How should public servants learn in an age of crisis and opportunity?

By Robyn Scott

We need your help figuring out how to build governments with the skills to respond to 21st century challenges, from AI to climate change.

Even in an age of hyper-politicisation, most agree that we need politicians and civil servants with the skills to understand and respond to the tidal wave of complex, fast-moving challenges that are remaking our world at breakneck speed.

We are all relying on governments to regulate the rise of AI, combat climate change and address other challenges. They can. But to do this, they need to be effective at learning, and learning at speed.

So we have launched a survey to understand more about learning in government, and how good and bad learning impacts public servants’ effectiveness. We will publish the final data as an open resource for any government to use.

Emerging insights from the over 1,300 responses we’ve already received include:?

• Far too many public servants are unclear about the skills they need to develop: More than 20% of public servants don’t know where to start when it comes to learning.?
• Public servants view collaboration as crucial: The top priority for public servants (cited by 25%) is learning how to break down silos in government.
• Governments still need to address the fundamentals of digital transformation: When asked about the most important challenge facing their governments that they want to learn about, public servants rate digital transformation (18%) ahead of AI (14%).

If you’re in government, or work closely with government, please share the 6-minute survey with your teams and networks. Everything you need to know is here. We will publish the results and analysis in July 2024.