Google Apps suite
  • GDS infrastructure and network support
  • information assurance
  • recruitment
  • interim support
  • performance management
  • people management
  • learning and development
  • compensation and reward
  • office and facilities management
  • finance operations
  • delivery operations
  • portfolio management
  • business planning and benefits management
  • assignment management

Milestones

April to June 2014

April
  • Publish GDS security policy
  • Annual staff performance assessments complete
  • Establish portfolio and programme management definition, standards and purpose
  • Digitise all paper forms or paper receipts for IT equipment
  • Review and report on final year end account
  • Business Continuity Plan updated and published
May
  • E-petitions accreditation complete
  • Virgin migration - improve broadband capacity in Aviation House
  • Provide automatic updates for all mac users
  • GDS base learning agreed - identifying the skills need to work in GDS
  • Re-visit and re-shape approvals board purpose
  • Complete audit for year end saving
June
  • GOV.UK quarterly ITHC
  • Business plan quarterly review
  • Provide auditable savings number for financial year ending March 2015 H2 report

July to September 2014

July
  • Assurance of new content delivery networks (CDN) for GOV.UK
  • Publish GDS July to September 2014 objectives and update on delivery against April to June 2014
  • Publish new portfolio Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
August
  • Setup ITHC call off - switch to suppliers to do health-checks instead of IT team
September
  • Accreditation of 5 Validation Joint Boards for Individual Electoral Registration Digital Service
  • L3 (impact level 3) - official level equipment (eg MacBooks) are to replace legacy official devices (flex machines)
  • Business Plan and budget 6 monthly review
  • Test environment - developing infrastructure for internal IT to be finalised by September
  • Transparency review - report created and published by data.gov about salaries, finances etc

October to December 2014

October
  • Mid year personal performance review
  • Provide Stephen Kelly with October to December 2014 objectives and update on delivery against July to September 2014
  • Transition support for contracts finder and licensing
December
  • GOV.UK quarterly ITHC
  • Winter estimates (SUPPS) - supplementary from start of year

January to March 2015

January
  • GOV.UK annual accreditation
  • Start business plan process early 2015
March
  • Achieve £710 million of savings by year end (pre-audit)

Budget and people

Budget

Budget name Amount
Civil servants £1,070,875
Interims £448,360
Other IT projects £38,000
IL3 project £50,000
Training budget £250,000
ITHC £300,000
IT budget £600,000
People related costs £960,000
Aviation House rent and rates £2,882,720
Other £491,000
Total £7,090,955

People

Civil servant grade Headcount
SCS2 1
SCS1 0
BandA* 2
Band A 5
Band B2 8
Band B1 9
Band C 0
Total 25

There’ll also be 4 interim members of staff.

Organisation

Structure of the Operations business unit

The following teams are in the Operations unit:

  • People Operations
  • GDS IT Operations
  • Finance Operations
  • Delivery Operations

Delivery Operations contains:

  • People Allocation
  • Business Planning
  • Portfolio
  • Benefits Realisation

Risks

1: The emphasis on delivery at GDS can mean processes aren’t used – processes which are critical to the smooth running of the organisation. This can undermine our credibility with Cabinet Office.

We will address this by making our services so good that staff choose to use them. To help business unit manage smaller budgets, the delivery operations team will provide better management information.

2: Budget for IT support only covers GDS so the team doesn’t have the people or money to give the support they’re asked to provide to digital and technology leaders.

We will address this by identifying resource issues and agreeing ways forward with the Operations Board. This will mean talking to other departments and sharing best practice for organisational change.

3: A lack of a clear communications channel for the team means GDS doesn’t know about the good work it does or the processes which GDS staff should follow to get the support to do their jobs.

We will address this by making our services so good that staff choose to use them. A quarterly review and refresh of the business plan will make staff more aware of the work of the team.

4: There may be difficulty agreeing the role of internal IT and how it fits with OCTO strategy.

We will address this by working with OCTO to identify changes and influence thinking.

Executive Director’s Office

Mission statement

We give practical and strategic support to the Executive Director in achieving GDS and ERG objectives.

Goals

Our goals are to:

  • investigate, initiate or run ad hoc projects for the director
  • give effective admin support
  • prioritise work
  • represent the director, both as first point of contact, and by acting in their absence (or identifying a suitable deputy)
  • be the channel for escalation, delegation and communication between GDS and the director
  • make plans to deal with emerging issues, inside and outside of GDS
  • support GDS’s reputation and support networks by building and maintaining strong relationships with stakeholders inside and outside of GDS
  • regularly assess the support the team offers to the director and to GDS to make sure it continually meets needs

Milestones

Our deliverables are restricted to ‘business as usual’ activities and ad hoc projects that may arise through the year. No milestones are planned.

Budget and people

Budget

Budget name Amount
Civil servants £349,936
Interims 0
Non-people costs £0
Total £349,936

People

Civil servant grade Headcount
SCS 2 1
Band A 1
TIS3 0
Band B2 1
Band B1 1
Total 4

There’ll be no interim members of staff.

Organisation

Structure of the Executive Director’s Office

The Executive Director is at the top of the Executive Director’s Office, the Private Secretary is underneath them.

Aps/Business Support, and Diary are beneath the Private Secretary.

Risks

If the work plan remains constant, from June onwards, or when carrying vacancies, the team would be unable to work on new projects or more work without extra resources.