Government launches £100m innovation fund for public service reform

The chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, has launched a £100m innovation fund aimed at deploying test-and-learn teams across the country.

The teams will be made up of people with digital and data skills, policy officials and frontline workers who will each be given a challenge to solve through innovation and experiments.

Announcing the fund at University College London’s East Campus on 9 December, McFadden said that he wanted the government to adopt a “test-and-learn culture”.

“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?’” he said.

“That’s the test-and-learn mindset, and I’m keen to see where we can deploy it in government and where we can make the state a little bit more like a startup.”

The first teams will be focusing on two set of projects – family support and temporary accommodation – across Manchester, Sheffield, Essex and Liverpool, beginning in the new year.

The projects will look at how family hubs can increase their reach for disadvantaged families, and how to reduce costs around temporary accommodation. How this is done is completely up to the teams themselves.

“We’re not going to dictate how they do that. The central point of these test-and-learn [teams] is that we set them a problem and leave them to get on with it. They’ll be empowered to experiment and find new and innovative ways to fix problems,” McFadden said.

The government is also encouraging people who work in startups and tech companies to do 6-12 month “tours of duty” in government, using their skills to tackle challenges such as healthcare reform as part of the next phase of the No.10 Innovation Fellows Programme.

The joint venture between 10 Downing Street and the Government Digital Service (GDS) aims to attract technology and digital talent to the public sector. Last year’s phase focused on AI and automation, while this year, the focus is on transforming the most critical teams in government, from healthcare to criminal justice to making Britain a clean-energy super power, in line with the government’s Plan for Change.

“Prison governors, social work heads, directors of children’s services – they are the ones on the ground who can see how things are working, where the obstacles are, and where a policy won’t survive contact with reality,” McFadden said.

“They have stared the issues and the people that depend on us in the eye, seen how the system has been broken – they have taken the frustrations home with them each week. Now we want them to be part of the solution.”