Research identifies top skills that support innovation in government

Image: Photo by Mohamed Raseem/Pexels

When asked about the top skills for civil servants to develop so they can better drive innovation, adaptability to change is viewed as the most essential, with nearly 60% of respondents emphasising its importance. Collaboration and teamwork follow closely, as almost half of the participants deem these skills crucial.

The findings are from Global Government Forum research based on presentations and discussions at Global Government Forum’s Innovation 2025 conference held in London in March, as well as a survey of over 300 UK delegates – drawn from more than 3,500 event registrants.

Creative problem-solving and leadership/decision-making are also regarded as vital, with significant proportions considering them essential.

One respondent noted that: “Creative problem-solving only takes one so far. Civil servants also need to develop the skill of identifying the problem in the first place… Real innovation demands the skills of setting aside all assumptions and prejudices about all things.”

Skills such as communication, data analysis, design thinking and digital proficiency are seen as important but less essential.

One respondent, however, urged leaders to “treat digital skills as a key skill alongside communication and numeracy, etc”.

“It seems to be acceptable to ‘not be good with tech’,” they said.

The UK government has a goal to significantly increase digital skills within its workforce but the survey results suggest work may be required to demonstrate the importance of this to all civil servants, not just those in digital roles.

Project management is rated essential by only 15%, with the highest share of respondents saying it’s only somewhat important, though one clarified that: “Project management is essential for ‘scale up’; innovation is the seed project management can grow.”

One respondent highlighted the importance of emotional intelligence in civil servants while another suggested that to boost their innovation skills, “civil servants need to spend time in the private and charitable sectors as part of their training and be better connected to the communities they serve in business and with the public”.

Ownership, listening skills, risk tolerance, and an outcome-oriented mindset were also flagged as important qualities for innovation.

Skills for a future-ready civil service

In a session on skills for innovation, Fiona Ryland, chief people officer for the UK government, used the metaphor of a “three-legged stool” to explain how civil service skills development is structured: core skills that all civil servants need, professional skills based on a person’s profession, and domain-specific departmental knowledge. The initial emphasis is on defining the core skills.

Ryland said there are some digital skills “that everybody will need to have to work alongside the technology we have now and the emerging technology that we’ll have in the future”.

“The other area that we think there might be a core common curriculum is leadership and line management,” she said. While not everyone is a line manager, “we really feel that there is a common set of standards and a common training programme to make sure that everybody is a really confident and capable line manager and leader”.

Eva Treven, director general, Directorate of Quality in Slovenia’s Ministry of Public Administration, said that values must inform the people skills needed in public service. She pinpointed values like trust, pride, self-respect, respect for others, sustainability and helping others as foundational, especially in the context of emerging technologies like AI, which many people fear or don’t understand.

Attracting the next generation

In Slovenia, there’s a challenge with an ageing public workforce, as the average public servant is over 50, and new talent is hard to attract. To address this, Slovenia has implemented major changes such as reforming public sector pay and promotion systems.

Annual performance reviews were abolished as they were ineffective. They were replaced by mandatory annual development conversations between leaders and staff. In addition, leaders receive annual training in people skills to carry out these conversations effectively.

The training system is now centralised and offers over 60 digital skills courses, from basic to specialist and over 60 soft skills courses “because they are very important”.

Slovenia has partnered with universities to involve students in real public sector projects with mentors. It has also created exchange programmes between public servants and private sector employees for better understanding and collaboration.

“Public servants spend up to five days in different firms and people from different businesses spend up to five days in the ministries because we want to understand… what the real issue on the field is, and then we can solve it together,” Treven said.

She added that public servants are also regular people who rely on public services, making them uniquely positioned to improve the system through real-world insight. “We are mothers, fathers, we are daughters, we are sons,” she said. “We need public transport, we need healthcare, and we can test in real life what works and what doesn’t.”

Read more: Leadership ranked as the most critical factor for government innovation

Digital expertise

Thomas Beautyman, deputy director, government digital capability in the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, highlighted prime minister Keir Starmer’s commitment that by 2030, one in 10 UK civil servants will work in techology and digital roles.

He said this “really speaks to where this government wants to go” and what the future workforce might look like. The definition of “expert” is based on roles tied to the UK’s Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Capability Framework, which standardises roles and skills across government.

High-investment areas include DevOps, cybersecurity and machine learning, supported by initiatives such as apprenticeships and role-switching accelerators.

However, the framework also includes roles that might not normally be associated with digital and data. “Probably the biggest growing role over the past few years has been the user researcher,” Beautyman said. “User researchers didn’t exist before; now they are a really critical part of our digital teams.”

Beautyman also made the point that the digital function shouldn’t be viewed as isolated or niche. “I’d say 70%, 80% of their core skillset is the kind of skills that you would want in many public servant roles,” he said, citing problem-solving, analytical thinking and teamwork.

Estonia’s approach

Karl Andreas Sprenk, director, digital skills coordination in Estonia’s Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs, described Estonia’s three-tier approach to developing digital skills in the public sector.

First is the focus on basic digital skills needed for daily tasks, such as using collaboration tools, understanding data quality, and being aware of cybersecurity and AI. To support this, Estonia created an on-demand Digital Academy platform for civil servants.

Second is developing skills for innovation and transformation. Estonia doesn’t have a single digital entity responsible for government transformation; each department and ministry focuses on the needs in their respective areas. Executive and mid-level managers are trained to align departmental projects with broader strategic goals and user needs, and to ensure solutions are compatible and meet core competences and standards in areas such as data, cybersecurity and sustainability.

Estonia also addresses the wider digital talent challenge in society through a partnership with the Ministry of Education and Research to promote reskilling programmes to build both public and private sector digital capacity.

The panel agreed that as well as supporting staff today, leaders must look ahead.

“I think that the landscape has never been as complex as it is now,” said the UK government’s Ryland, noting emerging technology, the amount of generations that are in the workforce, and new ways of working such as hybrid arrangements. Leaders need new skills themselves, she said, pointing to the need for organisational design capabilities as well as process management and adapting to new technologies.

“It’s also looking at how do we future-proof our workforces, our ways of working and be agile? How do you pivot in terms of what your workforce and your customers expect?”

Read more: Global Government Forum research reveals the top factors that enable civil service innovation

Innovation as a contact sport

Joe Torjussen, head of innovation in the Civil Service Strategy Unit within the Cabinet Office, led an Innovation Masterclass session, drawing on the civil service’s e-learning course which supports the One Big Thing initiative and breaks down the innovation process into stages. He pinpointed three core skill areas which have particular applicability for all civil servants: identifying and defining problems, building a proof of concept, and evaluating outcomes.

He noted that effective user research can challenge assumptions and encouraged civil servants to test ideas quickly and cheaply using tools like AI and anonymised data.

Evaluation is often overlooked but critical, he said. “I see so many brilliant pockets of innovation across government, so many pilots, and we’re not good enough at scaling or sharing our successes or our failures,” he said. “I think it should be a call to arms to share your learnings with your networks, with your communities, so that we can get better at learning from failure, but we can also get better at adopting and diffusing the really good innovations.”

Angela Hanson, the innovation lead at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Observatory of Public Sector Innovation highlighted global approaches including Belgium’s federal innovation awards, France’s public transformation campus, Chile’s bottom-up training platform, and Sweden’s formalised innovation roles.

The OECD’s six core innovation skills, published in 2017, are: iteration, data literacy, user-centricity, curiosity, storytelling, and insurgency. These are now being updated to also capture managerial competencies.

Hanson stressed that capacity-building must go beyond formal training to include real-world practice.

“Innovation is a contact sport,” she said.

Download the report for the full survey results and a summary of examples showcased throughout the event.

Sign up: The Global Government Forum newsletter provides the latest news, interviews and features on AI, data, workforce, and sustainability in government