The Civil Service helps the government of the day to develop and implement its policies as effectively as possible, while remaining politically neutral. It is made up of over 400,000 employees who work on areas that affect people’s everyday life, such as healthcare, education, housing, climate change, justice, and much more.

The Civil Service aims to be the most diverse employer in the UK by the end of 2020. While there have been improvements in diversity in the Civil Service over the past few years, there is still large room for improvement. This event will be hosted by a panel of senior leaders in the Civil Service, all from varied backgrounds, who welcome your honest thoughts and challenging questions around what they can do better for diversity and inclusion, to make the Civil Service more reflective of the population that they serve.

Panelists:

Zamila Bunglawala: Zamila is Director, International & EU at the UK Department for Education. Formerly Deputy Head of Unit and Deputy Director - Strategy and Insight, Race Disparity Unit at the Cabinet Office where she was the founding architect of the Ethnicity Facts and Figures website. Through her extensive national and international strategic policy and programmes experience in senior roles – including No.10 Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, Cabinet Office, Open Society Foundation, Young Foundation, Brookings Institution and United Nations – Zamila has led a wide range of pioneering policy and program projects, specialising in education and employment, open data and digital, gender, SGBV, ethnic and faith minority groups, humanitarian conflicts and development. Zamila is an international public policy speaker, is widely published and a JRF Practitioner Fellow at the London School of Economics and board member at the Royal Society, Concern Worldwide, Heywood Foundation and UK Research & Innovation, and International Advisory Council at King’s College, London.

Julia Sweeney: Julia is Director of European Programmes & Local Growth at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Julia is also the Social Mobility Champion in her department, representing and advocating for the social mobility network at a senior level. The work of the Social Mobility Champion is committed to ensuring that the department seeks out, welcomes, and retains a workforce that is as socio-economically diverse as possible; a highly diverse workforce is more likely to make better informed decisions and policy that is representative of the public we serve.

Robert Specterman-Green: Robert joined the Civil Service through the Fast Stream in 2001. He is currently Director for Media and Creative Industries in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Prior to moving to DCMS in January 2019, Robert worked in the Department for Work and Pensions: as Head of EU and International Affairs; then, as Principal Private Secretary to five different Secretaries of State; and, latterly, Director for Ministers, Governance and Strategy. Robert is the LGBT+ Champion for DCMS and is part of the network of senior Civil Service champions.

Agenda:

16:15 Panelists session

16:45 Q&A

17:30 Networking

18:45 Close