Sue Griffin, Head of User Support Services, DWP Digital
Today (March 8th) is International Women’s Day and this year's theme is inspiring inclusion. The theme focuses on inspiring women to be included, creating a sense of belonging, relevance, and empowerment highlighting the crucial role of inclusion in achieving gender equality.
This month we will be celebrating our colleagues and championing allyship through a host of events and mentoring opportunities.
Almost 35% of our workforce are women and we’ve seen an increase of women at Senior Civil Servant level rise from 39% to 50% in recent years. As a Senior Civil Servant, I am proud of the work we have done towards better gender parity.
Research shows that women rate company culture highly when looking for a job in the tech sector. DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) has a dedicated Women’s Network and Menopause Network providing communities of support, advice and guidance. Alongside the networks within DWP our Women in Digital and Women in Data forums provide a supportive community of women from all levels of the organisation.
The communities we’ve created through these networks have been recognised across the tech industry. In 2023, we won ‘Employer of the Year’ at the Women in IT awards and ‘Company of the Year’ at the TechWomen100 awards for our commitment to supporting women and encouraging diversity in tech.
We also won ‘Best employer career site’ at the Women in Tech Employer awards for our dedication to closing the gender gap in tech, impressed by our focus on showcasing role models.
We were shortlisted for ‘Diversity Employer of the Year’ at the Computing Women in Tech Excellence awards, and I was proud to be shortlisted for ‘Role Model of the Year’ due to my passion for our Women in Digital network.
I am very proud to be the sponsor of our Women in Digital network. The aim of the group is to create an inclusive environment for women to develop women in their careers, providing excellent networking and training opportunities to build confidence and engagement skills.
We get together at least once a month and some of the things we get up to include sharing stories and ideas; supporting each other with opportunities and tackling challenges; hearing from talented colleagues in DWP Digital; sharing information about our professional industry networks; learning together about our practices and job roles; and offer mentoring and coaching.
I’m lucky enough to have had a very long and varied career in DWP, and it really matters to me to give back to the organisation and help others grow and succeed. I firmly believe that the more diverse and inclusive our organisation is, the better products and services we will deliver which is ultimately why we’re all here.
A small thing we can all do to inspire inclusivity is to notice what’s going on around us. When women aren't present in a meeting or a talent cohort or on a speaking panel, we must ask "Why not?" And change that!
#InspireInclusion
]]>Aesha Zafar, head of capability, DWP Digital
This year, the theme for National Apprenticeship Week was ‘Skills for Life’. We took the opportunity to shine a spotlight on our incredible apprentices with a week of events, awards and talks from our current cohort.
The week culminated in ‘Celebration Friday’ – an opportunity for the support networks surrounding our apprentices to celebrate their successes and reflect on the overall programme.
Everyone at DWP Digital makes a difference to millions of people. Whether we’re leading innovative projects, writing code, or providing support to our colleagues, our work has an impact. We all contribute to our organisational goals, and we’re all directly involved in our core mission of making sure that people can access the help, advice, and financial support they need.
To achieve our mission, we need a skilled, driven and diverse workforce who aren’t afraid to put our users at the heart of everything they do. Apprenticeships, which give people ways to change career paths as well as supporting those at the start of their careers, are a key part in us achieving that.
We’re committed to supporting people who want to make a difference to society by learning new skills in tech and applying them to projects with real-world impact. We currently have 274 apprentices working across 23 different programmes, from level 3 to level 7. Our apprentices work in a variety of roles, including software engineering, DevOps, data analysis and project management.
We invest time to ensure we provide the optimum overall experience, with managers, mentors and Communities of Practice all playing a key part.
The 2023 apprenticeship survey told us that a massive 96% of our apprentices are satisfied with the support they receive from their line manager. More than 80 of our apprentices have gained a promotion during or in the 12 months following their apprenticeship.
Apprentices are supported by their line managers in a number of ways:
At DWP Digital, apprenticeships help us nurture and grow new and existing talent and create meaningful change. They are real jobs with formal and informal learning and allow people to achieve their career goals in a supported way, and they enable us to meet our business needs.
We offer a place to develop in an innovative and collaborative environment and whether someone is new or established in their role, our apprenticeships can allow people to flourish and truly shape their careers.
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Dan is Senior Technical Lead in our Integration Team. He leads on application development and adoption in several agile teams.
Some of the most transformational new technologies for the team are events and APIs.
At DWP Digital we continuously look for innovative ways to streamline our services, enable communication between our product teams, and improve our users’ experiences.
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and events have emerged recently as powerful tools in changing the way we innovate and collaborate across teams. This is because they allow data to flow between our services.
We use them to change the way we share and use data by:
Ultimately, these technologies empower our customers with efficient, real-time access to the support they need. They are one way our teams ensure that services are accessible and user focused.
Events are notifications that signal a change in a system or application. They allow components within the organisation to easily communicate with each other.
Events enable real-time updates, and are essential for building responsive, interconnected systems.
APIs are the bridge between different software applications and enable them to communicate and share data. APIs provide a standardised way for developers to access specific functionalities or data from other applications.
We use them to streamline our integration process and improve collaboration within the organisation.
API management serves as a vital framework to regulate, standardise, and enforce various policies. It is particularly useful in security and audit protocols, and helps you maintain consistency and reliability.
They help create transparency and collaboration between teams in an organisation. Real-time data sharing, through events, means stakeholders have access to the information they need.
APIs allow you to integrate different systems, connecting the teams who manage them in meaningful ways.
They allow you to produce components that are modular and scalable. As you develop new products, new components can be added and updated without disrupting existing systems.
This helps teams remain agile and can adapt to changing business needs or technological advances.
Events and APIs empower developers to build on existing functionality at the same time as they develop new features and applications. There are faster innovation cycles, and products can be delivered faster.
For us, this means quickly delivering value for our users.
By capturing real-time data, you can gain valuable insights into user behaviour, trends, and system performance. Integrating data from multiple sources gives you a complete view of our organisation’s operations and allows you to make better decisions.
One of our goals is to join our data up to improve customer experiences, create efficiencies, and enable us to share data with key partners. Events and APIs can help us do those things.
All our teams publish their APIs and events when developing their services. This allows other teams to use that data and eliminates the need to obtain the data from users again.
Choosing the appropriate event streaming and API management platforms is important. We need ours to be scalable, reliable, easy to use, and capable of integration. The tool needs to demonstrably support the business goal.
Collaboration is structured into to the way we develop and share events and APIs at DWP Digital. We provide training to our developers so they can understand how to create, use, and manage them.
We continuously track the performance of our events and APIs, seek feedback from stakeholders and users, and identify iterative improvements. That gives us a constant process of identifying errors or inefficiencies and optimising performance.
Events and APIs are powerful tools for large organisations to enhance collaboration, scalability, and innovation. By adopting a strategic approach, organisations can use them to build a connected, agile environment that drives the pace of delivery across teams.
At DWP Digital we’re harnessing the transformational potential of events and APIs, and using them to reshape the way we operate, collaborate, and deliver. If you want to be part of that, sign up to our newsletter.
After joining in April as CDIO (Chief Digital and Information Officer), I am delighted to be writing this end of year message. The months have flown since then and it’s clear the team has achieved so much together in 2023.
It’s been quite a time for me to join. It’s not every year when you can say, without fear of contradiction, that we are on the cusp of major transformation of the way we work and live, thanks to digital technology, our use of data and the rise of generative AI (Artificial Intelligence).
Digital in DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) is at the heart of this revolution, which means it’s a great, if busy and challenging, place to work.
We started the year with no fewer than 204 new projects complementing an impressive 235 existing projects. Alongside these, we launched our ambitious Digital Business plan, with five goals that set us up for continued future success.
The work we do transforms how customers, colleagues, and taxpayers experience DWP’s services, providing impact and improving lives. Our focus in 2023 was on simplifying and streamlining customer and colleague experience and, in the process, delivering value quickly and efficiently. Here are some examples of how we’re doing that. These examples and others mean that we are playing an important role in the Government-wide Digital and Data Strategy Top 75 Services programme.
This year we made the move from monolithic IT applications to modernised digital services with common components. In 2023 our Strategic Reference Architecture (SRA) teams built 90 reusable features, making the delivery of solutions faster and more consistent.
The Health Assessment Service deployed a new microservice to make it quicker for teams to make changes to customer information in the future.
In Child Maintenance it’s now easier for parents to report a change of income online, making better use of HM Revenue and Customs real time information to manage expectations and deliver real-time decisions.
The new Maternity Allowance calculator made its debut, helping colleagues process new claims by using real-time earnings data.
From October applications for Access to Work became easier using a redesigned, more accessible online application platform. Simpler cases are processed faster, leaving colleagues more time to engage with those with more complex support needs.
The Apply for New Style Job Seekers Allowance online service was made available to customers in Northern Ireland for the first time.
Our teams have been recognised with significant award wins this year – the ‘Founder’s Award’ at the Digital Leaders 100 Awards in June 2023, given for outstanding contribution to digital leadership. We were chosen because of our focus on the use of data, emerging technology, and innovation to drive our vision.
We demonstrated our commitment to diversity and inclusion winning the ‘Employer of the Year’ at the Women In IT Awards in February 2023 and ‘Company of the Year’ at the TechWomen100 awards. Showcasing our female colleagues across our careers site helped us win 'Best Employer careers site’ at the Women in Tech Employer Awards with judges impressed with our dedication to closing the gender gap in tech.
We’re constantly striving to create a workplace that is diverse and genuinely inclusive. In doing so we will always be able to be the best we can at everything we try to achieve. These award wins are a true testament to our progress.
We’ve made massive strides in our learning and training agenda in 2023. We’re making it even easier for teams to access professional memberships of organisations like BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT, and we’re bringing career development together through our Digital Academy. By giving colleagues access to even more learning and development opportunities, we’re ensuring a consistent level of professionalism across DWP Digital.
AI and machine learning will continue to make the headlines. But of equal importance is how organisations like ours use data to improve the lives of millions of people.
Bringing all these elements together will be DWP’s Digital Strategy, launching in 2024. With this strategy, we will be well positioned to realise the potential of data, providing us with the insight to refine and join up customer journeys where we can.
We have an exciting 12 months ahead, but for now I'd like to wish everyone a very Happy New Year.
]]>Around 5.7 million people currently claim Universal Credit – a monthly payment for people who are out of work or on a low income. One of the Universal Credit team’s strategic goals is to give people an excellent end-to-end experience.
But we know that sometimes people struggle to understand aspects of Universal Credit, such as:
Our job as content designers is to help people understand Universal Credit so they have the information they need to make the right decisions about their claim.
One of the most important ways we do this is with guidance on GOV.UK. The guidance includes information on how Universal Credit works, eligibility, and how to claim it.
GOV.UK is the main place people look for information about Universal Credit, and they trust the information is accurate.
If we get this information right – if it meets people’s needs and is easy to find and use – we will help people to better understand Universal Credit. We will also reduce pressure on colleagues in jobcentres and on the helpline.
All government teams working on GOV.UK are focused on meeting people’s needs. We need a deep understanding of what information people need and the words people use when they search for information.
To get this right, we need data and user research. We need expertise from designers, policy makers, and operational and legal teams.
Universal Credit is well set up to get those things. There are multiple Universal Credit ‘theme teams’ who manage specific subject areas, such as housing, health or earnings.
These teams:
With so much knowledge and expertise, it makes sense to involve these teams in creating and managing the guidance on GOV.UK.
Government services are large and complicated. By joining up across our internal structures, departments and processes we can design and develop joined-up user experiences from start to finish. This means people get the right information, at the right time, no matter where or when they interact with us.
There is a lot of expertise in our theme teams which can be applied when designing content for GOV.UK. Doing this provides a better, more consistent experience for our users.
For example, joined-up guidance can:
We’ve collaborated closely with colleagues across government, and published our first improvements to health-related guidance earlier this year. They include:
We’ve also removed duplication and made the words we use consistent on GOV.UK, and within the service. All of this moves us towards our goal of improving the overall user experience.
Our work is not done and we’ll continue to iterate. We know we need to make Universal Credit processes and content clearer and more transparent, based on what people need.
We’re learning how to help teams incorporate GOV.UK guidance into their processes and developing a strategy to do this. We’ll use this as a basis to work with other theme teams – by creating the strategy with them.
This piece of collaborative, cross-government work has allowed us to look at the user journey more strategically and holistically. We’ve been able to rethink health content in the context of the whole service, rather than making isolated tweaks.
As a result, the content is more consistent, timely and useful for claimants.
Collaborating with theme teams and giving them more ownership of their GOV.UK guidance is a huge step towards achieving our goal: giving people an excellent end-to-end experience.
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We are proud to announce DWP Digital have won Company of the Year at this year’s TechWomen100 awards.
The TechWomen100 awards recognise and celebrate achievements of women, networks and companies striving to make a difference in the technology sector.
Company of the Year is awarded to an organisation who has successfully designed and implemented initiatives and programs to develop their female talent pipeline, recognising how much we have progressed as a diverse and inclusive employer.
We strongly believe that a diverse workforce brings greater experience, innovation, and creativity through valuing our differences and working collaboratively. Our nomination was supported by statistics, almost 35% of our workforce are women compared to the tech sector in general which is at 27%. Our senior team are nearly 40% women.
Rich Corbridge, Chief Digital and Information Officer and Gender Champion for DWP said, “DWP is committed to redressing the gender balance. We are working hard to create an inclusive workplace that is attractive to women. Digital across the UK is missing 34% of a representative workforce by not appealing to women in digital roles; only 16% of the workforce is made up of women, we need to find every lever to correct this and quickly! This means having visible role models and helping women develop a broad skillset – not just technical but also engagement, leadership, confidence and the right support in the workplace at all times are essential.
“We are constantly striving to create a workplace that is diverse and inclusive, with equality at its heart. In doing so we will always be able to be the best we can at everything we try to achieve.”
Working in DWP Digital has many benefits that positively impact women, we pride ourselves on being family-friendly, offering flexible and agile working.
Initiatives we highlighted in our nomination include changes to our recruitment process, including how we have set up a senior diversity task force to test new ways of hiring and promoting. We also have a colleague challenge group to critique their work, providing real accountability and transparency.
Our internal colleague networks ‘Women in Digital’ and ‘Women in Data’ provide a supportive environment, and we’re passionate about celebrating awareness days like International Women’s Day, providing opportunities such as speed mentoring.
This award is another example of how we are working towards gender parity, having won Employer of the Year at the Women in IT awards in February this year and our DWP Digital careers website winning Women in Tech Best Employer Careers Website award in June. The judges were impressed with the focus on female role models in tech illustrated through the website.
The award-winning Digital Marketing team write the award nominations for the organisation to promote the exceptional work done telling stories that demonstrate how we are ‘Digital with Purpose.’
The organisation relies on a highly skilled, diverse, and inclusive workforce that represents the customers we build and maintain digital services for. Being an award-winning employer helps attract this talent into DWP Digital.
Head of External Engagement and Digital Marketing Nicola said, “We are proud to be part of an organisation that values diversity, equality, and inclusion, and actively encourages and supports women into our digital roles. Writing submissions for awards like these only comes from the continued efforts of our people to provide a diverse and inclusive environment.”
A recent study by CW jobs found that 64% of women in tech are inspired to pursue their career by a role model. From 1300 entries, Jane Kenny, Lead Delivery, and IT service manager was successful at the TechWomen100 awards in the Individual category alongside a list of 100 outstanding women.
As a positive role model, Jane believes we could encourage more women into tech by continuing to tell our story, and support, motivate and inspire others. Jane fell into a career in tech by accident, joining the Civil Service over 30 years ago as an admin assistant. Jane was recently interviewed for a Women in Tech case study, sharing advice and her career journey.
Following her win, Jane was happy to share the news:
“Thank you so much to everyone that supported me. It means so much. I really am so proud of this. To all the other winners – congratulations to you too.”
The TechWomen100 awards are run by WeAreTechWomen, one of DWP Digital’s established partner organisations.
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Agile Coaching is a relatively new profession in DWP Digital. We're the first government department in England to have the profession – that we know of. Because it’s such a new role, we’re a small community and the demand on our service is high.
There are so far only four agile coaches in DWP Digital, each bringing with them their own unique set of skills and experience. We provide a valuable service to lots of different teams across DWP, not just in digital.
Between the four of us, we help a wide range of multidisciplinary teams and individuals adapt to agile ways of working, improve their team dynamics and adapt to organisational change. We use team coaching techniques to help them unlock solutions to those challenges and make progress towards their goals.
Our goal is to help people across the department deliver for those we serve.
We also lean into our experience as Agile-Lean practitioners to help them grow and mature a culture of continuous improvement.
Having the word ‘coach’ in the job title can be misleading. Agile coaching isn’t always delivered from a coaching stance. Although a coaching stance can work great with individuals and teams, when we work with digital teams going through big changes, we often adopt other stances.
We can for example, adopt the stance of ‘teacher’, ‘facilitator’ or ‘mentor’, but we always aim to end up in a coaching stance as the team and culture matures.
Often with Agile coaching, we look at processes and structure, but problems that teams face are frequently about communication and collaboration. So, we need to look at how teams work together, rather than just get the theory right.
Being ‘Agile’ is not the end goal, after all.
That’s when team coaching, and a more ‘lean out’ approach to tackling the problem, can be extremely beneficial. As coaches, we believe that those doing the work have the power to solve their own problems. We just need to create the right environment and hold the space for them to do so.
DWP Digital is vast, and digital teams collaborate with colleagues across DWP, so we often take a systemic approach to coaching.
We work with individual teams on a micro level, as I covered above. But equally, unless we also coach the systems the teams are part of, we cannot expect to see lasting change and impactful outcomes. That can often mean challenging the status quo elsewhere in the organisation, but it’s an important part of our role.
Having worked with many teams in DWP in the last year, we could see there was an appetite for one-to-one coaching from people across the organisation. Working in government presents unique challenges, and everyone in the organisation needs to be a problem-solver on a regular basis.
A couple of years ago, I decided to seek out more one-to-one coaching experience, on the basis that it would complement and enrich the work I was doing with teams. So, supported by our excellent delivery practice and our generous learning and development budget, me and 12 aspiring coaches from our agile delivery community completed the International Coaching Federation accredited programme with Barefoot Coaching.
On completion of the course, you can continue your study with a PG Cert – something I’m knee deep in currently – and work towards becoming an Associate Certified Coach accredited with the ICF.
To do that, coaches need a number of hours of coaching experience under their belts. So I put a call out for potential coachees across DWP, offering them 4.5 hours of pro bono coaching from a trainee coach to help towards the final assessment.
The response was incredible, and came as a real surprise to me. 500 people from across DWP applied to take part. We had expressions of interest from delivery managers, deputy directors, data analysts, Job Centre Plus colleagues, work coaches – people in a huge range of roles across the wider organisation.
With a limited resource in DWP Digital of 13 fresh but eager trainee coaches, I could see we needed help to deliver this amount of coaching. I reached out to our wider network – fellow coaches from HMRC and Cabinet Office, and some of our DWP apprenticeship coaches. I also contacted trainee coaches from the private sector that we trained with.
We now have around 30 coaches from other government departments and the private sector, helping us build coaching relationships with 50 of the coachees that signed up. In return, our trainee coaches are getting valuable coaching experience and will be able to apply for their professional accreditation.
There is clearly a huge demand for coaching in government. Generally, it’s not offered as a service to everyone. Often, because demand is high and the number of coaches is low, it’s offered to those in senior leadership positions as a priority, in the hope that their experiences help to build a coaching culture within the organisation.
But for me coaching is not exclusive to senior leadership roles – coaching is for everyone. It enables the individual to find their own answers to their questions, and as a result they are more committed to solving problems.
I believe that in an organisation full of problem-solvers, coaching is an increasingly essential tool.
My little experiment isn’t the only activity happening within the coaching space. Others outside of DWP Digital in the wider organisation are investing in coaching apprenticeships, individual coaching and team coaching, to not only upskill our staff but to bring much-needed coaching capability to the wider department.
Although applications for our trial are currently closed, civil servants can access the wider Government campus coaching catalogue through Civil Service Learning, where they can reach out to qualified coaches within the wider Civil Service for free support.
Hannah Dell’Armi is speaking about the Agile Coaching service at Lean Agile Scotland on Wednesday 13 September.
Josh is a student at Notre Dame College in Leeds, studying Digital Production and Design at T-level. He recently brought his skills to DWP Digital as part of our work placement programme.
I joined DWP Digital earlier this year and going in, I didn’t know what to expect. My mind was full of so many questions that were quickly answered by the great team that I was introduced to. Over the course of my placement at DWP Digital I felt nothing but welcomed and appreciated for the work that I was producing.
I was interested in applying as I could see that DWP Digital was very different to my previous workplaces. I knew that being here, I would learn so many new skills that I could apply to many different situations, both in and outside of my time at DWP Digital.
As part of my nine-week placement I was tasked with developing a system that could be used in Jobcentres to help customers find a job quickly using their mobile phones. The task included doing this without developing an app in order to make the system more widely accessible.
I began work developing a digital jobs dashboard that would replace the old paper dashboard currently used in job centres.
I used different coding IDE’s (integrated development environments) which allowed me to create the digital job board that I was able to use and demonstrate at Pudsey Jobcentre. I was also fortunate enough to test the digital job board within the Quarry House office to get feedback from colleagues.
Developing a basic understanding of JavaScript in this role allowed me to expand my coding knowledge and was directly applied to the project. As a result, the dashboard has been developed with the ability to pull live job information from ‘Find A Job’ and display them in a meaningful way. QR codes are included for customers to scan to get further information on their mobile phone.
Developing the dashboard reduced the risk of roles becoming quickly out of date and ensured the latest technology was used. It reduces time searching and helps customers as soon as they step into the Jobcentre rather than having to wait to be served.
Having something that looks complete was rewarding and meant that I was able to test the system out on people and see if it works for them. It also provided me with an opportunity to get their thoughts on improvements. I’ve had some excellent feedback so far and am so glad it works for customers.
I presented my work to CDIO (Chief Digital and Information Officer) Rich Corbridge and Universal Credit Digital Director, Paul Francis at a recent visit to Pudsey Jobcentre.
After seeing the digital jobs dashboard Rich Corbridge said: “I’m so impressed with the work Josh has done in such a short space of time. He’s obviously a real talent. This is really great product. In the Jobcentres I’ve visited recently this kind of thing is on the top of their lists to help customers.”
My line manager Chris was also there and said: “Josh has exceeded expectations in what he achieved in just nine weeks. Colleagues and I shared an initial vision of the needs that digital jobs boards could meet, and provided support and feedback throughout, but he stepped up to lead this project. His prototype was used unprompted by real customers, generated lots of valuable feedback, and we already have plans to trial it in another four sites”.
I’ve learnt so much being in Digital Group – coding skills and working in a team – it’s the best thing I’ve ever done!
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Recently, I’ve been lucky enough to attend both the WeAreTech Festival ran by WeAreTechWomen in London and our own Women in Leadership cross-gov event in Manchester. The latter brought together 86 women from 13 different government departments with senior leaders from our partners Gartner.
Both events focused on equipping women to take control of their careers, build skills to support them in their leadership journey, and learn from those who have gone before, and to do so in a safe space.
The energy and excitement at the events was powerful and stimulating, with everyone keen to engage, share ideas and learn from each other. With so much energy in the room, it led to lots of useful discussions and great sessions where we could reflect and share practical experiences among ourselves.
Both events brought home the power and value of allyship. None of us work in isolation and having allies around you means you have support when you need it.
At both events, inspirational women spoke about their own leadership journeys, how they’ve built their confidence and personal style. They also spoke about the challenges they contend with and the people who’ve supported and influenced them on their way.
Rich Corbridge opened the Women in Leadership event in his role as gender champion for DWP’s Women’s Network. He spoke of his aim of creating gender parity in leadership roles in DWP and highlighted the need for allies.
Throughout both events we created our own network of allies, and considered where we already have such people in place in our professional and personal lives. This is more than just a few connections on LinkedIn. These are the people who support, encourage, advise, share the burden, and help us grow and meet our goals.
For me, my dad and my husband have always been my biggest cheerleaders. They’re the ones who tell me that of course I can do anything I put my mind to and reassure me that ‘you’ve got this.’ They inspire me and give me confidence to be brave.
They are closely followed by a strong group of women I’m lucky enough to call friends. A diverse group of women from my professional and personal lives, from a range of backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. They encourage and challenge me to be better – and I willingly do the same in return.
Then there’s my work ‘family’ – the teams I build around me and work with, who I want to succeed and who I’m sure wish the same for me. Now I have a new group of allies, all with the same goal of helping each other grow.
I feel lucky. I’m sure you’re lucky too. Take the time to consider who your allies are – history shows us the value of choosing well. It also shows that allies may not be in the most obvious place.
Our own Cheryl Stevens stamped her mark on both events with her people-centred approach to leadership, and provided the best piece advice I heard: treat your network like a garden, nurture it and let it grow. I consider my allies the prize plants in that garden. They’re not the showiest, they don’t all match, or even complement each other, but they are the ones that give me confidence, joy, and purpose.
Surround yourself with good people. Support, learn and grow with them and they will lift you up, no matter who they are.
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The Digital Leaders (DL) 100 list, in its 11th year, celebrates the teams and individuals who are working hard behind the scenes to secure the UK’s Digital Transformation.
The DL100 Awards took place on 22 June in Leeds. This was the first time the ceremony has taken place in the North.
DWP Digital made the finalist list with 6 of our people and projects shortlisted including the Digital Public Service Innovation of the Year, AI and Data Innovation of the Year, Digital Leader of the Year and Young Digital Leader of the Year categories.
On the night, we won the prestigious Founders Award. This was the first time the award, given for outstanding contribution to digital leadership, had been given to an organisation rather than an individual. We were chosen because of our focus on the use of data, emerging technology, and innovation to drive our vision.
Jacqui Leggetter, Head of Integration at DWP Digital said, “This award is fantastic recognition for the innovative work that we are doing across DWP Digital; it is not just for one team; it is for every team that is helping to drive transformation and pushing the boundaries of modern technology whilst never losing sight of our users and the citizens we’re here to serve. It was great having the six finalist teams represented at the event to celebrate; everyone in Digital Group should feel very proud of this award.”
Richard Corbridge, Chief Digital and Information Officer (CDIO) was in attendance on the night presenting the Young Digital Leader of the Year award and providing a keynote speech.
He said: “The part that we as digital leaders play in the delivery of customer services makes us essential to all successful transformation not just digital transformation. You are truly inspirational. I would particularly like to shout out to people in the room who are mentors, you play a vital role in building the next generation of leaders to win these awards in years to come. You are not just leading digital delivery but coaching the next generation. We can all learn from each other, and I encourage you all to do that here tonight, tomorrow and ongoing."
The awards brought a successful Digital Leaders Week to a close, which saw several of our DWP Digital colleagues participate in sessions and panel discussions.
As a proud partner of the week, we had 9 sessions across the week, a mixture of online webinars and in-person sessions. This included John Keegan, Head of Digital Security leading a session on ‘How DWP is utilising a two-pronged offensive against cyber-attacks.’ Jacqui Leggetter, Head of Integration and David Kibble, Lead Integration Architect held a discussion about how DWP Digital are transforming customer and agent facing services using composite architecture through a scaled test and learn approach.
Roni Colling, a software engineer talked about being a ‘Reluctant Leader.’ And, Duncan Parke, Integrated Risk, and Intelligence Service, joined the Digital Leaders conference in Manchester in a panel discussion about AI and public services.
We had further online sessions with Alex Coomer, a lead product manager delivering the session ‘How to transform services in Government,’ Tony Sudworth, Head of Sustainability spoke about next steps in digital sustainability and Neil Owen, our Tech Services, Collaboration and Communication Lead, talked about transforming a Digital Workplace at scale. Jacqui also joined a ‘Policy Jam’ session in partnership with BCS to discuss ‘Responsible leadership in a Digital Age.’
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