Where does the rewiring of Central Government leave Cyber/Digital Skills?
The rewiring of the UK state (Machinery of Government Changes – summary at the end of this post) has profound implications for reskilling the UK workforce to handle accelerating change.
Perhaps the best way of understanding their likely impact is is to look at how they might impact the four scenarios update in New Choices from HEPI : “the current situation is a rapidly advancing Scenario 1, overlaid with an implicit scenario (research concentration) and some elements of a nascent by under-developed scenario 3 (place-based tertiary system) without the explicit policy provisions that would ensure a coherent transition”.
As said in a TES article on the changes “Universities ‘unloved’ by new government as No 10 confirms roles” , the Universities have been left without a clear home. That may well leave them to find their own homes/roles in the “Possible topology of the future sector” described on page 23 of New Choices . What is not covered is how those “homes” will be dictated by the major employers who not only dominate cyber/digital recruitment but also spend far more on research with their chosen partners than the research councils. Will they decide to “help” Government to create the UK talent pipelines they, and those in their supply and distribution chains, need. Or will they decide the effort is too great and it is easier to think globally.
Nowhere will the choices be more significant that with regard to the provision of honest and accurate advice and guidance to those about to receive their exam results and make life-changing career choices on the basis of the information currently available to them.
There has long been a divide between the skills activities of cyber/digital communities (which have long regarded themselves as special) and mainstream careers advice and guidance (from LEPs to Local Skills Partnerships, from Welfare to Work to Careers Hubs.
There were signs earlier this year that programmes like CyberFirst and TechFirst were about to expand, in co-operation with the Careers and Enterprise Company , Governors for Schools (now Boards for Education) and STEM Ambassadors , in order to reach the majority of teenagers via the majority of schools and not just that subset already interested in professional careers. But few digital/cyber employers are among the 15,000 employers working with recruitment agencies and government to transform UK talent acquisition via the Better Hiring Institute and Association of Recruitment Technology Providers .
Will moving digital skills to DCMS, AI skills to Number 10 and devolution policy to Manchester make building those bridges and addressing place-based digital/cyber skills shortages harder or easier – given that those “shortages” are meaningless until unpacked, usually into demand for sector/application specific hybrids and issus to do with quality, relevance, security clearance and geography and mobility – less than half of vacancies are for hybrid, let alone remote, working and geographic mobility is harder and more expensive than it has been since the 1970s.
Sixty years ago the Labour government created a “National Computing Centre” in Manchester to encourage the growth of computer usage in the UK and ensure the necessary education and training was made available. One of the fledgling NCC’s first activities was to organise training in Systems Analysis – to identity where and how new technologies could be used. Another was research into testing staff and recruits for the aptitudes for system analysis and/or to programme computers.
It was quickly identified that the aptitudes for good systems analysts and programmers were different. Good programmers tended to be mediocre at system analysis, other than the technical side of systems architecture. Good analysts were rarely more than adequate at programming. Unfortunately the runaway success of the NCC aptitude testing service for programmers (promoted widely by the computer companies of the day who ran the training schools) and of the NCC Systems Analysis course (used to cross train Accountants and Work Study engineers to identify the applications, design the systems and instruct the programmers), masked the difference.
By the time of decimalisation (1971) most new computer departments were staffed by people who had been recruited for their ability to learn how to programme, as opposed to learn how to to understand user needs and design systems to meet them. My MSc Dissertation (London Business School MSc06, “Why Computer Systems Fail”, published by Computer Weekly as a ten part series in 1973) was not the first to identify the consequences.
The subsequent rise of “computer science” as an academic discipline exacerbated the divide between those who believe that digital technology is the answer and the rest of the population, The results is a chronic shortage of those with so-called “soft skills” – i.e. more interested in how technologies (now including data analytics and AI) can be used to better identify and address human needs than in the technology itself.
Will the move to Manchester (to put flesh on the other priorities of the new Prime Minister) make it easier to focus attention on addressing this divide, as well as the UKs other economic and social divides.
The UCAS “Choose your future” site is accessed by the majority of schools leavers, whether or not they actually apply to go University. It indicates geographic and social divides that need to be addressed as well as the widening divide between those focussed on programming/coding (where AI is already decimating employment) and those focussed on systems analysis/problem solving, including the use of intelligent systems to support an ageing population with a shrinking workforce and tax base.
The 30th June UCAS application data indicates that the year on year growth in applications for undergraduate engineering and technology degrees has been accelerating and is now over 16%.
In parallel applications to study computing have been falling at nearly 10% per annum, compound, since peaking in 2024.
Applications to study medicine, nursing and related subjects had been falling or stagnant since a peak during Covid but recovered sharply this year after a collective exercise to overhaul the relevant career guidance on the UCAS website – which now includes a sponsored section on NHS careers. There is a need for more cyber/digital guidance like “Defy the Limits” which goes beyond the technical roles for which demand has been decimated as they are automated. We need to attract those interested in using data analytics and augmented intelligence to help identity needs and generate solutions (the modern equivalent of systems analysis). Hence the plans of the members of the Digital Policy Alliance 21CN Skills group to work with UCAS and Cynam to identify support for a collective exercise to overhaul the relevant careers guidance.
Success will entail bringing together those looking to attract the attitudes and aptitudes they need to meet their own future needs. Increasingly that involves offerig flexible career paths (more akin to climbing walls than ladders) focussed on how to apply technology to better meet human needs, with an assumption that correctly instructed AI will then generate the code necessary to assemble the relevant products and services. Most will also wish to recruit onto professional pathways as defined and quality controlled by the relevant Chartered Bodies, but there is an awareness that current material designed to promote these no longer seems to attract most teenagers.
There appears to be similar sea change in the world of cyber security. The attitudes and aptitudes sought have changed with the need to target the use of real time data analytics to track and trace suspect/target transactions through message and transaction peering and clearing to identify and then “remove” both the originators and the vulnerabilities they have exploited. The implications for recruitment policy of a large scale switch from re-active to pro-active application and threat driven security, co-ordinated across regulatory and jurisdictional boundaries by those with “hybrid” skills (including language, discipline and culture) are profound. We need to engage those already wanting to create different talent pipelines at all levels, locally as well as nationally.
Hence the “interesting” exercise to decide who to invite to help plan the workshop on 8th October described in my previous blog “Updating Cyber Digital Careers Guidance for the Age of Augmented Intelligence“.
The immediate aim is relatively simple, to identify those willing to work together to ensure that the guidance on the UCAS website reflects the careers they wish to offer to the school leavers and graduate of today.
But should we also invite those (including the professional bodes, trade association and policy advisors who are grappling with trying to update UK skills structures and programmes to cope with a world in which private sector employers are more interested in meeting US , EU or ASEAN regulatory demands and/or creating talent pipelines for the “blended” skills to handle global transaction/security arbitrage (or warfare!)
Or should we leave them out because that would make it impossible to produce results in time for next year’s recruitment “season”?
I am inclined to recommend that we leave them out, except for a handful of those whose budgets or political support.
Instead we might offer a follow up meeting, perhaps in Manchester with Number 10 North, on the role(s) of the various departments and agencies in using social values procurement (transferred to DCMS) to ensure that place-based skills improvement plans deliver the skills of the future, with local access supported by University-based networks … the Janet and John strategy
Machinery of Government changes include:
1) The move of local economic growth and devolution strategy to Number 10 North
2) The Cabinet Office to have responsibility for the use of AI to transform the public sector, the AI Security Institute and the One Gov Delivery Agency (including the Government Recruitment Service and Security Vetting.
3) Social Values procurement (aka the Office for Impact Economy) to move to DCMS alongside the Government Digital Service and ID policy.
4) The Investment Security Unit to move to DBIST where it will have to try to reconcile digital sovereignty with inward investment (alias selling UK innovation and infrastructure to hedge and sovereign wealth funds).
5) The Public Sector Fraud Authority to transfer to DWP, by far its largest customer. The use of data analytics before DWP withdrew from Pathway (the predecessor to the Post Office Horizon) indicated 14% fraud (mainly insiders farming networks of non-existent claimants). Hence the savagery of the treatment of innocent sub-postmasters after the cleansing of the “registry” and the “Post Office Card” had been removed. How much £more could be redirected towards the needs of genuine claimants were the data analytics of today used to “cleanse” DWP files of duplicated, dead, fictitious and other wise ineligble claimants.
6) DCMS to host the GDS and ID policy arms-length from One Delivery and Government Recruitment and “bring together levers on online safety” with “an unprecedented focus on support” but not, apparently, enforcement.
7) DBIST to take over Science and Technology funding as part of a “reindustrialisation agenda” and connect the “directly to the businesses, places and workers that will drive good growth across the country” … presumably in co-operation (as opposed to competition) with the “local economic growth and devolution policy and strategy” that have been moved to Number 10 North.
It is not said, but it is implied, that digital skills policy (including digital inclusion) will be transferred to DCMS, away from Science and Technology and AI skills policy and mainstream careers advice and guidance, right to work and wider social inclusion. Or will social values procurement be used to help pull through place based, employer driven local skill improvement plans, co-ordinated via Number 10 North?