Speaking at the London event, Bracken added that government is “replete with very large [policy and strategy] documents that no one ever reads”, and complained that “we put a lot of time in writing perfectly-formed policy documents and strategies and yet fail to deliver.”
In the digital world, he said, the distinction between policy – the “great ideas and the playing intellectual gymnastics for a year” – and the “handing it over to the delivery people” is “just gone”.
When asked how he intends to break down the barriers between policy and delivery, Bracken said: “By sitting [policy teams] in rooms full of people who question them; by having multi-disciplinary teams, which is absolutely critical to successful service delivery.”
Bracken also announced that the way government recruits IT staff will “fundamentally change”: a new digital recruitment hub and a set of information and guides, he said, will help departments to find professionals with the right skill sets.
Bracken also explained that a new digital service framework will be published in the next few months, enabling government to speed up IT procurement projects.
Bracken made clear that IT professionals need specialist skills: “The age of the generalist technologist is over,” he said. But generalists will not be excluded from the civil service: Francis Maude, the minister of the Cabinet Office, told CSL that generalists have a skill set in “clear-headed, hard-edged analysis” and “build up deep expertise”.