Upskill civil servants so they can effectively use artificial intelligence, PAC report urges

• PAC warns against govt depts using deployments of elite crisis team as sticking plaster to mask their own lack of operational capability
• Report on smarter delivery of public services lays out real consequences for citizens of gaps in govt organisations' core capabilities  

The capabilities that civil servants need are changing, and government employees must be supported to navigate the impact of new technology and artificial intelligence (AI). In a report on the smarter delivery of public services, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) calls for more to be done to harness the potential and ideas of the frontline staff in the public-facing civil service workforce.

The PAC's inquiry focused on the Operational Delivery Profession (ODP). This represents over half of the wider civil service (290,000 people). It is the largest civil service profession, and is made up of those who work directly with the public in every kind of role, or those who support this work. The inquiry found that the visibility of the ODP beyond the civil service is low, which is a barrier to people seeing it as the right career path for them. The PAC is calling on the ODP to raise its external profile to encourage the brightest and best to join it, particularly students. Given the size of the ODP, its innovative potential is enormous, and the report also recommends senior leaders develop plans to ensure staff are able to raise ideas, learn from each other, and get involved with improving services.

The report finds that the expertise that public-facing civil servants will need in the future will require skills associated with digital professions; for example, the capability to provide services online or via apps, and through using AI. Automating straightforward types of demand means that staff can spend their time dealing with customers with more complex needs, or who cannot access digital services. But evidence to the inquiry suggests that public sector adoption of AI is still uneven and at an early stage, with a skills shortfall cited as one of the barriers to progress. The PAC calls on government to define the digital skills that the ODP requires, to support its adoption by government organisations for the delivery of better services.

The ODP is also responsible for the Surge and Rapid Response Team (SRRT). The SRRT is meant to be deployed as a last resort to help government departments deal with significant increases in demand, including from crises (e.g. the collapse of an airline) or seasonal peaks (e.g. winter fuel payments). In 2024, this highly-trained team supported 75 deployments across government. The PAC explored whether departments were in fact using the SRRT as a "get-out" clause, building it into their capability plans, rather than becoming more agile at dealing with their own demand. The ODP acknowledged to the inquiry that departments should be better at dealing with their own peaks and troughs, and the PAC recommends it conduct an analysis of who is using the SRRT and why they are using it.

The PAC identifies in its report a number of examples of how weaknesses in government's operational delivery will routinely have real consequences for citizens:

• Lack of capacity to understand and deal with demand ⇒ service backlogs
• Lack of focus on systematic and continuous improvement ⇒ customers' pain points are not identified and addressed
• Failure to consider systems holistically and siloed working ⇒ demand and cost of dealing with it is simply moved to another part of government.

The report recommends the ODP look at how effectively it is building the capabilities that are needed to deliver improvements to the cost and quality of government services.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “The ODP is equivalent to over half of the entire civil service workforce. These are the hardworking professionals who run our borders, our jobcentres, our prisons - and yet the ODP must be Whitehall's best kept secret. It has been fashionable under successive governments to bash the civil service; but our Committee's function is to scrutinise operational delivery of policy in the civil service, and we want it to succeed. In the ODP, government has a large pool of committed public servants to hand, whose ideas should be harnessed and potential maximised.

“The civil service should be shouting about the ODP, with a view to providing career paths for young people and joining up with local government and private sector. If this is going to happen, staff will need the right skills to make use of future technologies, including cyber capabilities. Government cannot expect civil servants to become magically more productive simply because it purchases AI platforms to run on their computers. To ensure that AI is used safely and effectively to transform services for the citizen, those at the sharp end of deploying it must be actively upskilled in its use. The ODP could be one of the better vehicles to achieve this, if the government follows the recommendations in our report.”

PAC report conclusions and recommendations 

The Operational Delivery Profession's (ODP's) importance to the delivery of public services is not reflected in its external visibility, which means that opportunities are being missed to attract talented individuals to operational roles. The ODP is the largest profession in central government, with over 290,000 members. It is responsible for building operational delivery capability and has assembled a range of learning and development opportunities for its members at various stages of their careers. Improving operational delivery capability will enable government to be smarter in how it manages and improves services, and to find innovative ways of getting the best value from the £450 billion it spends annually on its day-to-day running costs. However, the visibility of the ODP beyond the civil service is low. The ODP does not routinely share its ambitions, progress and successes beyond the scope of its membership. The ODP has launched its own version of the Civil Service Fast Stream to grow a pipeline of high-performing operational leaders, but the ODP's lack of external visibility is a barrier to individuals seeing it as the right career path for them. The ODP needs to develop a strategy to encourage the brightest and best students to join it.

Recommendation 1. The ODP should set out how it will raise the external profile of operational delivery as a desirable career path in particular for students, sharing the benefits of membership and key successes, including by publishing an annual report which sets out how it is performing against its objectives.

There are examples of innovation happening across government but more needs to be done to harness the ideas of the 290,000 members of the ODP for improving service delivery. There are 23 examples of innovation in the NAO's report, which show it is possible for teams working across government to continuously improve and be innovative – even in adverse circumstances where operational delivery is highly challenging. The transformative changes needed by government will require both large scale projects and day-to-day incremental improvements involving front-line staff. This requires a working environment that encourages openness, innovation, and challenge of current thinking, with senior leaders who see failure as an opportunity to learn rather than an exercise in sharing out blame. It is important to build ways of working that allow ideas to flow and give people time outside of their day job - for example, HM Passport Office says that its Quality Framework project has involved training around 1,000 people to identify issues and raise them. But considering there are 290,000 members of the ODP, the innovative potential is enormous.

Recommendation 2. The ODP should require all its Departmental Heads of Profession to set out how they will ensure that their staff have the time, skills, tools and support to raise ideas, learn from each other, and get involved with improving services.

The ODP is not doing enough to join up with the wider public sector, including local government, which plays a large part in the delivery of public services, or with the private sector. The ODP's focus is on the 290,000 members in the Civil Service and not on the capability of operational delivery professionals in the wider public sector, for example in local authorities. However, many government objectives involve both central and local government – for example, the delivery of planning services - and a lack of join up will hinder their effective delivery. The ODP described the benefits of building networks and told us how it has invited a small number of mayoral authority staff to its learning events. However, there is untapped potential for central and local government to more routinely learn from each other and to collaborate on building capability. For example, the skills framework the ODP has created would be relevant to local authority staff. Further, the ODP helps its members build career paths by highlighting roles in other government organisations to its members, but there is no visibility of opportunities across the local and central government divide. There is further potential to join up more with the private sector, which is not only involved in the end-to-end delivery of public services but is also a potential source of innovative ideas for how to improve them.

Recommendation 3. The ODP should set out how it will encourage innovation and join up delivery between:

• central government and local government, by more routinely placing members in local government roles, using its capability development and learning offers to facilitate better connections, providing career paths, and sharing learning; and
• central government and the private sector through facilitating two-way secondment opportunities and knowledge sharing.

There are gaps in core operational delivery capabilities in government organisations which impact on the cost and quality of services it delivers. Operational capability across government is varied and weaknesses have real consequences for citizens. For example, where a department lacks the capability to understand and deal with demand, the result is backlogs in government services. Where a department does not focus on systematic and continuous improvement, pain points for customers are not identified and addressed. Where organisations fail to consider systems as a whole, and work in silos only focusing on their own part of the process, they may just move demand and the cost of dealing with it to another part of government. The ODP acknowledges the criticality of improving capability across government, and its approach to doing so includes interventions such as a skills framework for generic operational capabilities, apprenticeship schemes, and targeted training for senior leaders. The ODP's goal is that all its interventions deliver measurable returns on investment, and it has built data expertise and is gathering baseline data so it can measure improvement. The ODP's understanding of whether its approach is effectively building the right capabilities will be crucial to delivering better services.

Recommendation 4. The ODP should monitor how effectively the approach set out in its strategy is building the capabilities that are needed to deliver improvements to the cost and quality of government services.

It is vital that the ODP keeps pace with advances in new technology and artificial intelligence and the implications for the changing skills its members need. The ODP has created a skills framework, which sets out the skills that staff need at different stages of their careers. However, the capabilities and expertise that its members need are changing and will require skills associated with other professions, particularly digital - for example, the capability to provide services online or via apps, and through using artificial intelligence. Automating straightforward types of demand means that staff can spend their time dealing with customers with more complex needs, or who cannot access digital services. There are examples of organisations using technology and artificial intelligence in ways that have made services easier to use and better for citizens, and that have reduced the amount of demand its staff need to service. For example, the Child Maintenance Service is using an artificial intelligence tool to identify payment arrangements which are most at risk of breaking down. If the ODP's members have opportunities to develop the skills they need in this changing environment, then more examples of innovative and effective digital services should follow.

Recommendation 5. The ODP should work with the Government Digital and Data Profession to define the digital skills that ODP professionals require, and include them in the new skills framework, to support government organisations to navigate the impact of new technology and artificial intelligence and adopt it to deliver better services.

The Surge and Rapid Response Team (SRRT) is a valuable resource but should be there for genuine need and not as a containment for the lack of operational capability needed to deal with demand that should have been predicted or absorbed. The capability to understand and deal with demand is a key priority for government organisations. The ODP is responsible for the SRRT, which helps departments deal with significant increases in demand, including seasonal peaks such as Winter Fuel payments, as well as those caused by emerging crises, such as the collapse of an airline. A benefit of using the SRRT is that its staff can be deployed immediately - for example, they are already security cleared and have contracts allowing them to be deployed nationally and internationally at short notice. Whereas recruiting staff or using a third party could be more time consuming and costly. The SRRT is clearly a valuable resource, and there are many examples of its successful deployment, but departments should not be repeatedly using the SRRT for peaks in demand that ought to have been foreseen and planned for, or which could have been absorbed in other ways.

Recommendation 6. The ODP should conduct analysis of who is using the SRRT and why they are using it to identify where they need to work with departments to increase their operational capability to better deal with variation in demand.