About the authors

This report was written by Andrew Greenway and Tom Loosemore, founders of Public Digital. The authors would like to acknowledge and thank the several current and former civil servants, former ministers, academics, and Whitehall watchers who provided invaluable comments on this report.

Public Digital is a transformation consultancy, headquartered in London, that radically changes how organisations work so that they deliver excellent services and greater impact, even when the future is uncertain. It has advised more than 40 governments around the world and worked with international funders and multinational businesses, including the World Bank, UN Development Programme, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Public Digital was set up by the founders of the Government Digital Service (GDS). GDS was established under the Coalition government as part of the Cabinet Office, with a mandate to make public services simpler, cheaper, and faster. It won awards and saved billions of pounds. Improving the user experience and underpinning technology behind how services were delivered online was a significant part of that team’s mission. But GDS also introduced new skills and ways of working into government and built levers to spread them at scale across central government departments. This made GDS internally disruptive and not always popular.

GDS has gone on to influence the world. It inspired the creation of similar digital government units (DGUs) around the world, including in the US, Canada, Australia, Argentina, and Singapore. DGUs, like Delivery Units and behavioral insight teams, have become a global archetype and field of academic analysis.