The UK government is seeking the kind of customer-service disruption Monzo brought to banking and Octopus to energy, alongside a living-document style roadmap for modern digital government.
"This roadmap will be iterative and we will provide annual updates on our progress against milestones and blueprint outcome metrics," Ian Murray, Minister of State for Digital Government and Data, told the House of Commons on Monday.
The new roadmap was promised (by the summer of 2025) in the Blueprint for modern digital government published in January of 2025.
CustomerFirst
The extensive roadmap was published on the weekend, but with a new headline focus: CustomerFirst, a new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) unit intended to "test innovative ways to tackle delays and frustrations by partnering with departments to rewire the government services on which millions rely".
DSIT believes it could save £4 billion by moving the service edge from phone, post, or in-person to app or online.
It is also keen to stress that the tools to do so, including a healthy dose of AI, are intended as helper of rather than replacement for civil service workers.
The unit is chaired by Tristan Thomas, an early Monzo joiner who left the challenger bank in 2020 as a VP of marketing and policy, with Octopus Energy CEO Greg Jackson as co‑chair.
Computer says no
CustomerFirst is due to work first with the high-volume Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), then take lessons learnt to other government departments to implement the key promise of the roadmap: better and cheaper customer service.
"A culture of ‘computer says no’ is not good enough, and this Roadmap sets out the wide range of brilliant work happening across government to improve public services and citizens’ interaction with them," said Murray in a press statement.
"CustomerFirst will help the hardworking employees delivering services, not just end customers - ensuring dedicated customer service staff have the right tools to do their job well," said DSIT.
Soft dates
The roadmap implements the January 2025 blueprint by decomposing priorities into products and services with delivery mechanisms and dates – even if the dates are not always firm or linked to tangible MVPs.
