Darren Jones: Revamp Whitehall, Boost Civil Innovation

On Tuesday 20 January, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones gave a keynote speech to set out his plan to rewire Whitehall and modernise public services, to move fast and fix things after years of low public sector productivity.

Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister set out plans to rewire Whitehall and say Britain needs “a new digital state that delivers public services directly to you. A state that can move fast and fix things”.
Learning from the successes of the Vaccine Taskforce, the government will deploy new taskforces that have a direct line to the top of government to remove obstacles to delivering change.
The No10 Innovation Fellows programme will be expanded to bring in further external challenge and specialist digital skills.
Jones also set out plans to “promote the doers, not the talkers” in the senior civil service and establish a National School of Government and Public Services to train them in the skills needed to deliver the new digital state.

Darren Jones said:

Everyone agrees that the status quo is not working. The public, politicians and civil servants are all frustrated by the pace of change.

The public sector has fallen unacceptably behind the private sector. Decades of stagnant productivity. Unsustainable increasing costs. Poor outcomes and unacceptable customer experience.

The public rightly ask, if you can bank and shop online, in a quick and convenient way, then why can’t it be done for public services too?

The Prime Minister and I expect Whitehall to focus solely on delivering for you, instead of talking to itself. To move from interdepartmental arguments, internal policy papers, processes and discussions, to a new digital state that delivers public services directly to you: the customer.

A state that can move fast and fix things.

The title of the event references the can-do culture of successful businesses which have seized the power of modern technology to create simple, cheap and convenient solutions to the public’s problems.

Alongside building the foundations for a new, digital state of the future, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister will announce changes to how Whitehall works to enable this shift and speed up delivery of the public’s priorities now.

Slashing bureaucratic checks

As Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Jones launched a crackdown to review and remove the layers of bureaucracy civil servants have to navigate to deliver for the public. From April 2026, this new framework will be rolled out across government, allowing civil servants to move fast and fix things, and to spend more time on doing, less on checking.

A pilot applied to HMRC’s plans to modernise the tech they use to crack down on tax evasion and let people file their taxes digitally cut the necessary approval processes from 40, spanning different departments and layers, to just two. It saved an estimated two to three months in the delivery timeline.

Taskforces

The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister announced the creation of new taskforces to be deployed across Whitehall.

Jones said:

Too often this approach of moving fast and fixing things is only applied in a crisis. Like the brilliant Passport Office, which only became brilliant after it spiralled into chaos. Or the Vaccine Taskforce.

So today, I’m announcing that we will apply the Vaccine Taskforce model in ‘peace time’ – not just in a crisis.

Taskforces will be able to expedite recruitment and bring in external expertise on short-term appointments; procure faster by bypassing layers of bureaucracy; and take more risks, supported by a direct line to the top of government and direct Ministerial sponsorship. The first taskforces will be announced shortly.

Innovation Fellows

The successful No10 Innovation Fellows programme will be expanded to bring in more external challenge and specialist digital skills.

The programme will be expanded to 30 Fellows, following a highly competitive recruitment campaign which put candidates through a series of problem-solving and coding tests. With a success rate of just 0.7%, the Fellowship has secured talent from the likes of CERN, NASA and Y-Combinator to work on projects like how to cut NHS waiting lists and building AI-powered systems to improve prison security.

The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said taking a data-first, digital-first approach to modernising public services is “not how government has traditionally worked, but it is how government should”.

Modernising the civil service

Darren Jones also made changes to “promote the doers, not the talkers” in the senior civil service. He announced that, moving forward, the hiring criteria for senior civil servants will put greater value on experience of frontline delivery, innovation and the private sector, rather than policy-writing.

Senior civil servants will also be held to account for delivering. Of 6700 senior civil servants, only seven were reported to be on performance improvement plans last year and only two were dismissed for poor performance. From now on, those assessed as under-performing and who fail to improve will be dismissed, and top senior civil servants will have their performance marked against KPIs set by Ministers.

The bonus and pay system for senior leaders will also change. Currently, 55% of senior civil servants receive some form of a bonus. The total bonus pot will remain the same, but changes will be made to ensure larger awards are focused on those who excel in their roles, rather than delivering business as usual.

Jones said:

I know from working with many brilliant civil servants every day, working long hours, that they are just as frustrated at the system and how long it takes to get things done.

They want to be the doers. Too often they have been scapegoats for political failure.

Our civil servants and trade union partners know that things must change. That is what they tell me and I am determined we work with them to renew the state and empower all of us to get on with the job.

New National School of Government and Public Services

The government will launch a National School of Government and Public Services to provide world-class learning and development for civil servants and prepare them for the future.

The school will ensure that the civil service is properly skilled for a more digital approach to government. Bringing training in-house will align civil service training with government priorities like AI, while reducing spending on external training over time as the school is fully established. It also comes as Jones says he is determined to support civil servants with training as the use of AI is expanded across the public sector to boost efficiency and save time costs on repetitive administrative tasks.

This builds on plans underway to halve government spending on external consultants and reduce departmental administration costs by 16% over the next five years, delivering savings of over £2 billion a year for the taxpayer by 2030.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/move-fast-fix-things-darren-jones-sets-out-plan-to-rewire-whitehall-and-incentivise-innovation-in-the-civil-service

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