Building digital capability is a key priority for government departments looking to deliver the modern, efficient public services that citizens need. Opencast’s TechNExt discussion focused on positive solutions with examples of what works, as well as looking at the key challenges facing government. 

Opencast’s Chief People and Operations Officer Cate Kalson, moderating the discussion, offered a definition of ‘capability’ as “the ability to deliver well in a task or in a role through a blend of skills and operational knowledge”. 

Building digital capability is a journey for any organisation in and beyond government – and to illustrate the scale of the challenge and the resources involved, Sarah McMann, Chief Digital Product Officer at HMRC, set out the experiences of the department over the past 15 years.  

Sarah, who has experience in both private and public sectors, oversees more than 600 digital services and products that support HMRC. She said the solution for HMRC was to focus not on the technology but to drive organisational change and “move from a programmatic funding model to building sustainable teams and capability to drive continual improvement.” 

She said that “in terms of capability, we understand what capability we need today – but we're always looking out for tomorrow, particularly with generative AI.” 

HMRC works hard to build the capabilities its existing workforce, she said. “With 80,000 employees we need to understand, harness and nurture them,” she said. They’ve introduced a technology fast track, apprenticeships and capability boot camps. “We've heavily focused on things like cyber security, enterprise and solution, architecture, and business analysts. Where we see a shortage, we'll start to deploy these boot camps in earnest,” she said. 

Asked what worked in fostering a culture of learning and innovation, Kara Kane, Head of Design, Test, Learn and Grow at the Cabinet Office, and Robert Craig Chief Operations Officer at Skills Builder Partnership, took different perspectives. 

Kara said it was vital that teams understood exactly what was expected of them, operationally and strategically, and to have agile teams that were autonomous and able to make their own decisions. 

“Communities of practice are core to this, as is bringing people together around a shared purpose,” she said. “Often there are a lot of similarities in our work, and there's so much we can share and reuse, collaborate and critique each other's work.”