Deputy Director Shared Service Design and Analysis

Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, York

Shared Services for Government (SSfG) is a Directorate within the Government People Group in the Cabinet Office. We are at the heart of the Cabinet Office and play a key role in driving modernisation and reform across the whole of the Civil Service. What we do, how we work and all that we achieve, contributes to making this a great Civil Service.

The Shared Services Strategy for Government is an enabler of the Civil Service modernisation and reform agenda, playing a part in driving automation and interoperability across government. We are the centre of expertise working across departments to make it easier for civil servants to use platforms for HR, finance and payroll.  We launched the new Shared Services Strategy for Government in 2021, of which our overarching objectives are:

1) Meeting end-user needs, promoting excellence and convenience for both staff and managers;

2) Delivering value and efficiency, consolidating technology in cluster service centres, including all transactional services; and

3) Convergence around processes and data, including the consolidation and modernisation of technology platforms, while maintaining choice for departments.

This is an exciting opportunity to join the SSfG Directorate in a leadership role at what is a pivotal time in the implementation of the strategy. You will be working with a highly motivated and passionate group of people, helping to shape and drive forward the Shared Services Strategy for Government. Our leaders are transformational, innovative and exceptional at creating the right environment for our colleagues to grow and deliver. As Deputy Director for Shared Service Design and Cloud Transformation, you will be a valued member of the SSfG senior leadership team and play a crucial role in providing senior leadership to cluster programmes, including challenging System integrators with appropriate domain knowledge. This is a significant role requiring the successful postholder to act as an ambassador for SSfG, demonstrating exceptional leadership, strong stakeholder management and communication skills.

Our vision is to free up civil servants to focus on what they do best: engaging with and delivering for citizens. We are looking for someone who can buy into that vision and then use their skills and expertise to make it a reality

The Shared Services for Government Strategy (SSfG) will transform and modernise the back office of Government. It brings together 18 different departments, and dozens of arms length bodies, into five clusters to replace around 200 departmental-based legacy IT systems with 5 modern, user-friendly, cloud-based systems. It will deliver smarter, cheaper, faster systems and processes to create a synchronised Civil Service, providing value and efficiency, process and common data standards and methodology. It will harness modern technology to deliver value for the taxpayer and improved experience for users. By standardising data and aligning policy and process across clusters we will improve the level of insight, and information available to government to underpin decision making.

Respected in the sector, you will lead an expert team of technical shared service specialists and play a lead role in supporting clusters to design and implement their new shared service centres and business process support; providing expertise across the range of services required. As a senior leader within the Cabinet Office, Government People Group and SSfG, you will be expected to play a full role in the overall leadership of the Civil Service.

You will lead the team, working collaboratively with departments, clusters and functions. Working to the SSfG senior leadership team and Director, the role will cover the following key responsibilities:  

• Lead the implementation of the Shared Services Strategy for Government working with a wide community transforming the back office of Government.
• Work closely with clusters engaged in in-flight migrations to cloud platforms to support them in taking advantage of best practice implementation approaches and technology, to enable successful delivery.
• Lead an expert team of shared service specialists with in depth service and product knowledge. 
• Work closely with clusters to support the successful implementation of their GMPP programmes.
• Horizon scan across the technical and business service provider sector to provide insights to support successful delivery.
• Work with HMT’s Functional Convergence Programme to drive synchronised data and standards across clusters.

It is important that, through your CV and supporting statement, that you provide evidence of the professional skills, breadth of experience and personal
qualities for this post.

Essential Criteria:
• Demonstrable experience of cross government working, delivering large scale programmes across departments and public bodies.
• Demonstrable experience of shared services transformation, with a focus on business service provision, process improvement and use of data.
• Experienced in implementing, enhancing and managing complex ERP systems.
• Experience of service design.
• Excellent analytical and data science skills and experience of operational research and data modelling to provide costed insight on potential future scenarios
• Strong strategic thinking skills, able to analyse complex problems and design and implement approaches to tackle them.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with an ability to influence at a senior level.
• Strong leadership skills, with experience of managing diverse teams through a changing environment.
• An ability to motivate and inspire, creating an inclusive environment to deliver successfully through others.

Desirable Criteria:
• Experience of HR, Finance or Commercial.
• Experience of public sector working with private sector suppliers and contract management
• Experience of enterprise architecture.
• Experience of data architecture and data governance.

We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Leadership
• Working Together
• Making Effective Decisions
• Delivering at Pace
• Changing and Improving

Alongside your salary of £75,000, Cabinet Office contributes
£20,250 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Whatever your role, we take your career and development seriously, and want to enable you to build a really successful career with the Department and wider Civil Service. It is crucial that our employees have the right skills to develop their careers and meet the challenges ahead. You’ll benefit from a wide range of training and development opportunities, regular performance and development reviews to ensure this development is ongoing. As a Civil Service employee, you’ll be entitled to a large range of benefits.

This includes:

• 25 days annual leave on entry, increasing on a sliding scale to 30 days after 5 years’ service. This is in addition to 8 public holidays and one privilege day to mark the King’s birthday. 
• A competitive contributory pension scheme that you can enter as soon as you join where we will make a significant contribution to the cost of your pension; where your contributions come out of your salary before any tax is taken; and where your pension will continue to provide valuable benefits for you and your family if you are too ill to continue to work or die before you retire;
• Flexible working patterns including part-time or time-term working and access to Flexible Working Schemes allowing you to vary your working day as long as you work your total hours;
• Generous paid maternity and paternity leave which is notably more than the statutory minimum offered by many other employers;
• Interest-free loans allowing you to spread the cost of an annual travel season ticket or a new bicycle;
• The opportunity to use onsite facilities including fitness centres and staff canteens (where applicable); and
• Occupational sick pay.

This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration
is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them
to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through
building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above.
This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions.
Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and
conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your
personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any
absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you
to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.

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Job contact :

• Name : SCS Recruitment Team
• Email : scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk