Richard Corbridge

Part of the IT Leaders 100 - a list of the most influential IT leaders in the UK in 2024.

Richard Corbridge is Director General of Digital at the DWP. He is responsible for all technology, data and transformation driven by digital capabilities. His previous roles include the CIO of Boots, the retailer and pharmacist, roles across the NHS and Clinical Research, and time as the CIO of the entire Irish healthcare system. He is a leader focused on people and how digital can help them do the role they want to do. He is a fellow of the British and Irish computer society and member of the UK F-TAG the technical advisory group of the BCS.

How did you get into IT?

To some degree by accident - a happy accident at that. I was educated to be a teacher, a junior schoolteacher, and I had loved every moment of it but at the fateful moment where I was to sign up to my first job I was offered a role as a system analyst with Perot Systems, which was well sold and seemed exciting. After a couple of years in that role I moved to the NHS where suddenly the reason for 'doing IT' felt so much more tangible and I went on to support the NHS's largest systems, deliver new modern connectivity to every GP in the country, create the Summary Care Record, build systems to make clinical research possible inside the NHS at pace and so many more changes that when I sit back today I can still be proud of.

I think those early NHS days set me up for a focus on the transformational result rather than the technology itself, and to this day that is what drives me the most, always wanting to bring a people-first approach.

What do you consider your greatest IT achievement of the last 12 months?

In my role at DWP the year has seen so many significant leaps forward. A focus on digital and data solutions to protect the most vulnerable citizens in the UK has been a brilliant direction for the team.

As a programmatic approach, the Lighthouse body of work has probably delivered the most positive and immediate change and is therefore what I would consider a significant achievement. Within the Lighthouse programme we can open 22,000 handwritten letters that come to DWP every day. We then scan them and turn them into machine readable code. Using an LLM delivered in a secure space, we then scan for vulnerability and 'post' in priority the most vulnerable citizens contacts to the team who make almost immediate contact.

Before this system went live, a response used to take four to six weeks; now, 75% are in the same day.

Within the programme are solutions that have modernised the Child Maintenance experience, increasing NPS by double digits; systems within job centres, which provide relevant and fast advice to all citizens seeking work; and solutions that remove human intervention in the collection of arbitration data in readiness for discussions about a citizen's claim.

How do you ensure diversity is taken into account in your IT recruitment?

The appeal of the organisation, I think, is a key to achieving diversity, equity and inclusion in our recruitment. We are members of the cross-government movement on professionalisation of digital. Professionalisation means the adoption of system-wide plans to be the most diverse employer we can.

Membership of organisations like BCS and WID have led to us being able to adopt best practice and offer access to training, development and networks to continue to grow our own knowledge. We have focused on social mobility through access to the DWP network of Job Centres. We have accessed over 200% of our apprenticeship levy to increase our new skills cohort. We have over 22% of colleagues being supported through some form of workplace amendment to assist them be able to be the best they can be in their job, and have put in place a gender champion at the most senior level of our organisation.

We have adopted a framework of diverse interview panels and insisted upon an inclusive statement for shortlisting. We have applied 'bias spotting' technology to job descriptions and have altered the interview process for interviews to attempt to open up opportunities to neurodiverse candidates.

Which technology are you currently most excited by, and why?

Generative AI - recent leaps in how we use this technology leave me no choice but to go here. My view now, at the end of Quarter One of 2024, is that this technology genuinely is going to live up to the hype that is being built around it and has, with the right human ownership, the ability to change the world.

The phrase we have adopted to empower our innovation is: Being human-centred and future-focused is the cornerstone of this strategy. Our world today is undeniably digital and technology is the place people consistently look to for solutions. We want to instil a digital-first mindset where people really feel their needs are at the heart of digital transformation, and we continue to meet them as they evolve. We are addressing legacy issues related to people, technology, policy, and data, to boost productivity and efficiency, and in turn deliver more accurate and enhanced experiences.

The key to why excitement is so high in this area is two-fold: the width of range of its application, and the ability for us to achieve new outcomes through the integration of this technology to elements that are tried and tested.

What would an outsider find the most surprising part of your job?

The variety day on day, I think, would surprise anyone looking in. To see this variety inside a civil service digital role I think would be even more of a shock to a peer looking in at what we do.

The reason for that variety is twofold; the need of our business for the bundle of things we label as digital is huge, and we have fostered that appetite to ensure we can lead transformation. The second area is my own focus on what it means to be a leader in this arena. The leadership elements of my role can take me from hosting a fireside chat with an external digital expert to add to colleagues' knowledge of digital, all the way though to being part of the most senior digital transformation governance across government and then on to work with our apprentice cohort to help them build the projects they want to deploy.

As well as being the most surprising, I think this element is the most exciting and interesting. No day is the same, and the impact on individuals as well as the wider business and citizens you can have hour on hour is tremendous.

What's your secret talent?

I can catalogue a record collection based on genre, chronology and artist quicker than anyone I know. I love a library and always have, and in the last few years I have become obsessed with vinyl. That obsession has led me to learn a new skill: being able to catalogue records at speed based on genre first, date of release second and artist third helps me find which one I want nearly as fast as a scrolling finger on a streaming service! We have hit that moment where a 'family decision' puts us in a one new record in then one old record has to leave to the great eBay shop in the sky, so the skill is getting tested more and more.

What makes you laugh?

My kids, and who they are and what they do, more than anything else in the world. I am relatively new to being a step-dad and every moment of time with them is extraordinary. They are funny, how they do things, their outlook on life and the future the world holds for them never ceases to amaze me. As a family we want to be able to be together to enjoy the world around us as much as we can. The job I now do prevents this some of the week which has made the moments when we are together even more precious.