Senior IT Service Manager - Government Digital Service - G7
Government Digital & Data -
Location
Manchester
About the job
Job summary
The Government Digital Service (GDS) is the digital centre of government. We are responsible for setting, leading and delivering the vision for a modern digital government.
Our priorities are to drive a modern digital government, by:
- joining up public sector services
- harnessing the power of AI for the public good
- strengthening and extending our digital and data public infrastructure
- elevating leadership and investing in talent
- funding for outcomes and procuring for growth and innovation
- committing to transparency and driving accountability
We are home to the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (I.AI), the world-leading GOV.UK and at the forefront of coordinating the UK’s geospatial strategy and activity. We lead the Government Digital and Data function and champion the work of digital teams across government.
We’re part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and employ more than 1,000 people all over the UK, with hubs in Manchester, London and Bristol.
The Government Digital Service is where talent translates into impact. From your first day, you’ll be working with some of the world’s most highly-skilled digital professionals, all contributing their knowledge to make change on a national scale.
Join us for rewarding work that makes a difference across the UK. You'll solve some of the nation’s highest-priority digital challenges, helping millions of people access services they need
Job description
As the Senior IT Service Manager for One Login, you will provide the strategic leadership, vision and direction needed to build an industry leading service management capability that operates effectively at national scale. Reporting to the Head of Live Services for One Login, you will be accountable for shaping how government services experience, adopt and rely on One Login, ensuring that service quality, resilience and user experience remain consistently high across a diverse and rapidly expanding ecosystem.
You will lead the development of a coherent, futurefocused service management strategy that supports One Login’s long-term ambitions and the needs of the wider government landscape. This includes defining or refining the operating model, governance structures, assurance frameworks and performance measures that will underpin a mature, scalable and data driven service management function. You will ensure that the differing technical, operational and support requirements of relying parties are understood, prioritised and translated into clear service outcomes, enabling each service to onboard, operate and evolve with confidence.
Your role will involve close partnership with senior leaders and staff across Product, Architecture, Service Transition, Operational Support, Data and Security teams. You will act as a voice for service excellence, ensuring that service considerations are embedded into decisionmaking, delivery planning and change processes across the One Login service. You will also represent One Login at crossgovernment forums where necessary, shaping expectations, influencing direction and ensuring alignment with broader digital and identity strategies.
As a senior leader for the service management function within One Login, you will shape and develop IT Service Managers, Service Relationship Managers and other service capability teams. You will foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement and customer-centricity, ensuring that teams are empowered, skilled and supported to deliver high quality services. You will champion best practice, drive standardisation and ensure that service management evolves in line with industry standards, emerging technologies and the needs of government.
Ultimately, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring that One Login delivers a reliable, secure and seamless experience for millions of users and hundreds of government services, now and in the future.
As a Senior IT Service Manager you’ll be:
- accountable for the end-to-end strategic service experience for all relying parties, ensuring that government services adopting One Login receive a consistent, high quality and resilient service that meets their operational, technical and security needs at national scale
- building and maintaining relationships across government, acting as the primary strategic partner for Relying Party leadership teams. You will ensure their priorities, risks and future needs are understood, anticipated and reflected in service planning, investment decisions and roadmap development
- shaping and governing the relying party lifecycle, identifying structural gaps, systemic issues and opportunities for improvement across onboarding, transition, live service and ongoing optimisation. You will drive the evolution of these processes from a service perspective to ensure they are efficient, scalable and aligned to One Login’s long-term ambitions
- leading continuous improvement across the entire service ecosystem, using data, insight and user feedback to enhance service performance, simplify interactions, reduce friction and improve the overall experience for relying parties
- setting direction and standards for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan, aligning with industry standards, mapping approach, templates and setting approach for ongoing improvements through testing and lessons learned exercises
- acting as the senior point of escalation for critical service issues, ensuring that major incidents, risks and cross government challenges are managed effectively. You will provide authoritative input into governance boards, service forums and strategic decision making groups
- overseeing and sponsoring service reviews, audits, incident investigations and improvement programmes, ensuring that lessons are embedded, systemic issues are addressed and service maturity continues to advance
- driving the evolution of the One Login service management model, working closely with Product, Architecture, Service Transition, Operational Support, Data and Security to ensure service management is embedded into design, delivery and operational practices across the organisation
- providing leadership, direction and development to IT Service Managers, Service Relationship Managers and other service capability teams, ensuring they are empowered, skilled and aligned to a shared vision of service excellence
For this opportunity you will be required to attend the Manchester office 3 days a week.
Person specification
We’re interested in people who:
- have a deep understanding of end-to-end service lifecycle management, and by using your analytical skills to make decisions that enhance our business and service performance you will help shape, design, govern and evolve onboarding, transition, operational management, versioning and deprecation processes at scale into a central service offering for our relying parties
- are comfortable taking full ownership and accountability for the service experience of relying parties, regardless of their size, maturity or technical complexity, and able to balance competing priorities across a diverse portfolio while standardising the service landscape.
- have strong negotiation and influencing skills, with the credibility to engage stakeholders across government, challenge constructively, and secure alignment on service priorities, risks and investment decisions
- are able to build long-term, strategic relationships, communicating clearly, managing expectations, and ensuring that service decisions reflect both Relying Party needs and organisational goals
- have proven ability to oversee, optimise and transform operational processes at scale, using data, insight and industry best practice to drive continuous improvement, standardisation and efficiency
- have experienced acting as the senior escalation point for live service issues, seeing the bigger picture by taking groups of services and investigating how to get the best of those underlying services you will be bringing a calm, structured and authoritative approach to incident management, risk handling and cross-government coordination
- are a natural leader, who can develop and inspire service management teams, fostering a culture of accountability, customer-centricity and continuous improvement, leading investigative work into problems and opportunities in existing processes, improving the service experience and by absorbing large amounts of conflicting information you will use it to produce strategic solutions for our service management customers
