Work begins on online platform for government’s ‘Civilian Reserve’
Work has begun on the development of an online platform for managing the government’s planned “Civilian Reserve” of external experts that will be deployed to support ministers and officials in responding to future emergencies.
The Cabinet Office is leading the project to create the reserve. A contract notice published by the department said: “The civil service will respond better to the next crisis if we can rapidly identify and deploy individuals with the needed skills and experience to meet that crisis.”
The reserve will be divided into two strands, the first of which will comprise a “group of senior leaders from the public, private, third sectors with expertise in matters relating to resilience and national security”.
“Members of the group would offer their time to advise ministers and senior officials, and would be willing to use their organisations to facilitate government policy in times of crisis,” the notice said.
The second strand will be composed of a “network of experienced former crown and civil servants, who can be surged into critical crown and civil service roles or local resilience forums during a crisis, or be used to support a particular need where we might otherwise outsource to consultants”.
The department wishes to create an online platform to “effectively on-board, manage and deploy members of the Civilian Reserve”. The system will allow reservists to provide information on their skills and availability, while enabling departments to communicate with them, manage their deployments and, where necessary, pay them for their work.
IT company Version 1 has been appointed to a six-month £230,000 contract to support the discovery and alpha development phases for the digital service.
This will include user research intended to “ensure the service is feasible”, before “developing and testing approaches to deliver the digital service”.
At the conclusion of the two opening phases, results of work undertaken “will be collated into an alpha service review pack… including modelling of the costs and budget required to set up and run” a permanent live service.