DWP Digital launches new three-year strategy
In DWP Digital the mission is to improve user experiences for Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) customers and colleagues through technology and innovation. They’ve launched a new ‘Digital Future’ strategy, setting out the goals and ambitions for the next three years, which includes recruiting hundreds of digital specialists into the organisation.
Simon McKinnon, CDIO at DWP Digital said:
“Like many organisations, DWP Digital has experienced a challenging couple of years. In the early stages of the pandemic, we saw a ten-fold increase in claims for Universal Credit, which led to an accelerated journey to digitalise services. With DWP at the forefront of the country’s plan to ‘build back better’ (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/build-back-better-our-plan-for-growth#:~:text=%27Build%20Back%20Better%3A%20our%20plan,our%20vision%20for%20Global%20Britain.), the ‘Digital Future’ strategy will see us significantly transform the way we work and help achieve our digital ambitions.”
DWP Digital are at the start of an exciting journey to change the way services are delivered. Traditionally, this has been about building back-office systems to support the way individual benefit are delivered.
Simon added: “We want as many of our services delivered through digital means where it makes sense, and where data becomes the lifeblood of how the department operates. We want to build on the successes of the last few years which have seen us bring our IT in-house, introduce elements such as automation and self-service to our digital services, and accelerate the adoption of public cloud.”
Key strategy highlights
The strategy is at the heart of a cross-DWP mission to design and deliver services which are critical to tens of millions of people – services which will be more personal, more accurate and more efficient. It sets out five key organisational goals:
Provide reliable, secure, cost-effective services. Enable 24/7 delivery of high-performing, sustainable, accessible digital services for colleagues and customers.
Design and deliver digital solutions. Collaborate across DWP to design and deliver modern digital services which deliver against departmental outcomes.
Transform use of data and analytics. Working in a common data language and adopting modern tools, make governed, accessible, and usable to unlock a range of analytics applications and insights.
Adopt common approaches. Align customer and colleague experience, by utilising reusable components, interoperable data and shared technology platforms, driven by a clear strategic business need.
Build our capability and culture. Continue our efforts to attract, develop and retain a highly skilled digital team.
To kick-start its journey, DWP Digital has built shared components as part of its application reference architecture to ensure that the basics are in place. Over the next three years, the organisation will look at how the value of these components can be released and really start making a difference for customers and colleagues.
As well as this, DWP Digital are really investing in their people and is set to launch more structured learning and applied learning experiences and career paths. This will empower colleagues to take control and own their career progression, learning and development.
Simon concludes: “The resilience of DWP Digital has certainly been tested over the last two years, but we’ve managed to navigate through the challenges of the pandemic and achieve some fantastic outcomes. We reacted amazingly well and rose to the challenges, adapting to hybrid ways of working. With such ambitious plans for the next three years, we can only go from strength to strength.”