Maximising UK public sector impact: From zombie culls to workforce wins

It seems a perennial question – since when has any government department not needed to get more bang for its buck? – but the current economic landscape means that now is a particularly pertinent time to approach securing value for money differently.

In brief, budget allocations are tight, even by recent standards, and are likely to get tighter, yet the lowest-hanging efficiency fruit has long since been plucked.

Pressure is increasing on departments to deliver speedy results from the allocations they have received, even though the complex, long-term, and cross-departmental nature of the most instrumental programmes means they are unlikely to deliver speedy results.

There is an opportunity as well as an imperative, however, as greater visibility on resources and long-term goals clear the path for bolder strategic moves. With the financial stability of a three-year funding settlement, the funding available to accelerate the AI transformation, now could be a chance to exit the extended crisis mode and look to the future.

Prioritise a small number of high-impact projects

When resources are limited, it makes strategic sense to concentrate on the projects with the highest potential impact and the highest chances of success. Spreading teams and capital across too many things risks them all becoming half-hearted flops.

It is interesting to note, for example, that in the National Infrastructure & Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) Annual Report 2024/25, 80 percent of the estimated financial benefits are coming from just 20 percent of the projects included within the Government Major Project Portfolio (GMPP). And nine out of the 31 ‘Red’ rated projects – those where successful delivery appears to be unachievable – have been going on for 10 years or more already.

Unfortunately, this is a common problem. The public sector has long suffered from portfolio creep, where pet projects proliferate but never die, the worst becoming ‘zombies’ with little-to-no chance of success and a constant hunger for budget.

The sunk cost fallacy can afflict any organisation – people’s time and effort has gone into these projects in good faith; they care about the outcomes – but a little calculated ruthlessness can go a long way. Assess the potential impact and continued viability of all non-essential projects in the light of funding realities, identify the zombies, and cull them.

The budget this frees can meaningfully improve the chances of your best prospects, which are recognisable not just through their viability and expected extent of their impact, but also through alignment with the government’s five missions.

Those that do align are likely to get more political support for longer, but only if they yield measurable results. Effective mechanisms for tracking progress – linked to Plan for Change milestones where relevant, and supported by the Office for Value for Money and Evaluation Task Force if necessary – are therefore also essential.

Indeed, without good information on whether the project is working, it becomes that much harder both to achieve the intended impact and to change direction, should today’s hero project turn out to be tomorrow’s zombie.

Embrace cross-departmental collaboration with shared budgets

It’s not difficult to see why collaboration is much vaunted in policy circles: the greatest problems facing this country don’t neatly organise themselves along departmental lines, so any meaningful effort to solve them will inevitably require a new level of cooperation, joined-up thinking, and unity of purpose.

When it happens, collaboration also has the happy effect of saving money through economies of scale, making it an ideal way to help close the public sector’s yawning resource-expectation gap.

Yet while collaboration is the right ambition, delivering it for impact is much easier said than done. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Specifically, we can learn from those occasions when collaboration is done well, like the WorkWell programme that brings together the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Health and Social Care to support long-term sick or disabled people to start, stay, and succeed in work through integrated work and health support.

Two things stand out in our experience: a single governance structure, and a shared budget.

If people are united by being in the same team, it is much easier for them to work towards shared objectives. They are less likely to pull against each other, or just to do their bit and hope the other team does the same.

Stakeholders can and should be kept fully informed – indeed, integrated information sharing and regular cross-departmental meetings at all levels can help resolve potential conflicts early. But teams will have a much better chance of success with simplified approval chains and a single accounting officer, rather than being tightly managed by their ‘parent’ departments or encumbered in duplicated processes.

Similarly, pooled funding gives the new team the freedom to focus on delivering their shared outcomes – which is ultimately what everyone wants – rather than constantly having to go back to their departments with their hands out.

Clearly, this joint venture approach is better suited to larger, longer-term projects, such as infrastructure, where the size of the prize warrants the institutional upheaval. But generally we’ve found that people want to collaborate individually and institutionally. They just need the right structures to do so.

Proactively build your future workforce now

Strategic workforce planning is vital for the public sector of the decisive decade ahead to have any chance of delivering the impact expected of it, with the resources available.

As an added complication, the rapidly changing world of AI is just the latest reason to double down on building organisational agility in the public sector.

However, successive crises – Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, Ukraine, inflation – have kicked this problem down the road, resulting in a distended organisational structure that is urgently in need of revision.

Our collaboration with the Institute for Government on responding to the findings in the Whitehall Monitor 2025 report shows significant opportunity for reshaping of the civil service workforce against a back drop of continued rising headcount, despite previous attempts to control recruitment. There are significant inefficiencies, with too many layers and poorly constructed roles. As an example, we have seen the number of Grade 6s and 7s increase more than 210 percent since 2010, which in our view has created a ‘ballooning middle’ of middle managers creating a negative impact on decision making, autonomy, and accountability.

With the Spending Review completed, now is an ideal opportunity to change this.

Start by making an honest, detailed appraisal of current organisational design. Where are the current attraction and retention problems? What doesn’t make sense anymore? Where are there gaps in accountability? Where are there obvious opportunities for greater productivity? Where could costs be reduced or outsourced? Where do you need to encourage more collaboration or innovation? What new or different capabilities are needed?

Then spend some time thinking further out, to what the workforce might need to look like in five or 10 years. Don’t let uncertainty paralyse you into inaction: it’s better to have a well-considered hypothesis or set of hypotheses for change than to pretend no change is coming. Working up a suite of likely workforce planning scenarios that help to create ready made plans ready to implement can drive real impact and benefit. For example, carving out some time to think or even dream about future under-/over-supply or potential retention/succession planning gaps or taking a longer term perspective – thinking 2-3 years out on future skills requirements as opposed to focusing on this years resourcing requirements can also help challenge existing pre-conceptions and encourage a more test and learn approach.

Like any new technology, the challenge with AI is less about the technical implementation and much more to do with the human change required to transform processes. This is particularly true with AI, where the technology is still evolving rapidly, and – without the guiderails of traditional implementations such as ERP or CRM – much depends on individual experimentation. So now is the time to actively test and determine how you can use AI in your context, as part of the strategic workforce planning process, so that you can get the best value from it in future.

Whatever conclusions you make, effective change management will be key: there will be resistance as employment increasingly becomes more about employees’ ability to adapt deeply embedded ways of working, rather than traditional roles and responsibilities – particularly if there’s also a loss or shift in headcount.

However, just as with previous technology revolutions and periods of significant change, we shouldn’t lose sight of the positive impact of successful drives for greater productivity, efficiency, and task automation: freeing people’s limited time to do their highest value work, and delivering better services, at lower cost to the taxpayer. This is undoubtedly something that will attract and retain the future generations of workers that the public sector requires. As well as delivering the true impact the public sector is undoubtedly capable of.