For years, public sector transformation has followed a familiar pattern. When pressure increases or capability gaps appear, organisations turn to consultancy. Consultants accelerate programmes, deliver systems and produce outputs. Then they leave and internal teams are left maintaining platforms they did not design and decisions they did not shape.
On paper, this model works. In practice, it rarely builds lasting capability. Across government and public services, there is growing recognition that transformation cannot depend on external consultancy forever. The opportunity is not simply to reduce spend, but to rethink how capability is built.
Consultancies bring expertise, scale and structure. They are often essential in moments of urgency or complexity, but when they become the default model, unintended consequences emerge.
One of the most common issues is that Build teams, sometimes inadvertently, become Run teams. Consultancies are often engaged to design and deliver new systems, but when public sector organisations lack the skills to maintain what has been built, those same consultancies are retained to operate and evolve the platforms. What began as a temporary delivery programme becomes a permanent dependency - costs escalate, and the public purse absorbs the burden.
At the same time, capability does not compound. Projects are delivered, but internal teams do not always grow alongside them, so skills, context and technical decision-making remain external.
Transformation becomes episodic rather than continuous and each major initiative requires a new engagement, a new team and a new learning curve. Progress happens in bursts rather than sustained momentum.
Over time, costs rise while resilience declines and critical knowledge and ownership sit outside the organisation. The question is no longer whether consultancy is valuable, but whether it should remain the dominant model.
An alternative approach is emerging across both public and private sectors - instead of outsourcing capability, organisations embed external engineering teams within their own structures. These teams work alongside internal digital, data and product teams, delivering outcomes while building skills, context and confidence inside the organisation.
This is not about removing consultancy overnight - it is about shifting from dependency to partnership. In practice, this means closer proximity to the organisation, with teams operating within existing ways of working and constraints. It means capability growing alongside delivery, with internal teams learning through collaboration rather than handover documents.
It also enables what many public sector leaders are now describing as contractor conversion. Rather than repeatedly cycling through short-term contractors, organisations convert embedded external talent into permanent capability. This approach brings proven skills into the organisation and delivers genuine long-term savings. Transformation becomes something organisations own, not something delivered to them.
We see this model increasingly across sectors where organisations want to move faster without losing control. In financial services, Counter partnered with Skipton Building Society to accelerate digital delivery while strengthening internal engineering capability. Embedded teams worked alongside Skipton’s developers, resulting in faster progress and a stronger in-house team able to continue evolving the platform. After critical delivery milestones, Skipton retained some of the team as permanent staff to continue the ongoing build and maintenance of the platform.
In aviation, Counter worked with Manchester Airport Group to modernise digital platforms and improve operational visibility. Engineers collaborated closely with internal stakeholders across engineering, UX and content. The outcome was not just a new website, but improved delivery practices and retained knowledge across teams.
In central government, Counter has supported Equal Experts in bringing this embedded model to life within a large government department. Working alongside civil servants and digital teams, engineers delivered critical services while actively transferring knowledge and building internal capability. Rather than leaving behind systems that required permanent external support, the engagement strengthened the department’s ability to operate and evolve its own technology.
Across these examples, the lesson is consistent - transformation succeeds when capability is built inside the organisation, not rented indefinitely from outside it.
Public sector organisations operate under unique pressures. They must balance accountability with innovation, long-term value with political cycles, and service continuity with rapid technological change. At the same time, expectations from citizens continue to rise.
In this environment, permanent reliance on consultancy is not only expensive, but limiting. Public bodies need teams that understand policy, users and constraints deeply, evolve systems incrementally, build institutional knowledge, and strengthen internal capability rather than substituting for it.
Moving away from consultancy forever does not mean abandoning external expertise - it means using external teams differently.
Our model sits between traditional consultancy and permanent hiring. Embedded engineering teams operate within organisations, delivering outcomes while strengthening internal capability by converting its consultants to permanent hires. The same people that built the systems while consultants and understand how things work, become the very people that now maintain those systems, but as permanent long term staff on a wage rather than a day rate. Costs are lower than most large consultancies, but accountability and quality remain high. Organisations retain flexibility without sacrificing ownership.
Most importantly, the model is designed to leave organisations stronger than they were before. For public sector leaders, the opportunity is not simply to cut consultancy budgets. It is to rethink how transformation happens.
The future of government digital transformation will not be built through endless cycles of external delivery. It will be built by organisations that invest in their own capability while using external expertise as a catalyst, not a substitute.The question is no longer whether the public sector can move beyond permanent consultancy. It is whether it can afford not to.