Towards a Highway Code for Digital?
Estimated read time: 5 minutes
If AI-assisted delivery changes the physics of how we build, then the bigger question becomes how we govern that new pace safely. As we navigate this higher-speed world, perhaps it is helpful to think in terms of a living Highway Code for Digital – a shared set of rules, signals and expectations that everyone in public service abides by.
Everyone is a road user
The Highway Code doesn’t just apply to drivers; it covers pedestrians, cyclists, and passengers too. Everyone who uses the road system shares a baseline of understanding about how it works and what keeps it safe.
Digital should be the same.
And it has to be living. Not a laminated poster, but a maintained set of patterns, defaults and expectations that evolves as the terrain changes, like a design system or a platform. The point is not to freeze the world, or prescribe a curriculum. It’s to give people enough shared grammar to move quickly and enough curiosity to keep updating it.
Whether you’re a policy adviser drafting regulations, a director signing off a budget, or an engineer deploying a service, you are a road user in the digital state. You have duties and rights. You need to know the basics of how the system functions and how your actions affect others.
Not everyone needs to code, but everyone needs judgement
This is not about turning everyone into coders. It’s about setting a shared civic expectation: that all public servants understand the digital terrain they operate in well enough to make informed, responsible decisions. It’s the difference between being a passenger who knows the car moves, and someone who understands the road system well enough to act responsibly within it – whether you’re driving, cycling, or crossing at the lights.
That baseline literacy is what keeps the whole system coherent.
In the same way, every official should know what an API is, what “open data” implies, why accessibility and security cannot be bolted on later, how user research should influence policy, and what it means to depend on a model you don’t control – in cost, carbon, and sovereignty terms. These are not technical specialisms; they are the grammar of modern government.
From “digital as a function” to “digital as literacy”
At present, we still treat “digital” as a function – something done by those with a DDaT or GDaD job title. Even as we talk up AI and automation, the instinct is still to ringfence capability: set a target for “digital professionals”, launch an AI skills campaign, and hope for transformation to follow. But this risks entrenching the wrong mindset: that digital is specialist work, and everyone else is a passenger.
The reality we need is the opposite: not a tenth who are digital, but a hundred percent who are digitally fluent. We will always need deep specialists – engineers, architects, data people – but basic digital judgement can’t be delegated. If you’re setting policy, commissioning a supplier, approving spend, running operations, or managing risk, you’re already making digital choices whether you call them that or not. Digital is that kind of literacy: it shapes how policy is made, how services are delivered, how risk is managed, and how citizens experience the state.
The bottom line is that this is too important to be left to the experts.
A baseline already exists
The aim of a Highway Code for Digital is not to elevate digital specialists above others, but to normalise a baseline of competence for all. And lots of people have done the hard work to think about what that baseline needs to look like already. For example, the OECD in its Framework for Digital Talent and Skills in the Public Sector sets out the following five digital government user skills for every public servant:
- recognising the potential of digital for transformation
- understanding users and their needs
- collaborating openly for iterative delivery
- the trustworthy use of data and technology
- and data-driven government
None of this makes digital specialism redundant. Any road system needs people who build it, maintain it, and keep it safe – and digital transformation in the public sector is no different. We will need engineers, researchers, designers and architects to keep things functional, extend its reach, and help others to travel safely. But the Highway Code exists so it isn’t only experts who hold the system together. Its full value comes when everyone else can travel responsibly: respecting the rules, anticipating knock-on effects, and knowing when to call for help.
What the Highway Code actually does
So a vibe-coded future requires us to democratise digital understanding across the public service, not to mystify it. A Highway Code for Digital would codify a handful of basics: how to recognise a user need, how to think about service performance, how to spot a privacy or security risk, and how to work with multidisciplinary teams rather than throw things over walls. These expectations shouldn’t live in a slide deck; they should be built into induction, leadership, appraisal, and everyday decision-making.
And like any Highway Code, it would come with a few simple disciplines for life at pace: signal early, check your mirrors, keep your distance. In digital terms: communicate openly, consider knock-on effects, and don’t outrun research, accessibility, review, or operational readiness just because you can.
A Highway Code for Digital, then, is about shared literacy and shared accountability. It recognises the value of professional drivers and mechanics, but expects everyone else to know how to travel safely, to respect the rules, and to notice when something isn’t working as it should. It’s how we keep our footing as the machinery speeds up – ensuring that every public servant, from the most junior official to the most senior minister, can move with confidence, safely, and in the right direction.