The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) has set out a plan of action to improve the recruitment and retention of technologists in the Civil Service.
The institute, which carries out research on defence, security and international affairs, has published a study on the issue, reflecting the widespread and longstanding recognition that the public sector struggles in competition with the private sector to recruit and retain digital talent.
It points out that the previous Government set a target for 6% of Civil Service roles to be in the digital, data and technology (DDaT), but according to figures from last August they accounted for just 4.8%, up a little from 4.7% a year before.
RUSI attributes this largely to disparities in salaries, providing a series of comparisons between the Civil Service and private sector, with the differences in the average figures for most relevant roles in the tens of thousands of pounds.
It adds that while the Government Digital and Data (GDaD) Profession Capability Framework provides various incentives, these are often not included in job advertisements and it hard to know if they have a significant impact.
Eight measures
In response, it sets out a plan of action involving eight measures. They include making the GDaD framework mandatory for all departments and centralising the costs of salary incentives, pre-assessing and adjusting salaries for technical roles against the framework, and reinvesting cost savings from reducing spending on consultants to improve pay for targeted roles.
These would be accompanied by exploring guaranteed annual increases to salaries under the GDaD through a double-lock mechanism, reflecting inflation or indexed against comparable private sector salaries.
Other measures would be to make cyber and data security roles eligible for GDaD incentive payments, allowing DDaT professionals to sacrifice employer pension contributions for higher salaries, and extending the number of technology positions that can receive pivotal role allowance – incentive payments to retain officials.
In addition, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology should consider reclassifying select non-AI technology roles under research and development spending to provide more competitive salaries.
Need for technical talent
The study's authors, Joseph Jarnecki and Natasha Buckley, say: “Technical talent in the Civil Service is key for the new Labour Government to achieve its objectives, particularly given its commitment to reduce the cost to the taxpayer of employing consultants, and driving innovation and high quality jobs across the UK.
“To achieve this, the Government must improve pay and other incentives to attract and retain skilled professionals in critical digital, data and Technology roles in the Civil Service.”
