Head of Resilience Planning

The Incident Response Team (IRT) is responsible for DCMS's crisis response planning and preparation. We work on a range of issues across the department and Whitehall - these are only growing as we take on responsibilities around cyber, telecoms, subsea cables and mis/dis-information following the recently Machinery of Government change.

We frequently engage with a range of cross-Whitehall resilience and response fora to represent DCMS interests. We deal with everything from immediate response to small crises through to planning for some of the most significant risks facing the nation.

The team has taken a greater role in resilience across the department in recent months, working with various teams to understand the impacts of different risks, identifying mitigations and developing response plans. This is an exciting time to join the team as the digital responsibilities coming to the department demand a new approach to resilience and updated governance.

Part of the Performance, Projects, Inquiry & Response division in the Project Delivery and Major Events directorate, we are a small team currently located across offices including London, Manchester and Cardiff.

Leading an exciting, varied and challenging portfolio of work to grow DCMS' resilience capability, you will building strong relationships across the department and Whitehall. You will develop our approach to resilience as we identify and explore acute risks facing the department. You will explore their impacts and offer frameworks for prioritising accordingly, allowing senior leaders to allocate limited resources effectively. You will then play a key role in building and testing the contingency plans that support resilience to these risks.

Ownership of different risk areas across the team will become clearer as the Machinery of Government changes bed in. You may be responsible for cohering plans across the department for responding to catastrophic impacts on our Critical National Infrastructure. Alternatively, you could be working with teams that are building our approach to resilience in the voluntary and community sector as we seek to maximise the impact of voluntary organisations in response to national crises and improve the UK's societal resilience.

Working with partners across Whitehall, you will maintain a clear understanding of wider government resilience policy, identifying where this will affect DCMS and preparing responses as necessary. You will represent DCMS' interests and policy goals at cross-government fora.

As part of the wider resilience and response team, you will be expected to take part in an out of hours duty rota. Overtime and/or TOIL will be available. You will also need to have, or be prepared to go through the process to acquire, Developed Vetting status.