Government announces plans for internal startups to ‘rewire the state one test at a time’

MVP approach will be rolled out by ‘crack teams’ of ‘problem solvers’

The Government is planning to kickstart agile working practices in the public sector, allocating £100 million of innovation funding to create a "test-and-learn" culture.

"The most important question isn’t how do we get this right the first time? It’s how do we make this better by next Friday?" said Cabinet minister Pat McFadden, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, during a speech at University College London's Stratford campus on Monday.

This MVP approach will be rolled out by "crack teams" of "problem solvers", who will be deployed across the country to work on specific tasks. These teams will be made up of policy officials, people with data and digital skills and staff from public services.

They will be given the freedom to experiment with alternative approaches, applying a startup-style approach to public sector.

"That’s the test-and-learn mindset, and I’m keen to see where we can deploy it in government. Where we can make the state a little bit more like a start-up," McFadden said in a statement.

The scheme will focus initially on family support and temporary accommodation, looking at ways in which more people in need can be supported while reducing the cost of short-term housing. It will kick off in January in Manchester, Sheffield, Essex and Liverpool.

As reported by CSW, McFadden pointed to the overhaul of the way that Universal Credit (UC) was being rolled out as an example. Having burned through huge amounts of funding and being hit by long delays, UC was removed from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and a small team was tasked with identifying local issues with improving it as they went along, being given a relatively free rein as to how they would do that. According to McFadden, this allowed the team to work out what was working and what was not, and to break through some of the bureaucratic processes that were getting in the way of delivery.

"This is what we should be doing more of," McFadden said, according to CSW. "It's the approach that the DWP will take now as they set about changing how Job Centres work. These experiences show we can make the state think a little bit more like a start-up. The question is: why has this kind of thinking not been applied more widely and why does it feel more like the exception than the rule?"

The £100 million innovation fund announced in October's budget will be used to support the deployment of these teams and to drive public service reform. McFadden said there were no plans to reduce the size of the civil service, but added that introducing internal startups "could help improve the way we that we work across the whole of government and start to rewire the state one test at a time”

The government is also encouraging innovators ad entrepreneurs from startups and tech companies to join the No. 10 Innovation Fellows Programme, where they can work on government missions in areas including the NHS, clean energy and economics.

Welcoming the government's internal startup plans, Mark Gibbison, VP global public sector & higher education at ERP vendor Unit4, nevertheless urged caution.

"It is commendable for Government to want to bring more innovation into the public sector. Wherever digital services are implemented successfully in local or central government, it quickly delivers more efficiency and value for citizens. However, you can’t achieve that by simply hiring more technologists who are eager to disrupt the status quo."

Gibbison said that innovation must consider the existence of legacy applications and should also focus on collaboration between teams to ensure that old silos are not simply being replaced by new ones. He added that training staff is critical for adoption.

"We cannot expect decision makers with central and local government, who do not have experience of cutting-edge technologies, to be versed in how best to adopt them. More importantly, we must educate them to ensure these tools are adopted in a way that delivers value to public sector bodies and the public. That needs to be integral to any strategy for transformation moving forward."