Given that in academic life Professor John Beddington was (and is) a respected population biologist, it’s perhaps appropriate that one of his main priorities upon becoming the government’s chief scientific adviser was to accurately ascertain the size of the science and engineering profession inside government.

Leading the science and engineering profession is just one of the roles included in the post Beddington inherited from Sir David King in January 2008 – but when he joined the government, he found that nobody knew the profession’s size and scope. His small team, based in the Government Office for Science, now estimates there are 18,000 civil servants who are either scientists or engineers. However, as Beddington himself said in his first annual report on the profession, published earlier this year: “This may be an encouraging proportion of the civil service, [but] questions remain around how much the profession is recognised and its impact on policymaking and delivery.”

One way of overcoming that hurdle, Beddington tells me, is through the development of Government Science and Engineering (GSE), a dedicated community of – at last count – 2,300 scientists and engineers, which he set up a few months after taking up his post.

“I started in June 2008, and we’ve got members from central departments, agencies, non-departmental bodies,” Beddington explains – but he acknowledges that the membership is still a relatively small proportion of the science-orientated people working in government. “Currently my plan is to get it up to 3,000 and we are well on track to do that by March next year. Really, though, I would like to have the whole science and engineering profession signed up to it so that we know who they are,” he says. “Then we can produce better internet news, advertise jobs and use the community to find out about skills levels.”

The scientists and engineers who have taken the trouble to sign up to the GSE community are getting to know each other through regular conferences, which Beddington is keen to cite as a useful tool for both learning and networking. “The first annual conference was in January 2009, and the feedback from that was very strong,” he says. The scientists certainly attracted a good calibre of speaker, with cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell addressing delegates, along with science minister Lord Drayson and popular physicist (and former pop star) Brian Cox. But the head of profession stresses that the increasing number of government science conferences have a serious purpose. “We had one in July on planning for uncertainty, and another in October. That was called ‘Getting your Message Across’, which sounds like a trendy title but it’s about how you communicate science and engineering”.

Also important is maintaining – and indeed building – the skills of all those who fall within the science and engineering profession. Beddington chairs the science and engineering heads of profession group, made up of profession heads from the departments that employ significant numbers of scientists and engineers. Skills and career development are the main priorities of this group, Beddington says, especially in the case of scientists and engineers who leave technical, specialised jobs – inside or outside government – for mainstream policy jobs. “Keeping up those professional skills when scientists and engineers move into government, and particularly policy, can be problematic,” he explains.

Overcoming that problem will require closer links between academia and government scientists, including making it easier for the latter to spend periods honing skills in universities and research facilities. “It’s a work in progress, but the aim is to try and get fluidity between academics and scientists and engineers in government,” he says. Does the chief scientific adviser want more university-based scientists to enter the civil service? “Like me? Very much!” says the longtime professor at Imperial College London. Pointing to one recent project in which outside academics were drafted in to assist with a project on the detection of trafficked nuclear material, Beddington says: “I certainly feel that we could use more scientists and engineers coming into government and feeling that this is an attractive career. There are certainly some exciting things to deal with – from climate change to new nuclear build.”

As well as encouraging more outside academics into government, Beddington says civil servants with science backgrounds are increasingly embedded in policy teams: “It used to be said that people [within government] would deny having a [scientific] PhD because they thought it would damage their career prospects. That might have been true years ago, but it’s [now] a myth,” he says. Though he says that having scientists in policy teams is a “win-win situation”, he is wary of prescribing a government-wide drive for scientists to enter policy teams. “You can’t legislate for that; it all depends on departments’ needs.”

Who are they? And what do they do?

Who are they?
About 18,000 scientists and engineers working across government departments and agencies, in a wide variety of roles. Of this number, around 2,300 have signed up to Government Science and Engineering (GSE), the formal civil service community. 

What do they do?
A wide range of science- and engineering-based roles, from laboratory-based research and on-site engineering projects to interpreting science for policy and delivery applications inside central departments. The profession also includes officials with a science or engineering background not working in a technical field, but still providing advice “which relies to some degree on their analytical experience”, according to the profession’s web page.

Number crunching

An estimated 18,000 scientists and engineers work across government departments and agencies
2,300 officials have joined Government Science and Engineering (GSE), the formal network
The original Scientific Civil Service group was set up in 1945, and abolished after the Fulton report in 1968
Two thirds of government scientists and engineers work for the Ministry of Defence (MoD)
137 graduates were hired by the MoD’s engineering and science training scheme in 2009
15 departmental science leaders comprise the heads of profession network
52 per cent of the profession are scientists, 36 per cent are engineers and 12 per cent are both, according to a 2009 survey
£8m annual budget of the Government Office for Science, supporting the chief scientific adviser
20 January 2009 was the date of the first ever GSE annual conference