Growing Government Science and Engineering (GSE) talent

Supporting diverse STEM talent from early career to become highly influential and effective scientists and engineers in government.

The Government Science & Engineering (GSE) profession has been supporting new joiners to the civil service through the Science & Engineering Fast Stream (SEFS) Programme. The programme has grown steadily across the years starting with a small cohort of 2 in 2014 to a current cohort of 60 with another 47 joining the scheme in October 2021.

In our revamped GSE Strategy, launching in July 2021, the profession is looking to maintain the growth of the scheme to ensure every aspect of government is supported by a diverse range of people and skills. We recognise how important it is to have science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills in government and our profession and this strategy commits to increasing and supporting diverse STEM talent from early career to become highly influential and effective scientists and engineers in government.

The revised GSE Strategy outlines a commitment to increase the promotion of STEM apprenticeships in departments and increase STEM outreach to diversify our early career talent pools through an annual STEM challenge event and the Science and Technology Network.

The strategy outlines our ambition to identify talented people and increase their opportunities for senior leadership roles by communicating and embedding GSE talent offers in departments and put career planning in place within departments so GSE members can apply for senior roles. We want to do this in order to develop confident science and engineering leaders that use their expertise to influence policy making decisions and who lead others by developing bespoke leadership learning offers. This will include established mentorship and coaching programmes.