Building a mission-led government:

Ruling parties and policies may change, but at heart, every government has a single mission: to improve the lives of the citizens it serves. Too often, however, that mission gets lost in the complexity of day-to-day departmental operations.

Under pressure to keep operations flowing while handling constant policy shifts, departments focus on their own activities and can lose sight of the outcomes they’re trying to achieve together. Over time, the boundaries between departments grow thicker, until teams either work at cross-purposes or duplicate each other’s efforts.

But although a government may be divided into separate departments, citizens’ lives aren’t. They only see the outcomes they’re trying to get to, such as employment, better health, or safer communities.

Governments must develop the ability to act holistically to deliver on their mission by turning policy into meaningful outcomes for citizens. And while this joined-up, mission-led approach is a cornerstone of the UK Government’s Plan for Change, it’s much easier said than done.

Translating policy into effective action on the ground depends on a supporting digital infrastructure — an infrastructure that’s currently characterized by fragmentation, duplication, and inflexibility.

In our conversations with technology, operations, and policy leaders across the UK public sector, the appetite for change is clear. So, what will it take to create a digital foundation for mission-led government? We believe success will depend on three ambitious but achievable actions.

1: Reclaim sovereignty of the core

A mission-led government needs ownership and control over how policies, departments, and services relate to each other and work together. To achieve that, it must have sovereignty over the core information infrastructure that underpins these connections and interactions.

In today’s public sector, delivery and operation of the digital core is often outsourced to third parties, with multivendor ‘rainbow teams’ owning and managing various components. But because the vendors in these rainbow teams compete with one another, they erect walls around their activities and, in many cases, retain ownership of data and intellectual property. This makes it much harder for mission-focused public servants to harness these assets to enable a joined-up approach to government. 

Silos and fragmentation are the enemies of progress. But by regaining control, the Government can use data more holistically to connect overlapping departmental activities — and align them more closely with the core mission. Removing the current silos and reclaiming sovereignty will also create opportunities to eliminate duplicated effort and wasted spend where multiple vendors are working on the same digital capabilities for different departments or services.

2: Enable composable government

Over the last few years, the idea of the ‘composable enterprise’ has emerged in the private sector as an evolution of the microservices approach to digital development. In essence, the composable enterprise breaks the organization down into a collection of capabilities that can be reused and combined — or composed — by different business domains to achieve specific outcomes.

It’s an approach that can lead to substantial gains in efficiency and agility while enabling rapid, low-risk digital experimentation. Composability can create significant value in the public sector as well. With control of the digital core, the Government can make capabilities reusable in different departmental and service-specific contexts. 

Composability is a key step in the journey to joined-up government, helping dissolve departmental boundaries and connecting activities and data to achieve better outcomes. 

Take ‘Break down barriers to opportunity,’ one of the five missions in Plan for Change, for example. Clearly, accomplishing this goal will require a coordinated effort across numerous departments, including DWP, DHSC, DBIS, DfE, and DSIT. Under the digital status quo, this could prove extremely complex, and while a sovereign core and composable capabilities won’t make it simple, they will make the goal much more achievable.

3: Use AI for policy implementation

One of the biggest challenges for digital teams throughout the public sector is supporting the implementation of ever-changing policy mandates.  

But as DSIT’s State of digital government review pointed out, “[…] successes are too often achieved despite the system rather than because of it. They rely on the dedication of experts doing their best with limited resources, navigating processes which were not designed for a digital age, and implementing policies which were not designed to be digital first.”

This is a challenge we often encounter in our clients’ engineering teams — both in the public and privatesectors — where innovation is impeded by slow, manual processes and ineffective development platforms. That’s why we created the AI/works™ Agentic Development Platform to power rapid engineering by automating many elements of the software development lifecycle and providing AI assistance to our experts.

At Thoughtworks, we envision a future where the Government has an engine like AI/works™ that uses the combined context of legislation, policy, compliance, and procedures to find and encode the smoothest path to the desired outcomes. For example, it might identify where new teams are needed to tackle a particular challenge, or which existing capabilities could be combined to provide a solution.

This AI-powered approach would also make it easier for departments to pivot quickly as policies change, or conduct what-if analyses to model the potential impact of changes on operations and citizen outcomes.

The journey to mission-led government starts here

When the Government is in control of the core and composability is at the heart of digital strategy, the addition of an AI engine would be transformational, finally bringing the goal of joined-up, mission-led government within reach.

While the destination may seem a long way off, there are steps you can take today that will make the journey faster and smoother:

• Be clear about your mission: Demand more clarity on outcomes (not the outputs) that must be delivered — and don’t lose sight of them. Ignore existing structures and think about the capabilities you need to accomplish the mission.

• Change your mindset about ‘impossible’ problems: Build your understanding of how modern technologies and approaches can help you solve longstanding issues that have previously been consigned to the ‘too hard’ pile.

• Bring technologists to the table: Get tech experts involved in the earliest conversations; they’ll bring a fresh perspective that isn’t tethered to existing organizational constraints and help you reimagine what’s possible.

Thoughtworks partners with public sector organizations worldwide, including numerous UK Government departments and the Government Digital Service, to help them evolve to meet growing demand for better citizen services.

To learn more about how we can help you build the capabilities to deliver your mission, get in touch.