There are some jobs you leave because the evening has ended.
The plates are cleared. The conversation has run its course. Someone is stacking chairs. It was good, perhaps even brilliant, but it’s clearly time to go home.
Leaving DWP has not felt like that.
The image I’ve had has been of walking out of a busy kitchen in the middle of service. Everything simmering away nicely on the stove. The ingredients good. The chefs knowing what they are doing. The smell promising. And yet, for reasons that are right and good and exciting, and of God, leaving before dinner was served.
Except that, last Monday, the metaphor shifted slightly.
Because some of the first plates are now leaving the pass.
The Prime Minister used his London Tech Week speech to announce a new AI jobs tool to help people out of work find the right jobs, create their CVs and get back into work. He was referring to the new experimental Work Hub, with its AI work assistant, CV builder, action plan, jobs board, and support for employers.
Some of this is new. Some of it is remaking things government has had around it for a long time. Some of it is very much at the start of its life. That’s why the experimental badge is important. It’s also why it’s brave. DWP has made something visible early enough for people to use it, test it, misunderstand it, criticise it and improve it.
So have a play, test it to the limits of your amusement, and maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised, maybe you’ll learn something actively helpful.
Still, given what is being imagined for the eventual menu, this is very much the hors d’oeuvres.
But I’m no longer in the kitchen.
I’ve taken off the apron, stepped into a different kind of work, and now find myself watching the first plates appear with a strange mixture of joy, pride and longing.
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