Background to the report

The Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions and child maintenance policy. Its vision is “to enable and empower everyone to thrive”. It administers the State Pension and a range of working-age, disability and ill-health benefits to around 23 million people across Great Britain. In 2025-26, it spent £309.5 billion on welfare payments and £10.6 billion on service delivery and running costs.

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Demand for DWP’s services is increasing, with an ageing population and growing numbers of people with complex needs. Customers’ expectations are also becoming more demanding as people want, for example, to be able to communicate with DWP through digital channels and to use self-service options. DWP’s strategy for 2030 aims to transform how it operates and delivers services, in order to meet the evolving needs of its customers while providing value for taxpayers. Like other departments, DWP is expected to become more productive in the coming years, by making efficiency savings and securing better outcomes for its customers.

Successive governments have looked to innovation and new technologies to play an important part in delivering modern, efficient public services. In 2025, the government stated that embedding a pro-innovation culture, identifying opportunities early, adopting the latest technologies and collaborating with partners in industry could ensure that public services deliver the best possible outcomes for citizens and businesses

Scope of the report

This report examines DWP’s approach to innovation. We carried out the study to consider how a department with a significant operational delivery role approaches innovation. Our study framework had two parts.

  • We reviewed DWP’s overall approach including its vision for the role of innovation, its organisational culture and risk appetite, and its approach to evaluation.
  • We examined what innovation looks like in practice within DWP through six case examples from across the organisation to highlight the enablers and challenges of innovation.

Conclusion

DWP has an ambition to be a leader in public service innovation, so it can improve outcomes for citizens, increase productivity and secure better value for taxpayers. However, as a major operational delivery department, DWP is pursuing this ambition within a challenging context. It is responsible for administering benefits in line with legislation, protecting large volumes of sensitive personal data, and providing reliable services for the millions of people who depend on its payments. Innovation must be balanced carefully with these responsibilities and cannot compromise them.

DWP is experimenting in valuable ways across the organisation, with indications of positive impact on customer service and productivity. The examples we saw ranged from trials to improve how jobcentres support claimants to the use of AI to keep child maintenance payments flowing and to produce staff training materials more efficiently.

DWP has many of the necessary building blocks in place for an effective approach to innovation, including taking a differentiated approach to risk and using test-and-learn methods to pilot and refine innovations before scaling them. However, there is scope for DWP to strengthen its approach further by applying good practice more consistently. For example, it has more to do to build a culture where staff feel confident to try new things within clear boundaries, and to share learning effectively across the organisation.

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View press release (21 Oct 2026)

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