Government productivity in UK social security has not grown across two decades to 2008 – largely because DWP senior civil servants blocked any move to ‘digital era’ services

Looking at the Department of Work and Pensions, Patrick Dunleavy and Leandro Carrera show that overall productivity levels failed to grow at all across two decades, despite massive capital investment, increased IT spend and several business process reorganizations. The dominance of a conservative organizational culture among senior public managers, plus constant policy churn, prevented any transition to delivering transactions or managing customer contacts in a modern, ‘digital era’ way.