We asked how the Department intends to perform better than the market, which it needs to do if it is to overcome the lack of supply of digital specialists. The Department told us that it has focused heavily on its brand and giving people access to interesting and innovative areas of work to develop their skills.35 It found that emphasising this in its job adverts increased the number of applicants, in one case by up to 20 times.36 We were keen to understand how the number of applicants is changing. The Department’s written response stated the average number of applicants for Defence Digital roles increased from 3.6 in August 2022 to 6.1 in November 2022.37 As well as rebranding itself, the Department told us it must work in a very different way with UK industry. This would increasingly include working with both larger-scale high-tech organisations, and small and medium- sized entities (SMEs), which currently find it too expensive to work with the Department.38 The Department reported that it met its target to recruit 150 digital specialists over the last 18 months, but that it needs to recruit 300 more in the next 18 months.39 Performance delivering major digital programmes