There’s never been a better time to join
DWP Digital is in the middle of a huge and exciting once-in-a generation digital transformation of its services, accelerated by coronavirus (COVID-19). Digital-first services are now more important than ever to customers.
This has led to an increased requirement for specialist skills. And DWP Digital are looking to recruiting around 750 people by March 2021 in roles including infrastructure engineering, software engineering, DevOps and architecture. They have adapted their recruitment process during the pandemic to make it easier for tech specialists to join. For example, they’re video interviewing instead of face-to-face, to keep people safe. Providing new colleagues with the tech to work from home including laptops and mobile phones. And introducing new technologies to support remote collaboration such as Microsoft Teams.
Meeting the demands of a pandemic
When the pandemic hit DWP’s priorities pivoted to focus on getting money to people as swiftly as possible and safeguarding vulnerable people.
Helen Roberts, digital director, Children, Retirement and Counter Fraud, said: “Coronavirus may have changed our priorities for a while, however it also gave us an opportunity to accelerate some of the work that was already planned. The call for us to apply our digital expertise to help address departmental challenges is not an opportunity, it’s a necessity and many improvements have already been made.”
For example, DWP Digital ensured that DWP’s services remained secure, stable and maintained, for the department’s 20 million customers. This included over 10,000 rapid IT changes, deploying more than 40,000 devices to DWP colleagues working at home, rapidly upscaling VPN capacity and accelerating the digitisation of several services. Crucially DWP Digital’s hybrid cloud hosting approach to the Universal Credit digital service enabled the department to deal with more than 10 times the usual number of claims.
The opportunities for new recruits
Tech specialists joining DWP Digital will have the opportunity to use data and a variety of technology to drive innovation and change to make a real impact on society at this difficult time. They’ll also have the chance to work with other government departments and organisations, like the NHS to share data, products and services.
The organisation is working to automate the majority of manual, simple processing tasks to enable colleagues to help customers when they need it the most. Such as State Pension, where they are currently automating around 50% of claims with no colleague intervention.
Building reusable services using API event-driven architecture. And, underpinning everything, is better use of data to drive innovation.
DWP Digital’s ambition is to provide a seamless customer experience across government. Allowing people to access support without needing to know what part of the department (or even government) provides it. The department is also moving to new ways of working, using scaled agile with more complex dependencies between services and technologies.
Tamara Bruck, DWP Digital Operations Digital Delivery Director, said: “It’s a really good time to join us. We’re using new technologies to really transform the services that we offer to our customers. It’s a brilliant opportunity to be part of that journey, people can really make an impact and we really want to bring in new skills and new thinking.”
The coronavirus pandemic has presented challenges, but it’s also given many opportunities to move forward on DWP Digital’s transformation. It’s an exciting time to be part of it. For more information and to see the available roles visit the DWP Digital Careers website.
