JOB SUMMARY

The Department for Business and Trade is at the heart of delivering the UK’s mission for growth, through supporting UK business and driving the government’s international trade agenda. DBT brings together policy, promotion, and financial expertise to break down barriers to trade and investment in markets across the world to help businesses succeed. DBT operates a broad portfolio of grants with a lifetime budget of over £30bn.
These schemes support many of the department’s priority industries and sectors. Delivery responsibility is currently split between different teams across the department. To ensure we deliver our portfolio of grants as efficiently and effectively as possible we have established the Grant Delivery Directorate (GDD), a centre of excellence for grant and funding delivery within the department and are in the process of transferring delivery of all grant and other financial schemes that support business into this team.
GDD works closely with colleagues from policy, finance, analysis and legal, as well as industry experts, to award and monitor grants across a wide range of policy areas, ensuring compliance with government grant standards and HMT’s Managing Public Money. A number of schemes have already transitioned and are being delivered by GDD and we are now looking to the next stage of consolidation and the future departmental grants and wider business delivery support landscape. We are looking to appoint a G7 PMO lead to build a portfolio management function to enable effective oversight of the growing grants and delivery function.

JOB DESCRIPTION

The individual will be responsible for a key pillar of our change programme - improving GDDs use of technology & data, better utilising an end-to-end grant management system to streamline grant management and strengthen portfolio reporting. This will deliver a single version of the truth and support greater efficiency. You will have experience of using digital systems and AI to strengthen delivery oversight and make reporting more efficient and effective.

NATIONALITY REQUIREMENTS

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements

RESPONSIBILITIES WILL INCLUDE:

• Lead the roll out of a new grant management MI solution, ensuring that the needs of different users are understood and met by the system. This will involve agreeing a phased approach to the onboarding of schemes, working collaboratively with delivery and policy teams to accurately capture historic data, quality assuring that, and working with the developers to migrate that data onto the new system.
• Manage this significant change programme effectively through (i) a tailored programme of L&D that meets the needs of different users (ii) strong ongoing communications ensuring expectations are clear and (iii) win the trust and confidence of staff – identifying problems quickly and finding ways to tackle those and working with the senior leadership team to address any difficulties with change.
• Deliver timely and accurate MI reports, dashboards and insight packs to internal and external stakeholders. You will also work with the Portfolio Management Office to translate complex data into clear narratives and actionable insights for a variety of audiences, including senior leaders and operational teams.
• Support continuous improvement of the system and our approach to reporting, looking for opportunities to deliver more automation and use of AI to drive out greater efficiencies and a better service for users of the system. Explore new methods and techniques to improve the quality of data and reporting.
• Provide leadership to a small team, working through them to manage and prioritise competing demands, escalating issues where necessary to mitigate risks and ensure service delivery.