CBI members help shape new innovation strategy

To ensure that business’s views are at the heart of the government’s new Technology Innovation Strategy, the CBI brought together suppliers from across the public sector with Minister for Implementation, Oliver Dowden CBE MP and officials from the Government Digital Service.

This Innovation Morning resulted in new ideas about how the UK Government can use emerging technologies to deliver world-class public services. The discussions fed directly in to the development of the strategy, and a number of the points raised were reflected in the

The discussions followed previous CBI research, which showed that public procurement hampers, rather than supports new ways of delivering services, with just 5% of businesses stating that current processes incentivise innovation.

In particular, the session focussed on the role that leadership and culture in businesses of all sizes can play in creating an environment in which innovation can thrive.

The three major points raised by business were:

• empowering government officials to try out new ideas and giving them the space and resources to innovate;
• increasing the number of secondments into government so that government departments can benefit from private sector expertise; and
• embedding innovation across organisations rather than just within projects with a clear technology focus.

A number of these themes were subsequently included in the Government Technology Innovation Strategy published in June.