by The state needs to become “more like a start-up”, a senior minister will say as he launches a £100m-backed public services reform effort.
Pat McFadden, who leads the Cabinet Office, will call on the civil service to adopt the “test and learn” culture used by digital companies.
The minister, whose title is Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, will warn: “If we continue to govern as usual we will not achieve what we want to achieve.”
Speaking at University College London’s East Campus in Stratford on Monday, Mr McFadden will add: “Test it. Fix the problems. Change the design. Test it again. Adjust it again. And so on and so forth as long as you provide the service.
“Suddenly the most important question is no longer ‘How do we do it the first time?’ but ‘How do we do it better by next Friday?’
“That’s the test and learn mentality, and I’m excited to see where we can use it in government. Where we can make the state a little more of a start-up.”
The minister will launch a £100m “innovation fund” to underpin his plans, which will be used to deploy “test and learn teams” in public services across the country.
The test-and-learn approach is used across the business world, allowing new ideas to be tried out on a small scale to see their impact before being rolled out more broadly if successful.
As part of the plans, the test and learn teams will be given a challenge and allowed to experiment and try new things to overcome it.
Mr McFadden will compare these reforms to the previous government’s “pointless distractions” and “headline-grabbing shenanigans”.
Two family support and temporary housing projects will represent the first use of the test and learn approach.
These begin in January 2025 with teams playing in Manchester, Sheffield, Essex and Liverpool.
While Mr. McFadden acknowledges that “each of these projects is small,” he will say, “They could be rewiring the state one test at a time.”
The Cabinet Office minister will also encourage people from start-ups and technology companies to join the government on six to 12-month “missions”.
The goal is to use their skills to address major challenges such as criminal justice and health care reform.
The Tories called on Labor to do more to cut red tape.
Richard Holden, a shadow minister in the Cabinet Office, said: “The British state’s bureaucracy urgently needs to be cut, which is why at the general election we had a plan to reduce it to pre-Covid levels, plans which Labor rejected.”
“Everything Labor has done so far has been to increase the size and cost of government at the expense of workers, pensioners, farmers and family businesses across the country.
“Labour ministers talk tough, but we know from bitter experience that’s all it is – glib platitudes and broken promises, with British taxpayers footing the bill.”
