UK government’s CustomerFirst unit sets out novel recruitment approach to deliver transformation
CustomerFirst, a new unit within the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS), has outlined how it is working to build “exceptional teams” to deliver “radical” digital transformation in government.
Announced in January 2026, CustomerFirst brings civil servants, private sector disruptors and transformation experts together to deliver modern public services “free from the usual barriers and with users at the centre”.
This semi-autonomous model is intended to give CustomerFirst “the freedom to operate outside legacy constraints, move at the pace of user need and deliver measurable improvements where existing systems make change difficult”.
In a new blog, Caitlin Heasman, talent consultant at CustomerFirst, has described how the unit is working to “build teams differently” to drive transformation across government, noting that “the people delivering transformation often matter more than the programme, technology or operating model”.
Eight months on from its creation, Heasman wrote: “Typically, transformation teams are… assembled through whatever recruitment route or resource happens to be available. But filling vacancies isn’t the same as building an expert, high performing team. That distinction matters, and that’s why we’re trying to do things differently.”
She explained that CustomerFirst seeks specialist expertise in areas such as service design, customer experience, organisational change and digital delivery but that because these skills are in high demand across government and industry, “relying on a single route into talent would limit the range of experience and capability we could bring together”.
As such, rather than deciding upfront whether a role should be filled through a secondment, fixed-term appointment, managed move or contingent labour, “we’ve often explored multiple routes simultaneously,” she wrote, adding that this “allows us to compare different types of experience, backgrounds and perspectives before deciding the best way to bring capability into the team”.
“Our aim isn’t just to recruit faster, but to design the team deliberately,” she said. “Bringing together different skills and perspectives around a common mission, so the team has the capability and ownership needed to deliver transformation.”
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Recruiting smarter, not faster
Heasman also emphasised that while experience and technical expertise matter, impact comes from how people use their skills in practice and that that means looking for people who can “build trust across disciplines, challenge constructively, share ownership, make decisions at pace and keep focused on solving whole problems for users”.
Such qualities are “harder to assess” than technical proficiencies, she said, “but are often what turns capability into delivery”.
So, rather than asking candidates to describe previous experience, the unit has designed role-specific scenarios and assessments with subject matter experts and asks questions designed to “explore how candidates navigate ambiguity, challenge established approaches, bring people together around a shared goal and make progress when there is no obvious answer”.
“The aim is to build a fuller picture of not only what somebody can do,” Heasman said, “but how they might contribute to the environment needed for transformation to succeed.”
Read more: US rolling out new standards to make it easier to get government jobs without a degree
‘A reduction of hierarchy’
In the blog, Heasman acknowledged that recruiting people in this way means they arrive “with different disciplines, employment arrangements and experiences of how organisations work” and that these differences “only become a strength when people are united by a common mission rather than defined by their role, profession or route into the team”.
To achieve this united front, the unit has focused on creating shared ownership of outcomes, encouraging people to contribute beyond their specialism and treating constructive challenge as a necessary part of delivery rather than “something to avoid”.
One of the benefits of this approach has been a “reduction in hierarchy”.
As she explained: “People are trusted to take ownership of outcomes, regardless of their job title or contract type. Combined with shared team objectives, this creates stronger accountability for what the team delivers together, rather than what individuals deliver alone.”
Heasman concluded the blogpost with the lessons to have emerged from CustomerFirst’s approach, including that bringing people together from government, industry and specialist transformation backgrounds “creates a richer mix of experience and perspectives”; that adaptability is often as important as experience; and that “the way you design a team directly shapes how it operates”.
She said: “Recruitment is not just a mechanism for filling roles. It’s one of the most important tools for creating the culture, behaviours and capability needed to deliver transformation. The aim is not to move away from Civil Service Recruitment Principles. It is to use the flexibility within them more deliberately.”
Read more: What do UK prime minister Andy Burnham’s efforts to rewire the state mean for the civil service?
A unit for human-centred delivery
CustomerFirst is intended as a “time-limited transformation programme” led by Tristan Thomas, its director and former vice president of marketing, communications and policy at online bank Monzo, and co-chaired by Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy.
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) was the first government body to partner with CustomerFirst earlier this year. The partnership aims to redesign DVLA’s processes for handling millions of customer interactions each year.
The government said in January that the partnership could save around £4bn (US$5.3bn) through the migration of phone, post and in-person contact to digital processes using new technologies such as artificial intelligence.
