Responding to plans announced by Pat McFadden, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, FDA General Secretary Dave Penman says civil servants will welcome a “test and learn culture”, as long as it’s a genuine commitment from the government.

Speaking at University College London on Monday 9 December, McFadden pledged to make the state “more like a start up”, encouraging tech firm workers to join government for six to twelve month “tours of duty” as well as enabling frontline public service workers, such as prison governors and social work heads, to take up secondments in central government.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster also launched a £100m “innovation fund to deploy new test-and-learn teams around the country”.

Responding in Politico, Penman said that civil servants “will welcome this approach from the government including the commitment of additional funding” and agreed with the premise that “cross public sector initiatives are key to driving change and improving public services”.

“Strong political support is vital if a ‘test and learn culture’ is to be genuinely fostered in government,” Penman added. “Civil servants have heard these same sentiments from previous ministers, but too often those warm words disappear as the political consequences of failure impact upon government.

Speaking to John Pienaar on Times Radio, Penman stressed that the government also needs a plan to recruit and retain key skills in digital and AI which will be required over the longer term.

“The government like lots of organisations, particularly in the public sector, struggles to get some of the kind of cutting edge skills which quite often pay a lot more than government are prepared to pay,” he explained. “So I can understand what he’s saying about a government that recognises that we need to reform and do things differently if it wants to deliver on its objectives… It’s okay talking about ‘tours of duty’, but we also need to bring in or recruit from within those sorts of skills and keep them, crucially, so that over the longer term we don’t need to keep going out to the private sector and paying top dollar for skills like AI and digital that we’re going to need.”