JOB SUMMARY

The Incident Response Team (IRT) is responsible for DCMS’s crisis response planning and preparation. We work on a varied and exciting range of issues across the department and Whitehall. We have a strong ambition to improve the department’s resilience and are recruiting two new posts to help us drive this.
We frequently engage with a range of cross-Whitehall resilience and response fora to represent DCMS interests. We deal with smaller responses in-house and have developed a volunteer cadre of staff from across the department who can be called upon to respond to more significant issues. We are developing our capability to plan and deliver exercises to test and improve both our people and our plans.
We are taking an increasing role in resilience across the department, working with various teams to understand the impacts of different risks, identifying mitigations and developing response plans. We run the Resilience Oversight Board to generate strategic oversight and drive resilience work across the department.
Part of the Performance, Projects, Inquiry & Response division in the Project Delivery and Major Events directorate, we are a small team currently located across offices including London and Cardiff.

JOB DESCRIPTION

The successful candidate will play an important role in an exciting, varied and challenging portfolio of work to grow DCMS’ resilience and crisis management capability.
You will support the senior policy adviser’s work to identify and then assess risks, developing contingency plans where necessary. You will take forward research to properly expose the impacts of those risks and develop options for mitigation with clear recommendations on which to take forward. This will involve bringing partners together to discuss complex issues and achieve consensus.
You will secretariat the DCMS Resilience Oversight Board which brings together senior leaders impacted by resilience issues. You will coordinate papers, drafting those in your direct areas of responsibility and manage information products.
You will also produce clear and concise briefing on your areas of responsibility for seniors and ministers at cross-government fora.
As a member of the Incident Response Team, you will also perform an operational role when the department responds to crisis. This will include triaging and managing information flows across the department via a shared inbox, producing information products (such as Situation Reports) and managing tasks assigned to the department.

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

To apply for this vacancy, you will need to submit the following documents which will assessed against the experience success profile:

• A CV setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements. Please ensure you provide employment history that relates to the essential and desirable criteria, and that any gaps in employment history within the last 2 years are explained. The CV should not exceed more than 2 x A4 pages and you should insert your CV into the “Job History” section on Civil Service Jobs on the Civil Service Jobs application form.
• A Statement of Suitability (max 750 words) explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role in reference to the essential requirements highlighted. You may also choose to reference the desirable skills listed however these will not be considered in the assessment of your application except in circumstances where there are a high number and calibre of candidates