About the job

Job summary

About the Government Legal Department

The Government Legal Department is the largest provider of legal services across government, working on high profile matters. Our work includes:

Developing and drafting legislation
Providing legal advice on policies
Securing our economic and trade relationships
Ensuring value from commercial contracts worth billions of pounds
Providing the Civil Service’s employment law advice

GLD is a non-ministerial government department, sponsored by the Attorney General. We are headed by the Treasury Solicitor and employ nearly 3000 people, including over 2000 legal professionals. We provide specialist legal services including Litigation, Employment and Commercial Law as well as advising most Government Departments on the policies and services they deliver.

GLD also depends on a range of vital corporate services. These are essential to the smooth and efficient running of the Department and provide the foundation to enable GLD to deliver outstanding legal services. Our corporate functions include Strategy, HR, Finance, Digital, Data and Technology, Communications, Security, Commercial and Project delivery. 

Our vision is to be an outstanding legal organisation and a brilliant place to work where everyone can thrive and fulfil their potential. 

Job description

About the Knowledge & Innovation Group

The work of the Knowledge & Innovation (K&I) Group is core to all our legal work in GLD.

Zane Denton, our Director of Knowledge, leads this group of lawyers, specialists, and administrators whose role is to advance GLD’s Knowledge, Capability and Innovation Strategy (KCI Strategy), which supports all GLD’s broader strategic outcomes and is particularly aligned with the ‘capability’ and ‘professionalise’ outcomes.

The K&I Group’s key areas of responsibility are:

• legal practice innovation and GLD’s broader grass-roots innovation activities.
• legal excellence:
• knowledge development and sharing in all its forms, including via our knowledge systems, both within and across GLD Divisions, with the wider Government Legal Profession (GLP), and with clients.
• legal learning (in partnership with our People Development Team (PDT) based in HR); and
• legal information and library services (including the subscription services (Lexis, etc) we manage on behalf of GLD and the GLP. 

These areas of focus require K&I Group colleagues to be very collaborative and outward looking facilitating and advising communities of practice and on local legal Division activity, as well as driving central initiatives; actively engaging with GLP colleagues; and pro-actively collaborating with the broader legal sector, government, and academia.

The Role

Reporting to a Knowledge Systems Specialist, the role is to support the Knowledge Systems Team in maintaining knowledge systems and associated learning and collaboration systems for GLD lawyers and for clients and other colleagues across government, as well as supporting the ongoing curation of content.

The role will offer the successful candidate an interesting opportunity to develop their career, working with colleagues in a hybrid way (combining home working with in-office learning and collaboration) to manage our existing knowledge systems on a day to day basis and periodically contribute to projects that investigate enhancements to those systems and assist in the introduction of new technologies as GLD shapes the future knowledge and learning systems roadmap.

The post holder will be expected to have the interpersonal skills to work as part of a team and to interact with departmental colleagues and other stakeholders at all grades. They will be working in a fast-paced environment and will be expected to be well organised, to prioritise their work effectively to meet deadlines and to be committed to delivering an excellent service to their colleagues. All round IT proficiency and some specialist technology expertise will be needed.

Key responsibilities:

1. Assisting with the business-side management of eKM, LION, gld.digital, Lawmaker and other knowledge and learning platforms. This includes providing first line user support by daily management of the mailboxes.
2. Ensuring our planner is kept up to date, alongside other work management tools such as JIRA.
3. Supporting team administration, such as arranging meetings, drafting agendas and minutes and ensuring actions are followed up.
4. Building relationships with our stakeholders – DDaT, legal teams, K&I group, external technology and service providers.
5. Understanding our access policies and assisting with the management of access to our systems.
6. Providing content owner support by creating, editing and uploading content.
7. Performing review and audit activities of our systems and content, implementing changes where needed
8. Supporting specific content projects e.g. the creation of pages for authorised users only to share sensitive information; onboarding of new teams or people.
9. Arranging and assisting with training for our knowledge and learning systems, including content editing and general use of the systems and providing ongoing support as needed.
10. Working with the K&I communications team to keep information about our knowledge systems fresh (e.g. on eKM home page, LION, Eagle) and sharing information about engagement activities with our stakeholders.
11. Supporting the reporting process across all our knowledge systems using technical reporting tools and other data management skills.
12. Willing to undertake relevant training related to the role.
13. Provide support to broader K&I projects as required.

Person specification

Behaviours

Below are details of the Success Profiles that make up this role. 
You will be expected to provide evidence to show how you meet the criteria at interview and/or selection stage.
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

Managing a quality service

• Work with customers to understand their needs and expectations.
• Keep colleagues and stakeholders fully informed of plans, possibilities and progress.
• Identify common problems that affect service, report them and find possible solutions.

Changing and Improving

• Regularly review own and team’s work and take the initiative to suggest ideas to make improvements.
• Help others to understand changes and the reasons they are being put in place.
• Look for ways to use technology to achieve efficient and effective results.
• Consider accessibility needs of the diverse range of end users.
  

Communicating and Influencing 

• Communicate clearly and concisely both orally and in writing.
• Interact with others in an enthusiastic way.
• Respond constructively and objectively to comments and questions.
• Interact with others in an enthusiastic way. 
• Express ideas clearly and with respect for others.
• Listen to and value different ideas, views and ways of working.
• Handle challenging conversations with confidence and sensitivity.

Delivering at pace

• Identify who and what is required to ensure success, set clear goals and areas of responsibility and continually assess workloads considering individual needs.
• Follow relevant policies, procedures and legislation to complete your work.
• Ensure that colleagues are supported where tasks are challenging.
• Have a positive and focused attitude to achieving outcomes, despite any setbacks.
• Regularly check performance against objectives, making suggestions for improvement or taking corrective action where necessary.

Experience

Essential criteria – ability and strengths

• Experienced with knowledge systems in an IT or knowledge management role.
• Proficient in the use of the Microsoft Office 365 suite and applications such as MS Teams, SharePoint, Planner, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and One Note.
• Enjoy seeking out new opportunities to complete tasks more efficiently and adding value to processes, working with others to develop and deliver shared goals.
• Highly motivated, able to work independently, exercise judgement and demonstrate a practical approach to problem solving.
• Takes pride in providing a high-quality service, with a keen eye for detail and delivering high quality work at pace.
• Ability to deliver successfully in a pressurised environment.
• Ability to work as part of an effective team on ad-hoc tasks and projects.
• Excellent communication skills, both oral and written.
• Excellent management of stakeholder expectations, including the ability to explain technical information in a meaningful way, whilst providing a high level of customer service.
• Highly organised with good time management skills and the ability to organise and prioritise workloads to maximise your own productivity.

Desirable criteria:

• Experience using analytics and data reporting tools such as Microsoft Fabric, Google Analytics, Motamo
• Experience of Microsoft Dynamics, Sitecore and HTML.
• Ability to manage, display and analyse large data sets
• Experience of using JIRA or other Agile work management tools

Civil Service Code

The Civil Service Code sets out the standards of behaviour expected of you and other civil servants. These are based on the core values which are set out in legislation. As a civil servant, you are expected to carry out your role with dedication and a commitment to the Civil Service and its core values of:

• ‘integrity’ is putting the obligations of public service above your own personal interests
• ‘honesty’ is being truthful and open
• 'objectivity’ is basing your advice and decisions on rigorous analysis of the evidence
• ‘impartiality’ is acting solely according to the merits of the case and serving equally well governments of different political persuasions

These core values support good government and ensures the achievement of the highest possible standards in all that the Civil Service does.

For further information about Civil Service recruitment processes and Success profiles, please visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/success-profiles

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £26,733, Government Legal Department contributes £7,217 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Strengths and Experience.

Application

Applicants must apply online via CS Jobs. Interested candidates are asked to submit:

• A CV which will be submitted online to be assessed and scored.
• A 500 word statement of suitability focusing on experience of the essential criteria, your motivation and your suitability for the role.
• 250 word statement demonstrating the below behaviour following the success profiles format:

Managing a quality Service (Lead Behaviour)

Your application should demonstrate how you meet the above essential criteria for the post, with relevant examples. It will not be sufficient to reiterate the criteria; you are expected to illustrate how you have met the requirements

Your application will be sifted by a GLD panel. Should we have a large number of applications we can assess on the lead behaviour and CV where otherwise it will be a full sift.

Selection Process

After the closing date, the appointing panel shall assess candidates’ suitability for the role based on evidence provided in their application against the behaviours and experience outlined in the person specification.

Interview

Should you be successful in being invited to interview, you will be assessed on your performance in all essential criteria as listed in the Person Specification, alongside scenario based exercises and strength-based questions. Candidates invited to interview will be given further information on the day and time to prepare.

• Behaviour: Managing a quality service (Lead behaviour)
• Behaviour: Changing and improving
• Behaviour: Communicating and influencing
• Behaviour: Delivering at pace
• Experience

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview.

Interviews will take place remotely via video conference, full details of the interview format will be provided to shortlisted candidates prior to interview.] The timeline later in this pack indicates the date by which decisions are expected to be made, and all shortlisted candidates will be advised of the outcome as soon as possible thereafter.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.