Gove signals intent with Levelling Up capacity boost... and focus on storytelling
Plus... BEIS targets public sector Tech Transfer, new GO-Science Insights Team and more
In this issue:
Gove levels up Levelling Up in Blue Wall areas?
DLUHC tools up for private sector housing carbon challenge
New BEIS Tech Transfer team spins up with more senior hires
New Technology and Science Insights team to support policy across UK Gov
FSA creates new Market Access team for post-Brexit standards work
Hello and welcome to Issue 2 of Wafts from Whitehall. Someone said the other day the name makes them think of Boris Johnson farting; well, you know what they say about being memorable.
Thanks for all the useful feedback on Issue 1. It's a little bit quieter on the Civil Service jobs front given the time of year, but there are still plenty of good nuggets for those with wonkish tendencies to feast on - most notably a slew of roles in Michael Gove’s new Levelling Up department, and some thoughts on what this tells us about his intentions.
I've been playing with the methodology a bit; last month I isolated all live job adverts and then filtered out just the ones with policy in the title. I've gone a bit broader this month, collating all policy and strategy roles.
And on the premise that where the Government puts its Comms and Marketing firepower is likely to be the same place where its priorities lie, I also included all live Marketing, Comms and PR vacancies in the initial trawl.
A good session of data science wrangling produced a grand total of 173 roles to crunch through, which (with the help of R Studio) have revealed an array of insights you are unlikely to find anywhere else.
Do let me know what policy areas you’re especially interested in, and would like to see covered in future editions. I'll do my best to oblige.
Season's greeting, stay safe and thanks for reading/subscribing, Look out for the next edition in late January.
Alex
PS - If you find Wafts from Whitehall useful, please do forward it onto friends and colleagues, and encourage them to subscribe (it’s free!).
PPS - If you want to chat more about these insights, how I’m using data science - and how it can be applied to give you the edge in strategic communications, public affairs and public policy engagement - do drop me a line at alex@whetstonecomms.com.
Gove levels up Levelling Up in Blue Wall areas?
+ Local Gov Strategy Team octuple expansion
+ And new video team formed to ‘tell story’ of Levelling Up
Amid a slew of policy-related roles connected to the Levelling Up agenda, the Cities and Local Growth Unit is boosting its policy capacity - and seemingly cracking on with things with Michael Gove at the helm (as widely predicted).
The Cities and Local Growth Unit is a joint team spanning DLUHC and BEIS and six regionally focused-roles have recently been advertised for;
Bedfordshire (Deputy Lead)
Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire (Deputy Lead)
Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, Norfolk and Suffolk (Deputy Lead)
London (Policy Advisor)
West Midlands (Deputy Lead)
Northwest (Co-ordinator)
Avid readers will note a chunk of these roles covering London and southern England - home to lots of Blue Wall seats, of course. Could this be a party-minded 'levelling up' initiative within the Levelling Up agenda itself, designed to appease certain backbench Tory MPs?
The Deputy Lead roles in all these areas have a remit to "make sure... that national policy takes account [an] area's particular needs and opportunities" and work with local partners to deliver big ticket initiatives like the Levelling Up Fund, UK Community Renewal Fund, UK Community Ownership Fund and Freeports.
Strategy expansion
There's also big expansion going on in the Local Government Strategy division, with up to eight (what look like brand new) intriguingly vaguely titled roles up for grabs.
They are advertised as up to 12 months and are a mixture of Temporary, Fixed Term and Loan positions, which adds to a feeling that exact details are still being worked out. The vacancy blurb notes that "this work…. can change in remit and pace, so you are someone who adapts well to change”.
From the details on the job adverts, the roles will include;
Working across the Directorate on a clear set of priorities for local government.
Policy design at scale and at pace
Working across government to develop better LG data, metrics and outcomes
Communicating and influencing – telling the story around Levelling Up…. and wider Secretary of State ambitions to Local Government and wider stakeholders.
Social research/ social innovation - co-design, test, iterate and develop trailblazer pilots for local government
Storytelling focus
And linked to 'telling the story around Levelling Up' emphasised in the roles above, a new video unit is being formed within the Levelling Up Department's digital communications team - “responsible for planning, capturing, and editing video to create high-quality and engaging content about the work of the department”.
If anyone wondered about the pace Michael Gove wants to drive the Levelling Up agenda forwards, the advert for a Head of Videography asks for some who can "work at pace and respond positively as plans and conditions change around you with little or no notice". Well at least they’re honest!
And DLUHC also tools up for private sector housing carbon challenge
DLUHC is also adding policy resource to deliver on tackling the carbon impact of poor quality housing in the private sector - as a plank of the Government's reform programme for the private rented sector (PRS).
Since being announced in June - following an earlier Queens Speech commitment to "bring forward reforms to deliver a fairer and more effective private rental market in England" - the PRS white paper has now been delayed until 2022, pending the findings of the National Audit Office’s review of regulation of the sector.
The Policy Lead job advert says that away from this legislation, a large plank of the sector reform "will be driven by the government’s commitments and legally binding targets to increase energy efficiency, reduce carbon emissions and reach net zero".
The Private Rented Sector (PRS) Standards and Net Zero team is acknowledged as "to date [having] had a more reactive role in this space", but the department concedes that the key role residential buildings are expected to have in meeting our targets "could have a profound effect on the housing market".
Responsibilities of the role holder will include working on minimum energy efficiency regulation and funding, future of Energy Performance, and representing the private rented sector across the department, government, and with key external stakeholders.
Usefully for those with relevant interests in this agenda, the post holder "may have the opportunity to support policy development for upcoming measures for the Renters Reform Bill".
New BEIS Tech Transfer team spins up with senior hires
BEIS continues to invest in a new Salford-based unit - the Government Office for Tech Transfer (GOTT) - to oversee work to develop and exploit public sector knowledge assets (KAs).
These are non-physical assets such as R&D outputs, skills, know-how, and data - referred to in the April 2021 report 'Getting Smarter: a strategy for knowledge and innovation assets in the public sector'.
Public sector tech transfer is described in a recent job ad as part of a Government priority "to unlock greater value from knowledge assets to support productivity and bring UK inventions into the economy."
In October, an ad went out from an executive search agency for a £125k a year CEO position, based in the Northwest, and recruitment is now on-going for two further senior roles.
A senior Policy Lead will be charged with expanding GOTT's programme of work, influencing and incentivising organisations to engage with the KA agenda - while a senior Communications and Engagement Lead is being sought to oversee work to engage with key public sector stakeholders.
As it spins up, GOTT will focus on increasing incentives and removing barriers within government to support and encourage the development of KAs in central government departments and their arm's length bodies.
The unit was first announced in the 2020 Spending Review, with an accompanying fund "to scout and develop knowledge assets across the public sector". The fact Steve Barclay, then Chief Secretary to the Treasury had his name on the foreword to the ‘Getting Smarter’ report suggests it had (at least back in late Spring) high-level Government attention; and it clearly feeds into the big 'science superpower' vision.
One of the job specs states "we are just starting to build GOTT" - and on that basis, expect to see more resource coming into this area.
New Technology and Science Insights team to support policy across Gov
A Senior Engagement Manager role reveals a new team in the Government Office for Science, with a remit to "deliver cross-Government analysis and assessment of the implications and impact of science and technology on HMG's goals on economic policy, social policy and national security".
The team's work will support policy-making on science, technology and innovation across the whole of Government, supporting Boris Johnson's post-Brexit vision for the UK as a 'Great Science Power'.
The new Technology and Science Insights team will provide "high quality assessment, data analysis and insight focusing on global developments in science and technology and drawing out the strategic implications for the UK".
The unit will draw heavily on inputs from a broad range of professionals - including policy departments, academia, business, intelligence agencies, public and private R&I funders, tech industry bodies, innovative SMEs, finance and more.
FSA creates new Market Access team for post-Brexit standards work
Following Brexit, the FSA faces a significant period of change and activity. According to the Agency, approximately 50% of food consumed in the UK is imported, and it has the job of ensuring these imports "meet to the same standards as the food we produce domestically".
A new Market Access team will work alongside the snappily named UK Office of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Trade Assurance (UKOSPSTA) in the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) to shape and engineer UK processes to deliver a "World-Class Assurance System".
FSA is a non-ministerial department of over 1,300 people - proclaiming "a big vision to drive change in the food system so that it delivers food we can trust".
Little Wafts
A Senior Policy Advisor role in Department for International Trade's WTO Operations team will support work to "establish the cross-Government framework to plan and successfully deliver the UK's own Trade Policy Review for the first time after leaving the EU". The role holder will be responsible for leading the UK's engagement with the core WTO transparency function - "working closely with relevant cross-Government policy teams and key external industry groups to advocate market access for UK businesses".
BEIS is hiring a Deputy Director to oversee the recently established Net Zero Strategic Delivery Team - an ‘intelligence’ function that will advise and help align major New Zero sector projects across the department. The Net Zero Delivery portfolio as "developing rapidly", to support the big commitments in the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan for a green industrial revolution, the Energy white paper, and the UK’s Net Zero strategy
The Seasonal Flu Team in the Department of Health and Social Care is recruiting for a Policy Advisor - "the policy advisor role is busy and demanding" - in case you were in any doubts at this stage of the pandemic. "You will join the flu team at an exciting time as we consider how COVID-19 vaccines have changed the future of our vaccination programmes... and what a future vaccine strategy should look like."
There’s recruitment at HM Treasury into the four-person Digital Infrastructure branch with the Infrastructure, Digital and Culture Team (IDC) which advises ministers on the telecoms sector, including broadband and mobile. The role combines public policy, spending oversight and strategy work. Specifically, it will support spending control and policy work on the £5bn Project Gigabit - “a critical element of the government’s Levelling Up agenda” - as well as issues relating to market competition and regulation.
A slew of recent roles advertised in BEIS's new Salford offices (along with a Salford option for the new Go Science team role mentioned above) should translate to some good opportunities for those in the Northwest to connect more closely with some big policy issues in 2022 and beyond; eg climate change and green economic growth, and science and innovation policy to name a few.
About Wafts from Whitehall
Policy roles being recruited within the Civil Service can tell us much about where the Government is focusing its attention (and its money). Floating within every job advert are wafts of juicy information about new teams and roles, serving as pointers about the Government’s intent and priorities - and providing useful insight on where the real policy thinking and development work gets done.
Whether your interest in the national policy agenda is personal, academic or professional - or somewhere in between all three - like me, you’ve got far better things to do than spending hours plodding through dozens, maybe hundreds of official job ads to find the nuggets.
As an experienced strategic communicator and external affairs professional - I’ve invested time in learning how to use hands-on data science tools to better engage with public policy making. It’s part of a mission to realise the valuable insight found in messy (or unstructured) public data - but with less time spent scrolling and clicking.