Digital Inclusion Lead

This key role requires an outstanding individual to ensure our approach to access needs and digital inclusion is coherent, professionally managed and of high quality.

You will be a vocal advocate for meeting all users’ needs and experienced at dealing with stakeholders at all levels to achieve it.

In this role, you’ll be heavily focused on supporting the Head of Accessibility and Digital Inclusion and the Deputy Director for Design and Research to formulate a strategic approach to Digital Inclusion for the Home Office.

This will include working closely with policy and operational colleagues across the department and wider government to identify best practices and opportunities for further work on digital inclusion as well as providing guidance, training and support for teams to embed digital inclusion into how they deliver services for the public and staff.

You’ll be very comfortable engaging with delivery teams plus strategic and operational leaders to influence decisions based on data and user research. You’ll provide high level advice and get involved in assurance activity with delivery teams at all stages of development, before and after services are released.

You’ll be able to explain and demonstrate inclusion issues and you’ll be eager to transfer your expertise appropriately across the range of digital professionals.

This post is eligible for a DDaT RRA. Successful candidates with exceptional skills & experience may apply for a Recruitment & Retention Allowance up to a maximum of £6000. This allowance is subject to an initial review within six months of taking up the post and thereafter an annual review in line with departmental priorities and could be reduced or withdrawn at any time.

Responsibilities
Your main day to day responsibilities will be:

• Defining approaches, policies and strategies to digital inclusion based on universal barriers.

• Evaluating the impact and success of digital inclusion efforts; identifying gaps and opportunities for improvement and translating those into the strategic approach.

• Leading a virtual team from across the Home Office to tackle the Universal Barriers to digital inclusion with a unified approach.

• Maintaining and disseminating best practice relating to digital inclusion that make our services and internal systems usable by all, by default.

• Collaboration and co-ordinating with policy and operational teams within the Home Office and across government on digital inclusion issues.

• Maintaining our assurance approach to support the Government Service Standard with regards to accessibility and digital inclusion.

• Providing consultancy to delivery teams and stakeholders on achieving channel shift goals whilst meeting diverse users’ needs with digital interfaces, offline channels and support models.

You will also be expected to carry out the following day to day activities:

• Building capability by developing and delivering training on a range of accessibility and digital inclusion topics.

• Be a proactive part of cross government digital inclusion communities and groups.

• Contributing to, supporting and sharing the work of the accessibility and inclusion communities across government.

• Providing team members with professional advice and performance feedback, supporting their learning and development goals.

Essential Skills

You will have a demonstrable passion for user centred design, with the following skills or strong experience in:

• Work relating to Digital Inclusion strategy and policy within a public sector organisation.

• Helping public sector organisations tackle the challenge of ensuring vulnerable people are not excluded from their services.

• Supporting digitally inclusive policy development within a public sector organisation.

• Stakeholder management including with policy and operational delivery professionals.

• Working collaboratively to lead teams across boundaries within in a complex policy/service environment.

• Defining in-house and third party provision of Assisted Digital support.

• Of how best to serve digitally excluded, hard to reach and vulnerable user groups

The skills listed above are reflective of the Home Office DDaT Profession Skills and Competency Model (based on the industry standard SFIA framework). Please see below for the relevant skills required for your role:

• Digital Inclusion
• User Focus
• Leadership and Guidance
• Communicating information

Desirable Skills

Ideally you will also have the following skills or some experience in:

• Working on digital transformation of services and an understanding of the social and technological context for those services.

• Managing and mentoring team members, providing them with guidance, training and constructive feedback.

• Planning, developing and delivering training as well as evaluating it’s effectiveness.

• Knowledge of the wider government strategy around digital accessibility and inclusion.

Qualifications:

Desirable but not essential: a degree in HCI/ Cognitive Psychology/ Anthropology/ Sociology/ Computer Science or related field, and/or relevant industry experience.
Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

Communicating information
Digital Inclusion
Leadership and Guidance
User Focus