Guidance

Government professions

Published 16 February 2024

1. What is a profession?

Professions work across government on behalf of departments, agencies and functions to develop specialist skills and knowledge in people, set standards and define career pathways. This includes:

• Developing members of a profession to progress from entry into the profession to deep specialist - through accredited routes as well as continuous professional development.
• Supporting members of one profession to build interdisciplinary range through another profession.
• Defining the awareness level learning that creates the essential capabilities every civil servant needs.

You can find out more about developing within your profession on our ‘Specialist skills’ page.

2. What are the different professions?

There are four types of government professions:

• Operational delivery
• Policy
• Functional professions
• Specialist professions

2.1 Operational delivery

The operational delivery profession is the public face of the Civil Service with over 250,000 members. They are responsible for the services that people use everyday, such as processing visas, passports, and driving licenses, running benefit offices, job centres, and courts across the UK, and working in consular offices around the world.

2.2 Policy

Members of the policy profession are responsible for the management of the government’s role in improving the welfare, security and prosperity of the nation. This ranges from designing public services to improving education and health, assessing the infrastructure needs for different parts of the country, ensuring the UK is on track to achieve net zero carbon emissions and level up the economy.

2.3 Functional professions

A function is a grouping aligned across government to manage functional work such as human resources, commercial, or finance. Government functions form a framework for collaboration within organisations and across organisational boundaries, to support efficient and effective delivery of policy, outcomes and services. Find out more on our ‘Government functions’ page.

The functional professions are:

• Actuary - aligned to the analysis function
• Commercial - aligned to the commercial and grants function
• Communications - part of the communications function
• Counter Fraud - aligned to the counter fraud function
• Digital and Data - aligned to the government digital and data function
• Economics - aligned to the analysis function
• Finance - aligned to the finance function
• Geography - aligned to the analysis function
• Human Resources - aligned to the HR function
• Internal Audit - aligned to the internal audit function
• Legal - aligned to the legal function
• Project Delivery - aligned to the project delivery profession
• Property - aligned to the property profession
• Operational Research - aligned to the analysis function
• Risk Management - aligned to the government finance function
• Security - aligned to the security profession
• Social research - aligned to the analysis function
• Statistics - aligned to the analysis function

2.4 Specialist professions

The specialist professions are:

• Corporate Finance (Note: this is a separate profession to the finance profession.)
• Intelligence Analysis
• Knowledge and Information Management
• Clinical
• Occupational Psychology
• Planning
• Planning Inspection
• Science and Engineering
• Tax
• Veterinary

3. What support is available to professions?

Government Skills provides guidance to the recognised government professions as well as those communities wishing to establish a government profession through our ‘Professions Best Practice Framework’ (July 2023) (PDF, 15.2 MB, 38 pages).

Government Skills supports professions and functions by leading two networks that bring together capability, talent and learning leads from across the professions:

• The People Peer Group (PPG) is a community of senior leaders from cross-government professions with responsibility for the delivery of professional capability.
• The Professions L&D Forum is a community of learning and talent development leads from the cross-government professions who meet bi-monthly.

For more information on either of these groups, please contact gscu.comms@cabinetoffice.gov.uk