“It’s about prioritisation – doing the right thing, and then the next.” The words of Kate Caulkin, director of People and Operational Management Insights at the National Audit Office, captured the pragmatic tone of a recent Civil Service World webinar, hosted in partnership with Deloitte in anticipation of the next Spending Review.
The session brought together senior leaders from across government to explore how civil servants can navigate the growing pressure to move beyond ambition and deliver measurable productivity improvements. Their collective message was clear: meaningful gains won’t come from sweeping reform or the latest technologies alone, but from consistent, practical change driven by people, not platforms.
From technology promise to productivity reality
The challenge of translating technological advances into tangible productivity gains remains acute in the public sector, where legacy systems, entrenched processes, and risk-averse cultures often blunt the transformative power of digital innovation. However, Emran Mian, director general at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, said to be optimistic about reimagining service delivery. He highlighted the transformative potential of AI in government services, using gov.uk as a prime example. "We are currently trialling what we think is really cutting-edge AI chatbot for people to be able to interact with the information and the advice that's available on gov.uk.”
He envisioned AI agents completing forms for citizens, reducing administrative burdens and processing times. Mian also recognised that while the country has the talent in academia and business to bring AI and other emerging technologies into the economy, there’s a need for stronger technology infrastructure to turn that potential into reality.
Caulkin observed that behind the scenes, many services still rely “on workarounds,” even when the user-facing experience appears modern. “Getting a new passport is really smooth, really quick. Everything's done online, but perhaps behind the scenes, it's not quite so smooth for the people that are doing those processes. There's still quite a few sort of workarounds behind the scenes because of technical issues with the case management systems.”
The long-term view
While digital tools and AI offer considerable promise, the panel agreed that technological progress is not a silver bullet. The key to realising potential is creating an ecosystem that supports innovation and remains focused on tangible citizen benefits.
Katherine Kent, head of Public Services Productivity Statistics at the Office for National Statistics, pointed out that productivity must be understood as a long-term journey. “So often we're striving for short-term results, expecting to see immediacy from this sort of technology implementation. Productivity should be considered over a much longer term.” The panel agreed this shift requires promoting a culture of innovation, encouraging calculated risk-taking and investing in end-to-end transformation instead of layering fragmented digital interventions onto outdated systems.
Drawing on experience from across government and industry, Clare Mortimer, partner for AI & Data at Deloitte, recommended a “test and learn” approach. She pointed to smaller, more agile countries and organisations as useful case studies. She also stressed the need to not just digitise existing processes, but to fundamentally rethink how technology can transform work. “There's a really interesting opportunity for us, rather than looking at why doesn't the technology deliver productivity, looking at other places to ask ourselves, how can the technologies [that we have access to now] enable us to do something differently?"
A catalyst for change
With technology only part of the solution, organisational culture emerged as a critical enabler of productivity. The panel agreed that leadership behaviours, not digital skills, set the tone for whether innovation succeeds or stalls.
“For a candle maker like me, I should learn about light bulb making, but more importantly, allow the light bulb makers into my organisation in all kinds of ways, through recruitment, through conversations, through contracting with light bulb makers,”, said Mian, reflecting on how we recognise the next paradigm shift that will liberate the productivity of our workforce.
Embedding this culture of innovation requires more than a mindset shift. To Mortimer, productivity isn't just about short-term cost savings, but about fundamentally changing how we work and take advantage of future opportunities. She called for blending long-standing institutional knowledge with fresh thinking in multidisciplinary teams. “We need to create waves but also raise the tide,” she said, and illustrated this by pointing to generational strengths: older workers have deep policy and institutional knowledge, while younger workers have digital confidence and willingness to take risks.
But civil servants and ministers aren’t always rewarded for taking bold steps. “If something goes well, I don't think the rewards are particularly clear. If it goes badly, then the way that plays out is very clear,” said Mian, reflecting on how the civil service must confront the asymmetry of risk. Still, he argued, the imperative to modernise, especially in a tough fiscal environment, is too strong to ignore. “There's also a really important thing about people within government wanting to work differently,” he said, noting officials have “little choice” but to lean into this wave of change.
Beyond blunt metrics
Another central theme was the need to move beyond simplistic productivity metrics, especially in public services, where measuring outcomes is vastly more complicated than tallying outputs. Kent described the ONS’s work on redefining public service productivity to focus more on impact and user experience rather than volume alone.
"We don't just want to measure what's been done, but how well it's been done, moving from a concept of output to an outcome,” she said. “For example, in healthcare, that might be the number of operations in a hospital, moving to how successful those operations are, how long people had to wait for that service, how satisfied people were with the service they received, and the life expectancy gained from that operation."
Caulkin added that poor metrics can distort incentives. She noted that productivity isn’t measuring the number of calls a staff member handles if those calls aren’t resolving the issue. Quoting NAO’s value-for-money framework, she defined productivity as “the optimal use of resources to achieve intended outcomes.” In her words, efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
Looking at examples from the insurance sector, Mortimer highlighted how poorly chosen metrics can undermine organisational efficiency, revealing that true productivity is about quality, not just quantity of interactions. "If my job is to get through as many calls as I can, the easy way to get someone off the phone is just to pay the claim," she explained. In this example, companies measuring call volume incentivised quick, superficial interactions, leading to higher claim payouts. In contrast, organisations focusing on the cost generated by contact handlers found that taking time to thoroughly explore claims could reduce overall expenses.
"I think being super clear on what do we mean by productivity improvement [and] how are we measuring it leads to a much more sophisticated choice, and the right choice around the value of doing that versus something else,” said Mian, reflecting on the critical importance of clarity. He stressed that being explicit about what productivity means, leaders can avoid trading off essential services or falling into false economies.
A roadmap for transformation
What emerged from the webinar was not a list of tech solutions or budget asks, but a framework for sustainable, adaptive progress. True productivity gains require departments to redesign processes with purpose, invest in leadership capability, adopt metrics that reflect reality and develop infrastructure that supports both performance and sustainability.
Crucially, the panel agreed these efforts must be underpinned by a willingness to embrace uncertainty and revisit long-held assumptions. “People [in government] are seeing the productivity improvements and the ease of use that's coming from some of these tools in their personal lives, and they're seeing their colleagues use them in other sectors. I think we really want it, and that’s why I think we're going to do a better job of the change this time."
Click here to watch this webinar on-demand