How Bruce Prendergast is rewriting the rules of government tech through service-design thinking
By Dr. John Gøtze, Chair of the awards jury
HMRC is a finalist for IRMUK’s Outstanding Service Design Initiative Award 2025.
When Bruce Prendergast arrived at HM Revenue & Customs he found a technology, data and security powerhouse whose size rivalled that of many multinational corporations—but whose strategies ran on separate tracks.
“Each discipline had its own plan, its own language and its own queue of urgent requests,” Prendergast recalls. “The real problem was that the wider business couldn’t see which demands mattered most, so everything felt like top priority.”
Prendergast, now CDIO Operational Strategy Lead, had spent a career nudging large public-sector organisations toward transformation—from strategy roles at the Cabinet Office and Defra to operational change in policing. Yet HMRC offered a new challenge: apply the full service-design playbook to an internal strategy, not a public-facing service.
The brief: one mission for three giants
HMRC’s Chief Digital & Information Office straddles three distinct empires—technology, data and security. Each is critical to the department’s mandate to “collect the money that powers the UK’s public services.” Its consumers range from every working citizen to 67,000 internal staff.
But siloed strategies risked creating duplication and confusion. “The opportunity,” says Prendergast, “was to craft a single, living strategy that aligns every investment to consumer value—whether that customer is a taxpayer, a freight broker or a tax-compliance analyst sitting in an HMRC office.”
Research in the engine-room
Before a line of strategy was written, the team embarked on an ethnographic deep-dive. They conducted semi-structured interviews with performance heads, product owners and platform architects, observed leadership meetings and reviewed good-practice playbooks from industry and overseas tax agencies.
“Storytelling unlocked the candour we needed,” Prendergast explains. “People opened up about pain-points once they realised we were designing with them, not for them.”
To capture the complexity of HMRC’s ecosystem, the team sketched stakeholder maps, power-interest grids and cultural-pyramid fishbone diagrams. They tested early concepts through rapid ideation workshops, iterating prototypes with decision-makers who would later sign off the final strategy.
The service-design toolbox
Service- and systems-thinking guided every step. Tools such as POPIT (people, organisation, process, information, technology) helped surface hidden dependencies, while a balanced-scorecard lens ensured feasibility, resilience and security stayed in frame.
“We deliberately prototyped the purpose, mission, outcomes and strategic objectives in front of real users of the strategy—directors who would have to live with it,” says Prendergast. “Hearing ‘this won’t fly in my world’ at prototype stage is gold dust.”
A tailored VMOST (vision, mission, objectives, strategy, tactics) became the backbone. When an initial vision statement failed usability tests, the team scrapped it and tried again until it resonated. Parallel work on value streams and capability maturity flagged areas for future investment.
They even piloted AssistKD’s new “Service Definition Canvas” to teach the wider organisation what “service” and “value” mean in practice. Though the canvas did not appear in the final document, 40 internal practices now use it to shape their operating models—and supplier contracts are expected to follow.
From paper to practice
The finished strategy sets a single mission for CDIO: drive customer value through a modern, trusted and secure digital organisation. Objectives cascade through quarterly and annual planning cycles powered by OKRs. Multi-disciplinary teams now align to services rather than functions, echoing patterns seen in high-performing tech companies.
“For the first time, data and security squads can see exactly how their backlog items ladder up to HMRC’s purpose,” Prendergast notes with evident pride.
Leadership principles and metrics were rewritten to lock in the behavioural change. Early adopters across HMRC have begun mirroring the approach—evidence that the culture is taking hold beyond CDIO.
Keeping the strategy alive
A key lesson was to treat the document as a living product. Annual refreshes, quarterly prioritisation and nested sub-strategies are baked into the governance model.
“Strategy shouldn’t be a leather-bound relic,” argues Prendergast. “It must breathe, update and sometimes pivot just like any digital service.”
To safeguard momentum, a nascent “strategy practice”—itself designed with service-design methods—will steward future iterations and coach teams in co-creation techniques.
Trust as the critical success factor
Looking back, Prendergast identifies trust as the most decisive ingredient. He deployed an OSCAR template—Objectives, Scope, Constraints, Authority, Resources—alongside strategy design principles so contributors could see exactly how their insights shaped the final output. Visual artefacts replaced jargon to demystify the process.
“People lower their guard when they sense genuine empathy,” he reflects. “Once trust is in place, even the fiercest critics become co-designers.”
A template for government change?
HMRC’s strategy shift may read like inside-baseball, but its ripple effects could influence how the UK public sector approaches technology at scale. By fusing service-design discipline with traditional strategy craft, Prendergast has demonstrated a repeatable path from siloed plans to a shared mission grounded in customer value.
“The takeaway for any big organisation,” he says, “is that service design isn’t just for apps and websites. It’s for boardrooms deciding where to invest the next hundred million pounds.”
For the taxpayers—and public servants—relying on HMRC’s colossal tech estate, that investment now has a clearer, more coherent destination.
About the IRM UK Awards and the Conference
HMRC’s internal strategy transformation—driven by service-design thinking—is just one of the powerful stories being recognised at the IRM UK Enterprise & Business Architecture Conference Europe 2025, co-located with the Business Change & Transformation and Service Design conferences.
As a finalist for the Outstanding Service Design Initiative Award 2025, HMRC stands alongside UK Research & Innovation in showcasing how co-creation, capability mapping, and systems thinking can reshape strategy and culture at scale.
📅 Awards Presentation
Monday, 16 June 2025 | 🕘 09:50 – 10:05 AM
🏆 Finalists – Outstanding Service Design Initiative Award 2025
• UK Research & Innovation – Damien Hatton, Service Design Lead & Susan Soulsby, Funding Service Engagement Lead
• HMRC – Bruce Prendergast, CDIO Operational Strategy Lead
The IRM UK Awards celebrate organisations using design, data, and dialogue to drive real-world change—proving that service design isn’t just for products, but for the strategies and systems that support them.
Let’s honour the innovators bringing clarity, coherence, and purpose to public service transformation.
📄 Find Out More: Click Here
🎟️ Book Your Place: Click Here
