A recently created specialist digital unit focused on reforming and improving citizen services is taking an “approach [that] shifts the work from designing solutions to testing constraints”.
The CustomerFirst team is based in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and was launched earlier this year with the remit of “bringing together the best civil service operators alongside leading private sector disruptors and transformation specialists”, all of whom will collaborate to “build services that make use of AI and modern solutions to mirror excellent customer services in the best of the private sector”.
In a newly published online post, Tom Wynne-Morgan, deputy director of the unit said that, while “government is clear about what good looks like… in practice, delivering on this intent is hard”.
“While teams are expected to think end-to-end, most delivery models remain organised around functions, funding streams and accountabilities,” he added. “Responsibility for outcomes is often shared, but authority to change how the service works is not. Teams may understand what needs to change without having a clear route to make it happen.
The intent of the Service Standard is clear. The operating model for delivering it in complex, federated services is much less so.”
To help support the use of alternative models, the CustomerFirst is trialling the use of a different approach, which Wynne-Morgan said is known as “NewCo”.
“In our model, NewCo is not a formal organisation or a fixed approach,” he added. “It is a deliberate way of creating space for small, multidisciplinary teams to look at a service differently and act on what they learn.”
The head of new service reform unit said, “at its core, this approach shifts the work from designing solutions to testing constraints”.
Wynne-Morgan cited three key questions that this model is intended to help departmental teams to focus on: “Which constraints most shape outcomes for users? Where do those constraints come from…? [And] which constraints are genuinely fixed versus unchallenged?”.
“Rather than starting with large-scale redesign, the emphasis is on creating conditions to explore these questions safely and practically, using real services,” he added.
Pointing to the work of the Government Digital Service in its early years, the CustomerFirst leader acknowledged that “this way of working is not entirely new”, adding that “experience from earlier NewCo-style efforts suggests this [approach] only works when minimal conditions are in place: clear ownership of outcomes, permission to test changes within agreed guardrails, access to end-to-end capabilities, and governance that grows from the work rather than preceding it”.
“Without these, the risk is recreating existing constraints in a new form,” Wynne-Morgan wrote. “This approach is therefore deliberately selective. It looks for situations where creating bounded space is likely to unlock learning that business-as-usual delivery cannot. The test is simple: does this way of working lead to better outcomes for users?”
The unit’s first major partner is the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, with which it has been working to reform services. As CustomerFirst’s work progresses, the unit is “committed to learning in the open”
“We have a lot to do, and a lot to learn,” Wynne-Morgan added. “Over the next two years, CustomerFirst will work differently to deliver better services for citizens and to challenge long-standing assumptions about how services are designed and run.”
Private sector leaders
Unveiled as part of the publication of the government-wide Digital Roadmap, setting out a range of programme and policy commitments for the coming years. CustomerFirst is led by Tristan Thomas, who joined the civil service having previously been a senior leader at Monzo. After leaving the online bank, in 2021 co-founded Packfleet: a carbon-neutral package-delivery firm.
After three years in operation, Packfleet raised about £8m in a 2024 funding round – but shuttered its brand just a year later, with all customers and operations transferred to new owner DHL. Shortly after its multimillion-pound funding injection the company also encountered criticism for its employment models, with leaders of the Unite union hitting out at “disgusting… pernicious and hypocritical” proposals to offer drivers more money for taking on a greater workload of deliveries, rather than being paid a flat hourly rate.
Another industry big-hitter supporting the work of CustomerFirst will be the founder and incumbent chief executive of Octopus Energy Greg Jackson, who serves as the unit’s co-chair. As an example of the kind of services government wishes to replicate, DSIT pointed to Jackson’s company which it said now uses “generative AI tools [to] assist in drafting 35% of all customer emails, slashing wait times and receiving customer satisfaction ratings of 70%”.
Having been founded by Jackson in 2015, Octopus grew to become the UK’s largest energy supplier by 2024, and accounts for almost a quarter of the market. In August of last year, Jackson began a three-year term as a non-executive director of the Cabinet Office. He also serves as a member of government’s Industrial Strategy Advisory Council.