Context and challenges for Senior Civil Service roles in digital and data

A Senior Civil Service job in digital and data can vary depending on the context and challenges in your organisation.

Each contextual challenge has one of 4 levels reflecting how challenging it is: 1 being the most simple, and 4 being the most challenging.

You can use these contextual challenge levels to:

• identify the level of potential impact or challenge that a specific Senior Civil Service role has
• assess what job grade might be appropriate for a specific role

Not all contextual challenges are relevant for all digital and data roles.

Making digital and data decisions

Digital and data leaders are involved in decision making with different levels of impact.

Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4
Decisions about services or technology strategy for a part of the organisation	Decisions about digital and data strategy for the whole organisation	Decisions about the overall strategy for the organisation	Decisions about strategy for the whole of government

Protecting data

Digital and data leaders need to ensure data is appropriately protected based on the volume of data, type of data, and the impact of this data being compromised.

Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4
Protect against compromise of data that could result in minor or temporary impact on individuals or organisations	Protect against compromise of data that could result in moderate impact to many individuals or organisations, or serious impact to a small number of them	Protect against compromise of data that could result in serious impact to some individuals or organisations, or significant impact to a large number of them	Protect against compromise of data that could result in threat to life, national security or critical national infrastructure, or critical impact on individuals and organisations on a national scale

Protecting systems

Digital and data leaders are required to appropriately protect against different levels of impact caused by system failure or a system being compromised.

Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4
Protect against system failure or compromise that could cause minor or temporary disruption at an organisational level or a non-critical national level	Protect against system failure or compromise that could cause significant disruption at an organisational level or a non-critical national level	Protect against failure or compromise across connected systems that could cause significant disruption or potential harm at a national level	Protect against failure or compromise of critical systems or critical national infrastructure that could cause widespread disruption at a national level or threats to national security

Sharing data and systems

How widely technology and data is shared across different groups in your organisation can affect the challenges of your role.

Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4
Sharing across part of an organisation	Sharing across a whole organisation	Sharing across a whole organisation and connected public bodies	Sharing across government and outside the public sector

Enabling digital and data transformation

Digital transformation includes creating common platforms, shared technical and data infrastructure, governance, processes and ways of working.

Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4
Transformation in some aspects of the organisation	Transformation in all aspects of the organisation	Transformation of all aspects of the organisation and connected public bodies	Transformation across government and outside the public sector

Challenges at different sizes

The size of organisation, budget and number of people that a digital and data leader has responsibility for will vary.

Each size comes with different challenges that affect what you need to do to be effective.

	Small	Medium	Large
Organisation size	Up to 1000 people. Challenges: multitasking across several roles more exposure	Up to 15,000 people. Challenges: more likely for priorities to change more fluid responsibilities	Up to 80,000 people or more. Challenges: broader focus or specialisation more hierarchy
People responsibility	Up to 50 people. Challenges: risk of getting too involved in specific problems learning to trust others to make decisions	Up to 200 people. Challenges: risk of relying on a narrow set of relationships potential for people to ‘burnout’	Up to 500 people or more. Challenges: more distant from your people hard to know what is really going on
Budget responsibility	Up to £5 million. Challenges: more precarious dependent on others for money	Up to £50 million. Challenges: difficult to adapt to changing budget priorities not enough budget to either bring in enough specialist skills or fully outsource	Up to £5 billion or more. Challenges: higher number of competing priorities higher risk