Summary

"Impactful Government Careers (IGC)" helps impact-focused individuals deliver positive outcomes in government by simplifying the process for individuals seeking impactful civil service roles, providing expertise in navigating the bespoke application process, and aiding the development of critical skills to succeed.

With current funding, IGC is at a critical moment to expand its services and build upon its community of impact-focused individuals. This post aims to raise awareness within the EA community of IGC as an organisation, whilst gathering feedback and views (including through this survey) on potential initiatives to maximise IGC's future impact. 

If you are keen to stay up-to-date or get involved then it’d be great to hear from you! Finally, to not just arrive out of the darkness, I've also recently written an introductory blog on IGC's website.

How did ‘Impactful Government Careers’ begin?

In 2017, in the corridors of the UK civil service, there was a group who recognised that civil servants have the potential to do enormous good, but that there was not a dedicated service to help them maximise their impact. Out of this realisation, they decided to form an informal group called the ‘High Impact Policy Engine’ which later became ‘Impactful Government Careers’. Their mission was to identify and address the most important bottlenecks in:

• Impact-focused people moving into positions where they can help the most.
• The building of trusting relationships between people who can help each other have more social impact in government and beyond.

Why is this important?

Not one to reinvent the wheel, I look to 80,000 Hours who provides a succinct summary of the importance of working with and through governments (and thus the civil service) in their article on the world’s most pressing problems^[1]:

In fact, all of the top 5 most pressing issues identified by 80,000 Hours (AI, pandemics, nuclear war, great power conflict, and climate change) are heavily influenced, if not entirely reliant, on the decisions made by governments. This reality is also reflected in the priority cause areas highlighted by other career advisory sources such as ‘Probably Good’^[2] and ‘Successif’^[3]. 

Beyond this, numerous EA funded projects focus a considerable amount time, energy, and money on trying to get the best information in front of the best people so that the best decision can be made by governments. This isn’t surprising. Governments have enormous potential to shift funding and focus to highly impactful areas. A 1% chance to improve the effectiveness of just 1% of the UK Government's annual expenditure could equate to c.$140 million extra per year for more impactful causes.

In summary, governments are important. I don’t suspect I’m providing anyone with new information here. However, it serves as an emphasis on how integral governments are to the success of many priority causes. 

What benefit does IGC provide?

A fairly well established and reasoned belief is it is desirable to have motivated, empowered, and impact focused individuals in positions that help deliver key decisions in powerful organisations and institutions. If the staff in these institutions are incentivised and supported to find the most effective solution to a problem, then this benefits society at large and gives us the highest chance of solving some of the world’s most complicated and concerning/existential problems. 

This is recognised in the growth and support for organisations such as: 80,000 Hours; Probably Good; High Impact Professionals;^[4] Animal Advocacy Careers^[5]; and High Impact Engineers^[6] - to name a few. However, it begs the question of whether Impactful Government Careers actually provides a benefit that isn’t already serviced elsewhere. There are three main reasons why we believe it does:

1. Finding a high impact role in the Civil Service is a hard and specialised task. 

In the UK, a central ‘Civil Service Jobs’ portal provides access to all the jobs available, but it can be incredibly difficult to assess the potential impact of the role from the job advert alone. Some general predictors such as seniority of the role, the department it’s in, the job responsibilities may be a helpful guide but they are far from perfect. The risk is that you get a job believing it is high impact, only to find 3-6 months in it’s not and you: (a) have missed another higher impact opportunity; (b) are unable to apply for another job for a set period; and/or (c) have to start looking for another position and role the dice again. 

Ultimately, to improve your changes requires time and effort to speak to people in the area, understand the political and institutional context (i.e. what’s the opportunity to move the dial, have influence and autonomy over your work etc.), and weigh these considerations against other jobs being advertised (now or potentially in the near future). Given the job adverts are typically only open for two weeks, there isn’t a lot of time to figure this out and produce a first-class application.

IGC can help streamline this by doing early filtering, having an understanding of the context of key policy areas, and putting prospective individuals in contact with people who they can trust to give them candid and open views on the area of work. We have the specialised knowledge that puts us in a prime position to evaluate a job advert, help you investigate the questions above, and then make a well-reasoned judgement on how impactful the role is likely to be.

2. Securing a high impact role in the Civil Service is competitive and requires unique skills.

Anyone who has applied for a job in the UK Civil Service will know the potentially soul-draining experience it is. There are often extreme levels of competition, especially in higher grade roles which offer more autonomy or responsibility. The task of writing concise behaviours to showcase your skills and meet an incredibly broad set of criteria can be laborious, and the following interview format can be rigid and an unusual experience. The process is designed to strip a lot of individuality away from the application in an effort to remove any bias (be it prejudice, nepotism, or other biases) from the people making the assessment. I could do a whole other post on how this system doesn’t work, but maybe another time.

IGC has expertise and deep experience of getting through the civil service application process. We are able to provide individual feedback and support on the written part of the application, and coach people through the interview so that they can not only hit the required scores, but bring out their personality in a way that makes them stand out. In such a rigid process it forces a need for knowing the ‘tricks of the trade’ to increase the chances of success.

3. Excelling and delivering impact whilst in a role is an art.

Even once in a role with high potential of impact, delivering on that often requires a wide variety of skills such as having an attention to detail, be able to understand Ministerial objectives and incentives, work collaboratively with team members and utilise their skills effectively, being able to manage upwards and downwards, have an ability to productively negotiate with internal and external stakeholders, know when to compromise but not undermine the main benefits/elements of the option, and manage to write and talk concisely and with confidence - often on highly complex and uncertain issues to very senior officials or Ministers. 

The art is in knowing how to navigate the system, understand where your opportunities are, know what skills to leverage when, and have the confidence to die in a ditch when it’s warranted. 

IGC can not only help individuals in building those skills, but provides a network of other aligned individuals who can help them develop and implement these. From access to experts who can provide civil servants with information and evidence to help them in their thinking on a policy issue, to support with skills such as negotiation, communication, and reasoning under uncertainty.

IGC helps people find, secure, and deliver in high impact civil service roles.

This is good for civil servants - Many people join the Civil Service because they want to help others. This drive is a fundamental benefit to the Government of the day and the public at large. However, many individuals end up feeling unsure about whether they are actually making a difference, and/or unsure how you can direct their career to ensure they are maximising their impact and benefit to the world.

This is good for the Government - A civil servant who is focused and supported to deliver impactful work, is a more effective civil servant. Their work therefore helps the Government of the day achieve its goals in the best way possible, whilst helping the institutions retain the best people and deliver greater value for citizens.

This is good for the world - The world gets better when people in our most important institutions are motivated and empowered to deliver impactful projects and policies. IGC helps ensure that the most pressing problems in the world are being addressed by the most capable and motivated individuals. 

Risk of IGC

There are always risks in such services, especially when it relates to working with public bodies. Some of these have been proactively mitigated through IGC’s remit/focus, and others will aim to be addressed through IGCs new strategy (see below ‘What's next’ section). 

The most important risks to highlight in this post, as an introduction and overview of IGC for the EA community, are:

Impartiality

It is fundamental to IGC’s existence that its work remains impartial. There is a clear and necessary separation between the role of Ministers and politicians, and those of the civil service. That does not mean civil servants cannot or should not be motivated, incentivised, and supported to maximise the benefit of their work to the world, within the defined objectives and directions set by Ministers. The internal structures and process of departments ensures this - the civil service provides advice, and Ministers make the final decision.

IGC isn’t set up to push any political view or motive, but rather to help individuals find and secure high impact roles, and once there, have the skills available to identify and advise which options provide the highest positive benefit. The better informed individuals are, the better their advice will be for Ministers.

Political decisions and cycle

Political decisions dictate, to a large degree, what is done and what is not done. Along with the power to do good, politicians can equally make decisions with enormous harm, and thus the same skills that could make civil servants very effective could be used in a net-negative way. 

I think this is a very fair risk. Having experienced a situation very similar to this however, I do feel there is an argument that having people who want to maximise impact (in a positive way) should help mitigate the negative effects of such decisions by advising Ministers of the least damaging way to achieve their objectives - providing counterfactual benefit compared to someone that didn’t care about impact. Assuming the political objective isn’t explicitly about maximising harm (which I believe is extremely rare), performing well in such a scenario may actually increase the EV your work could have given this counterfactual benefit.

However, there is a fine line to be drawn between this benefit and working on something you disagree with. Fundamentally this also points back to the 1st risk - the civil service advises and Ministers decide. Being outside of Government, IGC can candidly advise on alternative impactful areas to go into if such political objectives make it impossible for individuals to stay in their current role. 

The scale of the issue is too large for a small organisation to help solve

IGC has been run by one full time Director and some volunteers for the last 18 months, and now has funding to expand to c.2 FTE for the next 12-18 months. Though the theory of change for IGC may make sense, it could be that the time necessary and funding required to deliver on that is much higher than the amount of money funders are willing to provide.

This isn’t a shameless plug for more money I promise, but a real risk. The problem is large, the solutions are complicated, multifacted, and uncertain. There are potentially thousands of civil servants IGC could serve, and dozens of interventions that could deliver benefits. It’s on IGC to make use of the funding to target our actions in the best places for the money we have and make the case (if necessary) for why an extra £/$ spent on IGC is worth it. 

What’s next for IGC and how can you help

As set out in my introductory blog, I’m focusing on two main aspects for IGC:

1. Maintain the existing service, building the awareness of IGC and ensuring the existing services continue to operate. This will involve:
   1. Early stage career advice and support for those in or interested in government roles.
   2. More specific coaching for individuals applying for roles, either in helping them narrow their specific focus or support with the application process.
   3. Undertaking events to build awareness of IGC and having impact.
   4. Building the community and network of impact-aligned individuals.
2. Develop a clear and concise strategy for IGC, identifying exactly which services we will provide in future, and which ones we won’t. Current ideas (not exhaustive) under consideration/investigation are:
   1. A platform which captures and ranks government jobs (based on several metrics) so that users can easily filter and compare different roles based on their personal fit, career goals, and potential for impact. With opportunity to easily connect with others working in similar roles/areas for views and recommendations (potentially anonymously).
   2. A more involved and focused coaching service designed to help the most promising and ambitious candidates to find and secure high-impact roles.
   3. A bespoke training/fellowship programme designed to provide individuals with skills to help them succeed in delivering impact in their roles.
   4. An internal function designed to investigate, aggregate, and disseminate research and evidence on the most promising high-impact interventions for specific priority areas, with the aim of reducing the time and effort required for civil servants to find such information.

Impact evaluation and monitoring will be at the heart of how we direct our effort and funds. With huge uncertainty around monitoring the impact of such career advice/support services, we’ll be looking to deploy advanced techniques designed for uncertainty/belief modelling such as a Bayesian network/theory of change, so that we can be transparent in the beliefs and data that underpin our assessments, and maximise the confidence apriori that our interventions will make a difference.

The main purpose of this post was to make the EA community more aware of IGC, and by doing so, hopefully gather views which I can integrate into my decisions for how to maximise IGC’s own impact. Linked to that, I’m collecting views to help inform the strategy above through this survey, and would appreciate any and all responses through that. Equally, I’m very happy to receive direct messages or of course comments below, particularly any thoughts you have on the below questions:

1. Where do you see the biggest gaps/risks to civil servants being able to deliver impact in their roles?
2. Where do you feel there are similar services that are doing well, and therefore IGC should avoid competing with to avoid duplication?
3. What elements of IGC's potential areas of work do you see as having the highest potential EV?

Great ideas rarely form in a vacuum, and often your strongest supporters and fiercest critics are the ones that steer you towards success.

1. ^{^}

   https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/

2. ^{^}

   https://probablygood.org/cause-areas/

3. ^{^}

    https://www.successif.org/our-work

4. ^{^}

   https://www.highimpactprofessionals.org/

5. ^{^}

   https://www.animaladvocacycareers.org

6. ^{^}

   https://www.highimpactengineers.org/