Finding the next generation of government digital talent

While there are numerous digital teams across government spearheading innovation, it is widely understood that the Civil Service has a digital skills shortage.

The State of Digital Government Review found that, as of 2024, an insufficient proportion of digital and data roles were technical; that non-competitive wages posed a hindrance to attracting and retaining top talent; and that the proportion of advertised roles filled via recruitment campaigns fell from around 80% in 2020 to an average of around 50%.

Government has explicitly recognised the need to widen its digital talent pipeline in response to this challenge, yet the experience of people entering through alternative routes raises questions about how effectively opportunities are reaching candidates.

We spoke to trainees and supervisors at Mercator Digital’s Academy, which was selected by government to support the capability of and pipeline into DDaT roles, and which provides people from a range of backgrounds with focused technical training to prepare them for digital careers.

They recounted their motivations for pursuing digital careers, the challenges they faced in accessing such opportunities, and what could be done to improve government’s DDaT pipeline.

____

“It’s really demoralising”.

For Freddie Read, an aspiring senior developer, computer programming has been his form of “self-expression” since childhood. However, despite graduating with a first class degree in computer science, he still hadn’t managed to find a job after around 120 applications.

“The first few are the worst, but after the 60th one, it's like ‘whatever’,” he laughed.

Read also tried government websites and services to find jobs, but recounted being unable to find a suitable role through them. He eventually found his way into Mercator Digital's Academy after hearing of the opportunity from a family friend.

His experience raises questions for government about the possible visibility and accessibility of government technical careers.

The issue is not only about attracting people who already identify as technologists. While another trainee, Elizabeth Turay, was interested in technology from a young age, she joined the industry following roles in customer service and as an NHS patient pathway coordinator.

This latter position involved managing appointments and referrals, and facilitating communication for bedridden patients. She explained how her experience highlights that digital skills do not exist in isolation from other professions.

She said: “Technology definitely does play a part in making sure you manage the patient's details so no faults or delays occur, which would result in something bad.

“I guess from that, we can see that technology can help in different ways in different departments. It doesn't have to be within the tech industry, it can be in healthcare, or customer service.”

Elizabeth now hopes to specialise in cyber security.

Andy Probert, Head of Academy at Mercator Digital, argues that it is the soft skills developed in this type of environment that make someone more, not less qualified for a job in DDaT.

He said: “Teaching the coding part of software development is essentially very easy, but teaching someone to be organised, problem solving, resilient, empathic, that's a lot harder to achieve.

“People coming from diverse backgrounds will naturally bring those to the market, because they've got previous life experience, or they've done another job before, such as hospitality, where they will have dealt with individuals at a base level and conflict and resolution, and consequently those skills are imperative in delivering into government.”

For government teams, the implication is not to lower technical standards, but to ensure recruitment processes are sufficiently good at identifying potential and transferable capability alongside previous technical experience.

While Probert acknowledges that government also has to compete with private-sector employers on pay, he argues that public service itself remains an attractive proposition for people starting digital careers.

“They see it as still an amazing opportunity to get into an organisation that has so much capability to affect everybody who lives in this country,” he said.

For senior digital leaders, the experiences of these trainees point to three parts of the recruitment pipeline worth examining: can potential candidates find government opportunities, can recruiters recognise what candidates bring from outside traditional DDaT backgrounds, and is the Civil Service making a compelling enough case for people deciding where to build a digital career?