Editorial

‘Smarter Working in government means developing capability to build and maintain the best digital services across departments’

Here’s hoping you have Thursday free in your diary – as Think Smarter Working for Public Sector 2018 opens to explore what that might mean in real life

Posted 4 June 2018 by Gary Flood


The clock is really ticking down for anyone interested in exploring the idea of if a ‘smarter’ attitude in Whitehall and the wider public sector could make their delivery  more effective.

That’s because it’s only three business days now to Think Smarter Working For Public Sector 2018, a special one-day event being held this Thursday (June 7th) at Westminster’s centrally-located One Great George Street conference venue (nearest Tubes: Westminster and St James’s Park).

Think Smarter Working For Public Sector 2018 starts under the stewardship of high-profile UK public sector IT journalist David Bicknell, who edits Government Computing, and is officially sponsored at government level by the Government Digital Services (GDS) and the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) and on a commercial level by a number of suppliers, including at Diamond level by UKCloud.

The main government keynote, we are delighted to be able to announce, will be Lou Downe, Director of Design and Service Standards for the UK Government at GDS. Ms Downe joined Government in 2014 and founded the discipline of service design in government, and now leads a community of over 3,000 designers, user researchers and content designers across government, as well as helping set the direction of a £5m programme of design standards, products, and activities focussed on enabling government to transform services to meet user needs.

She will be joined as a presenter at the event by another senior Whitehall IT mover and shaker, Oliver Lewis, Deputy Director of Learning and Development for DDaT at GDS. Lewis will be talking about how Smarter Working in government means developing capability to build and maintain the best digital services across departments – as well as how, from agile ways of working to artificial intelligence and other emerging technology skills, the learning and development offer of the GDS Academy plays an integral role in addressing this.

The day also features a talk from Kit Collingwood-Richardson, Deputy Director, Universal Credit at the DWP, who will tell delegates about progress with ‘One Team Government’, plus a number of panels featuring analyst, supplier and civil servant representatives.

These include Smarter Working experts such as Mark O’Leary, currently head of network access at Jisc, the not-for-profit government organisation that delivers data connectivity and associated services to the UK’s research and education community via the world-leading Janet network, who wants to share his thoughts on a new initiative called ‘Govroam’.

The event will conclude at 4pm, after a very full day of debate – and we really hope to see you on Thursday, but places are going fast and we recommend you try and secure your chance to hear these stakeholders speak today.

Places are still available, which, like all Think Digital Partners events, are FREE to qualified public sector professionals.

Please go here to check out the agenda and here to secure your place on a day set to answer the questions Smarter Working is asking of all of us.