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Service owner

Find out what a service owner in government does and the skills you need to do the role at each level.

Last updated 30 May 2025 — See all updates

Contents

What a service owner does

A service owner is accountable for the quality, performance, benefits and outcomes of a service. They provide clear end-to-end direction, prioritisation, risk management and decision making for teams in line with department, policy and user outcomes.



In this role, you will:


  • define success and quality measures for a service, driving continuous improvement towards these measures
  • inform and influence stakeholders, getting consensus that enables work to progress
  • ensure the delivery of change that realises the outcomes and benefits of your service

Service owner role levels

There is one service owner role level.

The typical responsibilities and skills for this role level are described below. You can use this to identify the skills you need to progress in your career, or simply to learn more about each role in the Government Digital and Data profession.

1. Service owner

A service owner is an accountable leader that brings together a multidisciplinary team to ensure delivery of a quality service. They advocate for their service and teams, and develop an open and trust-based culture.


At this role level, you will:


  • ensure a strategy is in place that delivers the intended vision, outcomes and benefits
  • prioritise areas of development, balancing user needs, business requirements and policy
  • ensure appropriate governance and assurance is in place
  • ensure appropriate funding is in place
  • create the culture and environment for the team to do their best work

This role level is often performed at the Civil Service job grade of:

  • G7 (Grade 7)
  • G6 (Grade 6)
Skill Description

Adapting to delivery methodologies

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • set and iterate standards for working within different delivery methodologies
  • actively promote collaboration and agreement to ensure the team delivers value at the right time
  • experiment with new and innovative ways of working to enhance delivery outcomes
  • research new and evolving delivery methodologies and identify how your role would work within them

Applying user-centred insights

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • advocate for a range of effective research approaches across the organisation
  • coach others in making decisions that meet user needs across a range of channels
  • advocate for continuous use of user insights in teams
  • use user insights to make strategic decisions to provide the best user experience

Financial ownership

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • ensure a business case is in place that provides sustainable funding
  • identify measurable benefits that represent good value for money
  • allocate money and make spending decisions across competing priorities
  • enhance and own relationships with suppliers to increase quality and deliver good value outcomes
  • act as an escalation point and work with stakeholders to manage financial and commercial risk

Governance and assurance

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • ensure appropriate and proportionate governance and assurance is in place and is continuously improved, aligned to organisational and government needs
  • guide teams through governance and assurance processes, such as service assessments, to ensure standards are met
  • share the team's governance and assurance processes so stakeholders trust them to deliver value in a sustainable way

Leading performance and benefits

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • ensure appropriate measures are in place to deliver valuable outcomes to users and agreed business benefits
  • ensure metrics are used to monitor, manage and prioritise delivery and inform decision making
  • demonstrate the value of the service and build understanding with stakeholders by ensuring effective data and insights are shared

Life cycle management

Level: practitioner

Practitioner is the third of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • work and consult with the right people at the right time to move through the life cycle and deliver value
  • use evidence to decide when a team should continue, change direction or stop
  • identify tools and techniques required at different phases of the life cycle
  • guide colleagues and stakeholders through different phases of the life cycle

Operational management

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • ensure a scalable operating model is in place to provide a resilient, high quality service
  • coordinate teams from operations, policy, digital and delivery to operate and iterate a service
  • ensure teams understand the importance of efficient service operations
  • identify and overcome operational constraints
  • act as the escalation point for major operational issues

Stakeholder relationship management

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • direct the stakeholder relationship strategy for your teams
  • ensure stakeholder's objectives are set and support teams to meet them
  • influence and negotiate with senior stakeholders to resolve issues and enable progress

Strategic ownership

Level: expert

Expert is the fourth of 4 ascending skill levels

You can:

  • support and coach others in creating and implementing a successful long-term strategy and tactical approach that others agree with
  • influence and persuade stakeholders to support delivery of the strategy
  • support with strategic decision making
  • ensure strategic alignment across the organisation
Role Shared skills
Product manager

Stakeholder relationship management

Strategic ownership

Life cycle management

Applying user-centred insights
Business analyst

Stakeholder relationship management

Adapting to delivery methodologies
Digital portfolio manager

Governance and assurance

Stakeholder relationship management
Business architect

Stakeholder relationship management
Content strategist

Stakeholder relationship management

Updates

Published 7 January 2020

Last updated 30 May 2025

30 May 2025

The service owner has been fully updated. This includes a new role description and role level description.

The role has been refreshed with updated skills. The role now includes the new skills 'adapting to delivery methodologies’, ‘governance and assurance’, and ‘leading performance and benefits’ and the updated skills ‘financial ownership’ and ‘operational management’.

These skills have been removed from the role: 'agile working', ‘Government Digital and Data perspective’, ‘problem management’ and ‘product ownership’.

28 February 2025

The skill 'life cycle perspective' has been renamed 'life cycle management'. This is to better reflect the requirements of the skill and for consistency across the framework.

The skill 'strategic ownership' has been updated. The level descriptions were edited to improve clarity and to better meet the definitions for each level.

Service owner now includes the skill 'applying user insights'.

The skill 'user focus' has been removed from the service owner role.

30 November 2024

The skill 'problem management' has been updated to improve clarity and ensure consistency across the framework, allowing it be shared with roles previously using the skill 'problem resolution (data). No change was made to the meaning of skill level descriptions.

1 December 2023

The 'DDaT perspective' skill was renamed 'Government Digital and Data perspective' across the framework. This follows the launch of the new Government Digital and Data brand that replaces DDaT.

30 August 2022

Service owner now includes the ‘DDaT perspective’ skill, at practitioner level.

7 January 2020

First published.