Millions of people rely on public services every day. Their experience shapes trust in government. Digital delivery has improved many services over the past decade. But too often services are still slow or fragmented, held back by legacy systems, processes and organisational boundaries. Incremental fixes are no longer enough.
To meet today’s expectations, government needs to move beyond improving digital journeys and focus on transforming how services are designed, run and improved end to end.
That’s why DSIT has set up CustomerFirst, a new unit within the Government Digital Service. Our mission is to test how government can deliver better services when teams are empowered to work end to end, free from the usual barriers and with users at the centre.
CustomerFirst works using a NewCo approach – a semi-autonomous model that gives teams the freedom to operate outside legacy constraints, move at the pace of user need and deliver measurable improvements where existing systems make change difficult. Our role is to test and prove what works through real delivery with departments, and build evidence for what can be scaled across government.
This model is well established in the private sector and has also been used successfully in government, including the Universal Credit reset programme and the creation of the Infected Blood Compensation Authority. CustomerFirst builds on these lessons and applies them systematically to service transformation.
What we want to achieve
We have set 3 objectives against which we will measure success:
1. Deliver radical service transformation across multiple public services that supports the ‘rewiring of the state’ and benefits citizens
We want to make a real‑world impact quickly. During our two‑year pilot, CustomerFirst will partner with up to 4 public sector bodies to transform services where there is a clear need and strong potential for impact.
For each partnership, our aim is end‑to‑end transformation that delivers a more efficient service and meaningful benefits for citizens. Delivery timelines will be shaped with each partner and published as they are confirmed.
Our first partnership is with DVLA. We will announce further partnerships over the summer and autumn.
2. Understand the value of a NewCo approach to service transformation across government and build capacity and capability in the civil service to deliver transformation in this way
Our hypothesis is that working in a NewCo way can enable a step change in how government designs and delivers services. Over the next 2 years we will test this through real delivery.
We will take a test‑and‑learn approach, learning from each step and sharing what works and what doesn’t. We are committed to doing this in the open.
Each month, we will publish blog posts to share progress, lessons learned and the challenges we are tackling. We will also develop a NewCo Toolkit, bringing together practical lessons from our work and insights from other NewCo‑style initiatives across the public sector.
To build capability, we are bringing together expertise from across the public and private sectors, spanning policy, service design, delivery management, analysis, organisational design, change management, product and data. A core team is already in place, and we are concluding recruitment for a Lead Technical Architect, Product Lead and Service Design Lead.
We are also forming partnerships with organisations with a strong track record in transformation, inviting their challenge and drawing on their expertise. Our first partnership is with Octopus Energy. Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, is our first co‑chair and will support CustomerFirst’s set‑up and selected projects. We will appoint additional co‑chairs during 2026.
3. Demonstrate value for money from our work
Our primary goal is to deliver better services for citizens. We also aim to help address the £45 billion of unrealised savings and productivity benefits identified in the State of Digital Government Review.
Alongside our test‑and‑learn approach, we are putting a monitoring and evaluation framework in place from the start. This will allow us to assess our progress honestly and understand which benefits are (and are not) being realised.
The framework will apply both to CustomerFirst as a whole and to each individual project we deliver with partners.
Looking ahead
We have a lot to do, and a lot to learn. Over the next 2 years, CustomerFirst will work differently so we can deliver better services for citizens and challenge long‑standing assumptions about how services are designed and run.
We will share our progress openly. You can follow our work on the GDS blog and on our campaign page.
If you want to get in touch, email us at [email protected].
