Learn about the digital, data and technology roles in government, and the skills you need to do them.
Each role level (such as junior business analyst or senior business analyst) in this framework includes a list of required skills. Each skill is assigned one of 4 skill levels, reflecting the required proficiency: awareness, working, practitioner or expert.
As you progress from one role level to the next, the proficiency required for each skill will typically increase (other than in instances where leadership positions no longer require day-to-day use of the skill).
Chief digital and data roles (such as chief technology officer or chief data officer) do not have role levels and so their skills do not have levels. Instead, each skill lists digital and data requirements together with examples of leadership needed to be effective in a Senior Civil Service role.
30 November 2024
Graphic designer has updated skills.
Interaction designer has updated skills.
Service designer has updated skills.
The skills 'design communication', 'designing for everyone', 'designing strategically', 'designing together', 'evidence-based design', 'iterative design', and 'leading design' have been added to the 'Skills A to Z' page.
The skills 'coding and scripting (infrastructure engineer)', 'communication', 'community collaboration (front-end developer)', 'consultancy (business analysis)', 'data standards (data architect)', 'development process optimisation (management)', 'IT infrastructure (network architect)', 'problem resolution (data)', and 'systems integration (network architect)' have been merged with similar skills and removed from the 'Skills A to Z' page.
The skills 'digital perspective', 'evidence-and-context-based design', 'prototyping in code', 'tools and software' have been removed from 'Skills A to Z' page as they are no longer required by any role.
Updated the content of 20 skills to improve accuracy, clarity and consistency with the rest of the framework: 'applied social sciences, (previously applied knowledge of social sciences)', 'asset and configuration management', 'availability and capacity management', 'coding and scripting', 'community collaboration', 'consultancy', 'cyber incident management (previously 'cyber incident strategy and management)', 'data engineering (previously data engineering and manipulation)', 'data standards', 'data visualisation', 'development process optimisation', 'information security', 'IT infrastructure', 'modern development standards (previously modern standards approach)', 'problem management', 'security technology', 'service management framework knowledge', 'IT service reporting (previously 'service reporting), 'service support', 'systems integration'.
22 October 2024
Data governance manager has had an error corrected in the indicative job grade displayed for the 'data governance manager' role level.
User researcher has had an error corrected in the skills required for the 'senior user researcher' role level.
7 October 2024
Chief data officer was added to the chief digital and data role group.
Chief information security officer was added to the chief digital and data role group
Chief technology officer was added to the chief digital and data role group.
Skills for Senior Civil Service roles have been added to the 'Skills A to Z' page.
30 August 2024
Analytics engineer was added to the data role group.
Machine learning engineer was added to the data role group.
User researcher has updated skills.
The skills 'agile research practices', 'research management, leadership and assurance' and 'user-centred practice and advocacy' have been added to the 'skills A to Z' page.
The skills 'society and technology', 'strategic insight' and 'user-centred and agile practices' have been removed from the 'skills A to Z' page.
Updated the content of 13 skills to improve clarity and consistency with the rest of the framework: 'business modelling', 'business process improvement', 'business process testing', 'change management', 'continuity management', 'customer service management', 'data maturity', 'leadership and guidance (frontend developer)', 'metadata management', 'stakeholder relationship management', 'user research methods', 'web performance optimisation'.
31 May 2024
Enterprise architect has updated skills.
Solution architect has updated skills.
Technical architect has updated skills.
The skills 'making architectural decisions', 'strategy design' and 'technical design throughout the life cycle' have been added to the 'skills A to Z' page. The 'enterprise and business architecture' skill has been renamed 'enterprise architecture'. The proficiency level descriptions for 'problem definition and shaping' and 'enterprise architecture' have been updated.
The skills 'communicating between the technical and non-technical (technical architect)', 'modern standards approach (frontend developer), 'problem management (data architect)', 'strategy', 'turning business problems into technical design' and 'understanding the whole context' have been removed from the 'skills A to Z' page.
Indicative job grades for 17 roles have been updated according to the latest data on the most common grades for these roles across government.
28 February 2024
Digital portfolio manager was added to the product and delivery role group.
Solution architect was added to the architecture role group.
The skills 'architecture communication' and 'architect for the whole context' have been added to the 'Skills A to Z' page.
1 December 2023
Name of framework changed to ‘Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework’. References to ‘DDaT’ changed to ‘Government Digital and Data' across all pages. Name of skill 'DDaT perspective' changed to 'Government Digital and Data perspective'.
28 November 2023
Business architect was added to the architecture role group. The new skill 'business architecture' was added to the 'Skills A to Z' page.
31 July 2023
The technical role group was removed. The roles within it were moved into other role groups or removed from the DDaT Profession Capability Framework.
A new software development role group was added.
Development operations (DevOps) engineer was moved to the new software development role group.
Frontend developer was moved to the new software development role group.
Software developer was moved to the new software development role group.
Infrastructure engineer was moved to the IT operations role group.
Specialist infrastructure engineer was removed from the DDaT Profession Capability Framework.
Technical specialist architect was removed from the DDaT Profession Capability Framework.
A new architecture role group was added.
Data architect was moved to the new architecture role group.
Enterprise architect was moved to the new architecture role group.
Network architect was moved to the new architecture role group.
Security architect was moved to the new architecture role group.
Technical architect was moved to the new architecture role group.
31 March 2023
Data governance manager was added to the data role group.
Data architect was updated and moved from the technical to the data role group.
30 August 2022
Accessibility specialist was added to the user-centred design role group.
Data ethicist was added to the data role group.
Enterprise architect was added to the technical role group.
Business analyst has been fully refreshed.
Data scientist has been fully refreshed.
3 December 2020
Frontend developer was added to the technical role group.
7 January 2020
The content in the Digital, Data and Technology Profession Capability Framework has been restructured to make it easier to access the role descriptions and the skills associated with individual roles. Each job role is now presented on one page, including all the levels and the skills.
28 December 2018
Removed information about Civil Service Competencies as these will no longer be used after 6 January 2019.
23 March 2017
The Digital, Data and Technology Profession Capability Framework was first published.