Abstract
This case study explores the evolution of the UK's Government Digital Service (GDS) since its inception in 2011. GDS is seen by many as the gold standard digital agency, copied in multiple instances and praised for its achievements. Drawing on expert interviews with former and current GDS employees, we look at the evolution of GDS through three distinct phases. We argue that at the core of GDS foundation is a coherent and paradigmatic approach to government digital transformation. GDS can be viewed as a conscious effort to create new capabilities within government through a new organisation that questioned dominant routines in government IT and generated new approaches, frameworks, and skills to do digital transformation differently. These new routines have, over time, become part of the central government machinery. GDS has successfully professionalised these new routines beyond its own organisational boundaries. However, in doing so, GDS has itself become a distinctly different organisation that now faces the challenge of how to rejuvenate its original dynamism.
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