A Cabinet minister has said reform of the state is “essential” and suggested that the “creativity” seen in start-ups could help the Government produce “better results”.
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden has said there are “a lot of good people caught in bad systems” and that there has got to be “learning from what’s happening” in the private sector.
Mr McFadden will deliver a speech on Monday where he will call for the Civil Service to adopt the “test and learn” approach seen in tech firms in the private sector.
Asked about his plans for Whitehall, Mr McFadden suggested on Times Radio that firms such as Spotify and Airbnb have “completely changed” their sectors.
He told the station: “What I’m talking about today is reform of the state, and I think reform of the state is essential.
“We all depend on the state for lots of different services, but in some ways it does things in the same way as it’s done for a long time and we’re in a world where things have changed very rapidly in the private sphere.
“I’m talking today in my speech about businesses that didn’t exist maybe 15 or 20 years ago, like Airbnb or Spotify or WhatsApp, and they’ve completely changed the way that we think about travel or the way that we consume music, and so on.
“We’re very creative in this country on technology and start-ups, and I want to bring some of that creativity into government to help us produce better results for citizens.”
Asked whether he was picking a fight with civil servants, Mr McFadden told Sky News that he was “praising” them.
“I think we’ve got a lot of good people caught in bad systems, and the point I’m making today is that we’ve got huge change in the private sphere.”
He said firms such as Spotify have “changed our lives”, and added said that the Government has not changed in the same way and that Westminster has “got to take the learning from what’s happening” in other sectors.
In a speech at University College London’s East Campus in Stratford on Monday, Mr McFadden is expected to warn that “if we keep governing as usual, we are not going to achieve what we want to achieve.”
He will launch a £100 million “innovation fund” to underpin plans to launch “test and learn” teams in public services around the country.
In the same speech, the minister is expected to tell Whitehall: “Test it. Fix the problems. Change the design. Test it again. Tweak it again. And so on, and so on, for as long as you provide the service.
“Suddenly, 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?
“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.”
The test and learn approach is used across the business world, and allows new ideas to be tried out on a small scale to see their impact before being rolled out more widely if they are successful.
Under the plans, the test and learn teams will be set a challenge and allowed to experiment and try new things to meet it.
Two projects on family support and temporary accommodation will be the first outing for the test and learn approach.
These will begin in January 2025, with teams deployed in Manchester, Sheffield, Essex and Liverpool.
While Mr McFadden will acknowledge “each of these projects is small”, he will say “they could rewire the state one test at a time”.
