Across the Ministry of Justice, thousands of colleagues are doing some of the hardest jobs in public service. My team is there to make sure technology helps them, not hinders them.
I am Steven Kelly, and I lead the Technology Adoption Group at the MoJ. Most of the people we support did not come into their careers expecting technology to be a big part of the job. Increasingly, it is. When the gap widens between the tools people are given and how ready they feel to use them, things can start to go wrong fast.
That is where we come in. We are there to help colleagues build the skills, confidence and support they need to use technology effectively in their everyday work.
Confidence before capability
There is a common assumption in digital change ‘give people the right tools, and everything else will follow’. In my experience, that is rarely how it works.
I saw this first hand earlier in my career, working in a prison. Two highly experienced colleagues, both exceptional at their jobs, were asked to move into slightly different roles. They were given all the tools they needed to do their job easier and more effectively. The work itself was familiar, but the tools were not. One role relied heavily on Word documents, the other on Excel. I thought this would be a simple adjustment and didn’t give it much consideration, however that small shift created such anxiety that both colleagues considered leaving. Not because they were incapable, but because they felt scared and worried about failing.
By sitting with them, breaking things down into small practical steps and creating a safe space to learn, their confidence grew. They stayed and best of all they succeeded. Years later, one of them stopped me in the street to thank me for recognising they needed that support. That experience has stayed with me ever since.
It reinforced something fundamental, even small digital changes can have a huge impact on people’s working lives and sometimes their personal lives too.
When AI enters the room
AI has energised conversations around adoption, to maximise the value of this new technology across the department and wider government. AI is recognised as a fantastic opportunity to increase productivity and efficiency, however it comes with some inherent challenges.
My team has focused on building digital confidence from the ground up, and that means starting with the basics of AI. The more people understand how it actually works, the better placed they are to use it safely and get genuine value from it.
That is why we start with the fundamentals: understanding data, where information comes from, and where the limitations are. When people know how a tool works, including when not to trust it, their confidence is built on something solid rather than just enthusiasm.
Bringing people with us
When working in a large organisation, technology can easily feel like something that is done to you rather than done with you. When change moves too fast, or without context, scepticism grows often based on very real past experiences where initiatives did not land well.
In my experience healthy scepticism is not a barrier, it is an asset. People who remember what did not work before helps us design better approaches now. Listening carefully to that feedback, without becoming defensive, has shaped how we approach adoption.
What colleagues told us they needed was something practical, accessible, and entirely on their own terms. So, we built BiteSize Sessions: short, self-directed learning on a range of applications. Over 52,000 people across the MoJ have self-registered for nearly 1,100 of them.
We understand that technology can be confusing and intimidating. To deliver a clearer, simplified understanding of technology and its use, we established a dedicated Adoption and Change Management team (ACM) as part of TAG. This team has strong ACM methodologies specifically to support technology, teams and projects to ensure their users are confident in using their tools.
Culture matters more than tools
Ultimately, technology adoption is about culture. It is about creating an environment where it is acceptable to say, “I don’t know how to do this yet.” That can be surprisingly hard.
When people feel heard, supported, and safe to ask for help without judgement, learning becomes continuous. Colleagues start sharing what works, building on each other’s ideas, and bringing improvements forward themselves. Technology stops being something to work around and starts becoming something that genuinely helps.
What success looks like
We do not measure success by how many tools are deployed.
It is the person who was dreading a new system and ends up showing a colleague how to use it. The one who finally asks the question they were too embarrassed to raise six months ago. Those are the moments that tell us something is working.
The best version of what we do is completely invisible. Technology fades into the background and people can get on with the complex, human work that brought them into justice in the first place.
Faster, simpler, more accessible justice services start with people. Every colleague who goes from uncertain to confident plays a part in making that a reality. I could not be prouder of my team, who are doing that vital work every single day.
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