This article is more than 1 year old

The Government Digital Service: The Happiest Place on Earth

Consultants confirm: It's white, cliquey and everyone hates them

Cabal culture

It’s not unusual for a football manager to bring in his own back-room team. Yet it is unusual in Whitehall. GDS was exceptional in permitting its executives to draw quite so heavily on personal connections and old associations to fill the top ranks. It became a problem with GDS staff, the report found.

Of all the reasons the Art of Work report pinpointed for low morale and high turnover, this emerges as the clearest. GDS leaders were permitted to recruit who they wanted, and they recruited very narrowly into top positions. In turn, they excluded others from the decision-making.

The key personnel running GDS – chief executive Mike Bracken and deputy director Tom Loosemore – were “anointed” to lead the venture by Martha Lane-Fox, insiders say. Bracken had helped set up the NGO MySociety, where Loosemore was a director and treasurer. They also collaborated on TheyWorkForYou, and many of those volunteers would be appointed to senior positions at GDS.

Loosemore also drew on former BBC associates.

“Permanent staff progression was a problem if you were not in the Bracken/Loosemore fan club,” a source familiar with GDS explained. “Basically, you needed to come from a MySociety or BBC background, and be handpicked to get a good role”.

GDS staff told HR consultants that the nepotism was an important factor: staff felt career progression could only be achieved by leaving GDS.

“Reward is for the ‘chosen few’”, despaired one civil servant in the report. The consultants noted that:

The appointment of staff into new roles seems to frequently bypass any internal open competition, with roles going immediately to the external market or internal people being appointed by senior management on a basis of ‘who they know’. These practices have led to frustration for team members who feel they have missed opportunities.

It also noted:

There is a general feeling that you have to know the right people to get noticed, there is ‘favouritism’ and people do not hear about opportunities as they are frequently offered to external staff or new roles are filled by management without any ‘open’ competition.

Staff told external consultants that hiring old mates hampered career progression and created an insular organisation, convinced of its own brilliance, but unable to describe its purpose. As The Art of Work's analysis found: “Because the majority of people are bought in at Band A, often at the top of this Band, there is no future salary progression.”

“There is a fine line between recruiting people you know are good, and making it a shoo-in for your mates,” one individual familiar with GDS told us.

Of the TheyWorkForYou volunteers, ten ended up as staff or contractors at GDS, with several taking senior positions.

Being favoured by the Bracken/Loosemore axis pushed out more talented IT staff, one Whitehall IT source familiar with its work told el Reg:

Most of the great stuff in GDS happened because really good people either took a big pay cut on the promise of great things to come or came in as contractors. Those that took the pay cut started leaving when progression was limited and the senior roles were already cornered by people like Neil Williams who got in there early.

The people that came in as contractors split into two camps: 1) the people that cared who have now mostly been cleared out, and 2) the people that are 'delivery' focused above all else, who have been kept on despite the damage they are causing.

“We've lost a lot of really, really good people who were contractors.

Williams was a social media enthusiast at BiS, who joined as project manager. He was promoted to oversee the GOV.UK transition. – Ed

Next page: Conclusion

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like