Civil Service World

Government departments protecting our borders and national security stand ready for transformation. The commitment is clear in the MoD's £1bn investment in digital battlefield technology and in the renewed focus on modernising the Home Office’s technology infrastructure, too. But the journey to realise this ambition requires success in moving pilots to scaled-up services. Achieving this, however, remains one of government's most persistent challenges.

Twenty-five years after parliaments and governments opened in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, a new PolicyWISE report has found that while devolution has delivered policy divergence, there is less systematic learning about what works and what doesn’t. At a time of fiscal pressure and growing political divergence, the UK civil service cannot afford to keep solving the same problems in parallel.

The launch of the Office for the Impact Economy last November was a significant moment, even if it has not yet received the attention it deserves. Previous governments have created civil society infrastructure before, most notably the Office for Civil Society, but the OIE represents something conceptually distinct: a deliberate attempt to treat the impact economy as a strategic economic asset rather than a charitable afterthought.

The Care Quality Commission's Gambling Harms Team has won the Collaborative Practice Award at the Institute of Regulation Awards,  for a pioneering assessment framework built to assess treatments which sit entirely outside the regulator's normal remit. The awards, now in their second year, recognise excellence across the categories of innovation, collaborative practice and rising star.

29th April | Online | This one-hour workshop, facilitated by internationally renowned cultural intelligence expert Ritika Wadhwa, gives public sector leaders practical tools to navigate the cultural complexity they encounter every day - across communities, departments and political contexts. Moving well beyond the usual inclusion conversation, the session explores how culture shapes decision-making, risk, communication and authority, and what leaders can do about it.

Changes to Green Book funding rules, increased national funding, and the recent statement on future fiscal devolution, combined with further devolution to Mayoral Combined Authorities, all inject further momentum into regional growth programmes - but the need for private finance to fund growth continues to loom large.

Over the past two years, the conversation about AI in public services has changed quite noticeably. Eighteen months ago, many of the discussions we had with senior civil servants were still about what AI means for the future of public services. Today, that question has largely been answered. Most leaders across government understand the potential of AI and accept that it will play a role in the future of public service delivery. The conversation has moved on.

After many decades of post‑war stability, the world feels unsettled. Institutions, treaties, economies and partnerships are all facing pressures that are testing their resilience - but the legacy of that period remains deeply woven into our national story. The decades after 1945 reshaped Britain’s social and economic foundations: the creation of the NHS, sustained public investment, and a period of broad‑based prosperity, all expanded opportunity and created unprecedented social mobility.

"Build in Canada first. Partner with trusted allies. Buy off-the-shelf only when necessary – and always with benefits flowing back to domestic industry." Canada's new Defence Industrial Strategy, backed by $81.8bn in investment, establishes a clear hierarchy for defence procurement and a fundamental shift.

AI is already saving civil servants nearly two working weeks each year. But time saved on individual tasks is not the same as value delivered at scale, and the government remains a long way short of its ambition to unlock over £45bn per year through full digitisation, productivity and service improvements. Too often, AI is treated as an adoption challenge. The harder task is turning new capability into safer, faster, better delivery, and doing so in a way that stands up to scrutiny.