It's policy. It's official Whitehall policy.
As a department you can't hire programmers at £100k/year, because that pushes them way, way higher than civil service bands allow. But you can pay a "Systems Integrator" - a consultancy like Cap Gemini, Deloitte, Fujitsu - £600/day for the same programmer in the same seat. So, £100k/year = bad, £120k/year via an external consultancy = good.
Then we get into actually building and owning tech. Look at the history of GDS - they were empowered to pay half decent salaries and build and own things, but then had budgets slashed and programs cut. Why? Because we can "just buy it". Yes, you won't own the IP, it'll cost 4x as much, it'll take 3x-5x longer, but at least you won't have "inefficient civil service bloat" to have to manage.
This all started in the 1980s, and there are signs of it swinging back. I was at one department last year where they were telling me they're thinking about hiring actual engineers and embedding some devops stuff internally - absolutely jaw-droopingly revolutionary. Genuinely.
Similar stuff with other ministries. Interior ministry has their own it department, where they develop and maintain the population registry, criminal registries, and stuff that requires a security clearance
I agree that GDS is a good thing, and I interviewed with them a few years ago and was impressed, but there is always the risk of bloat. I wish this could be fixed. I have some ideas about a similar concept in the NHS that would require the government hiring well-paid software engineers.
>There's no competitive/market pressure on it to naturally cap spending based on value.
The parent is specifically claiming gov jobs don't allow for near market rates. That number would literally be formulated by current market pressures. If that goes lower in the private sector it will go lower in the gov sector.
For your point to be correct with respect to their specific example, you would have to claim the gov could pay £300k/year when the going market rate was £100k/year and there would be no pressure prevent this. Whereas all it would take would be someone to ask why a run-of-the-mill programmer is getting paid 3x the market rate?
> but at least you won't have "inefficient civil service bloat" to have to manage.
Specifically, he bemoaned how well-intentioned anti-corruption measures meant that if they wanted to lean on a startup, it was practically impossible to do so. The risk that had been mitigated was that of someone like him giving money to his family or friends – which is an understandable risk to try to mitigate! But the net effect of that was that IBM got all the contracts at a wildly higher cost and with no ability to lean on small business.
It did, I'd argue the first (and in a sense final) nail in the coffin was the Electricity Act (1989).
Take a look at this job posting for example: https://www.jobs.nhs.uk/candidate/jobadvert/C9175-26-0093 .
The role is more aligned with IT/Data as obvious by the fact that the main skill requirement is SQL.
The British government and public sector are constantly limiting themselves by being unwilling to pay market rates for the skills they need. Then they contract out needs like tech to work around the bureaucracy - but they demand so many strings attached that the little guys who are more cost effective don't want anything to do with it. And so they mostly outsource to large firms or sometimes specialist agencies who have jumped through the hoops to get all the right certifications. Naturally those suppliers are in a position to charge premium rates even for relatively simple work.
If the Civil Service built up a capable IT function staffed by properly qualified and experienced people that would surely save billions in budget and years in timescales for some of the (in)famous government IT projects and probably significantly increase the odds of successfully delivering something usable at the end of them. But as anyone who's working in our Civil Service can tell you the emphasis on ranks and pay scales and other very specific rules about career advancement are unlikely to go anywhere any time soon. Even if they did the culture of people moving around the Civil Service like interchangeable parts instead of building up deep expertise in specific areas would still be a problem.
Bear in mind there is a 23.7% pension contribution from the employer, so it's a roughly £62-70k total comp for a mid-level role.
Edit: Actually though, in reality I would expect a salary bump to work in the public sector to encourage one to put up with the terrible working enviornment with all the bureaucracy.
That said, I don't think there's that much wrong with that job description - I've been a software dev/eng for 15yrs and every role has had SQL at its centre. And its much easier to get someone new up to speed on some swanky new UI or scripting tool than it is with SQL IME, so prioritising people who are comfortable with the hard bits sounds fine to me.
No, wait, I've read it a bit more closely. It's all about Data warehousing. OK yeah, that's a data job.
It is horrible to work for them and in fact in consulting as soon as you hear that the project is for the NHS people run and hide not to be assigned.
Amusingly, the person concerned has the surname "Swindells"...
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/6c548670-0f3e-45f1-ba08-8bb6dd152...
I get the same feeling every time I see oracle chosen for anything.
Today in things that the press isn't legally allowed to describe as corrupt but would probably reach the intuitive threshold for corruption for most people who this is explained to.
Because where they are in their career at that point isn't the endgame and being the person that does the deal and throws the money around is how you get the board position where you broker those deals with governments, the NGO think tank position, essentially all the actually high paying roles.
Same reason the US political system is falling apart - buyable businessmen eh I mean politicians in power. „Lobbying“
Because of financial kickbacks. This is also why people should be suspicious at the current age-sniffing movement. Their next move was "VPNs must be abolished". We can see which mega-corporations finance those movements. Quite suspicious how different countries so easily "copy-paste" this legislation.
Agreed. It is said that Peter Mandelson had links to Palantir. (1) And also Wes Streeting (2)
1) https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/04/peter-mande...