In Estonia this was solved by moving all the IT related people to organisations adjacent to the ministries and departments, so the lower paid civil servants wont have to be compared to the highly paid software developers and architects, etc. One colleague used to work as and architect of the justice ministry. He said the suit wearing civil servants with law degrees were pissed off at the homeless looking sweatshirt wearing software developers who were much higher paid. So the IT stuff was moved to another new department, but it still answers to the minister.
Similar stuff with other ministries. Interior ministry has their own it department, where they develop and maintain the population registry, criminal registries, and stuff that requires a security clearance
I’m not sure I buy that. That doesn’t explain what happens when the ministers budget gets slashed and as government policy there’s a push to outsource. It requires consistent commitment at a cultural level across governments. It works in Estonia because Estonia is a small enough country that there’s just no financial incentive for lobbying and it’s let to do its own thing.
This seems like a very practical solution lol.