In Estonia this was solved by moving all the IT related people to organisations adjacent to the ministries and departments, so the lower paid civil servants wont have to be compared to the highly paid software developers and architects, etc. One colleague used to work as and architect of the justice ministry. He said the suit wearing civil servants with law degrees were pissed off at the homeless looking sweatshirt wearing software developers who were much higher paid. So the IT stuff was moved to another new department, but it still answers to the minister.

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

The problem is that the civil service is inefficient and will bloat, because the only pressure on it to not is the individual good practice of leaders. There's no competitive/market pressure on it to naturally cap spending based on value.

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.

I remember chatting with the then-mayor of Cambridge, UK about this.

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.

> This all started in the 1980s

It did, I'd argue the first (and in a sense final) nail in the coffin was the Electricity Act (1989).