Digital Portfolio Planner

Job summary

Across government, effective portfolio planning is critical to ensuring that digital investments deliver maximum value. As organisations manage increasingly complex portfolios of change, the ability to plan and schedule effectively, coordinate resources and maintain a clear picture of delivery is essential. Ofgem plays a vital role in the UK’s energy system, protecting consumers and enabling a more secure, fair and sustainable energy future, and strong portfolio planning is central to ensuring that the needs, and expectations of the business are met in-line with agreed priorities.

Ofgem is on an ambitious transformation journey. To support this mission the Digital, Data and Security Services (DDSS) directorate, is delivering a wide-ranging portfolio of digital, data and AI initiatives. As demand continues to grow, ensuring that this portfolio is well-structured, achievable and aligned to strategic priorities is key to successful delivery.

As a Digital Portfolio Planner, you will have unique opportunity to help us effectively plan and deliver this important portfolio of work, ensuring that priorities, resources and schedules are aligned to maximise value and delivery strategic outcomes. You will work at the heart of portfolio decision-making, with the DDSS Lead Team, Portfolio Office, Digital Delivery, Demand, and Resource Teams to ensure projects are planned pragmatically. Your work will provide the transparency and coordination needed to help projects succeed and the insights to support senior management in making meaningful decisions.

This is a highly collaborative role, offering exposure across a broad range of digital initiatives and contact with a broad range of stakeholders. You will combine analytical skills with engagement skills to ensure that portfolio plans are dynamic, realistic and aligned with business priorities in a fast-paced environment.

Job description

You will be responsible for:

• Creating, publishing and maintaining the Digital Portfolio Plan ensuring it provides a clear, accurate and up-to-date view of in-flight and planned initiatives, key milestones, dependencies and alignment with the commitments of the Ofgem Digital Strategy.
• Owning, maintaining and continuously improving the Digital Portfolio Master, ensuring timely and high-quality portfolio data is available to support planning, prioritisation, reporting and decision-making.
• Ensuring change requests are appropriately assessed, governed and recorded through the Change Request Process and Master Change Log. Analysing the impact of proposed changes to scope, schedule, cost, delivery and interdependencies.
• Supporting effective Portfolio Governance, assisting with preparation for stage gate reviews, preparing portfolio information and helping facilitate the Change Board and the Portfolio Board meetings.
• Monitoring portfolio delivery performance, identifying risks, dependencies, scheduling conflicts and opportunities to improve planning, sequencing and delivery.
• Working closely with the Digital Portfolio Analyst, Digital Delivery Managers, Project Support Officers and Resource Management colleagues to support capacity planning and scheduling.
• Producing clear portfolio reporting and planning insights and visualisations, enabling stakeholders to understand delivery impacts, assess trade-offs and make informed decisions.
• Championing portfolio management and planning best practice, supporting continuous improvement of processes, tools, reporting and ways of working across the function.

We are looking for:

A proactive, organised and analytical professional who enjoys bringing structure, clarity and insight to complex delivery environments. You will be comfortable working with stakeholders at all levels, balancing competing priorities and using data to support effective planning and decision-making.

You may come from a PMO, project delivery or planning background, but you will demonstrate:

• Experience working within a Portfolio, Programme or Project Office environment, supporting the planning and delivery of digital or technology-enabled change.
• Experience developing and maintaining portfolio plans, integrated schedules, or multi-project roadmaps, including milestones, dependencies, and delivery constraints.
• Experience supporting portfolio governance, reporting and change control processes, with strong attention to detail and a focus on data quality and accuracy.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to interpret complex information, and translate data into meaningful insights and recommendations.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with confidence to work collaboratively across delivery teams, business stakeholders and senior leaders.

Experience in government or regulated environments, together with knowledge of programme or project delivery frameworks such as MSP or PRINCE2, would be advantageous.

This is an opportunity to play a key role in ensuring that Ofgem’s digital transformation is effectively planned and delivered. You will help shape how the organisation manages its portfolio of change, priorities are met and delivery remains on track in a complex and evolving environment.

Person specification

Essential Criteria

• Proven Experience working in a Portfolio, Programme or Project Office environment with a significant number of concurrent Digital projects (Lead Criteria).
• Proven experience developing, producing and maintaining project schedules considering dependencies, resource requirements and constraints to optimise delivery (Lead Criteria).
• Experience defining the high-level components of digital projects to create outline plans, including estimating scope, deliverables, time scales, resource requirements and budgets.
• Ability to effectively leverage digital tools and data analytics for better portfolio visibility and decision-making.

Desirable Criteria

• Knowledge or experience of Project Delivery, either gained in a Project Management or Delivery Management role, or gained via qualification in Managing Successful Projects (MSP) or equivalent.
• Experience identifying and monitoring portfolio-level risks and issues, escalating where needed to seek resolution or agree replanning.
• Experience in working within a PMO or Project Delivery environment in a Government context.

#LI-DNI

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Managing a Quality Service
• Delivering at Pace

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £35,232, OFGEM contributes £10,206 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).Ofgem can offer you a comprehensive and competitive benefits package which includes; 30 days annual leave after 2 years; Excellent training and development opportunities; The opportunity to join the generous Civil Service pension which also includes a valuable range of benefits; hybrid working (currently 1 day a week in the office but this is kept under review), flexible working hours and family friendly policies. Plus lots of other benefits including clean and bright offices based centrally, engaged networks and teams and an opportunity to contribute to our ambitious and important targets of establishing a Net Zero energy system by 2050. This exciting blend of professional challenge and personal reward identifies career opportunities at Ofgem as something to get excited about.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

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

When you press the ‘Apply now’ button, you will be asked to complete personal details (not seen by the sift panel), your career history and qualifications.

You will then be asked to provide a 1250 word ‘personal statement’ evidencing how you meet the essential and desirable skills and capabilities listed in the role profile. Please ensure you demonstrate clearly, within your supporting statement, how you meet each of the criteria listed in the role profile. In the event of receiving a large number of applications, an initial sift may take place on just the lead criteria indicated in the essential criteria.

The personal information we have collected from you will be shared with Cifas who will use it to prevent fraud, other unlawful or dishonest conduct, malpractice, and other seriously improper conduct. If any of these are detected, you could be refused certain services or employment. Your personal information will also be used to verify your identity. Further details of how your information will be used by us and Cifas, and your data protection rights, can be found by [https://www.cifas.org.uk/fpn].

At Ofgem, we expect our staff to carry out their roles with honesty, fairness and openness. They should follow the Civil Service code and be free from any influence or bias. We are committed to making sure interests are recognised, declared and managed appropriately so that we can fulfil our duties as an energy regulator. Our Conflicts of Interest policy outlines the types of interests Ofgem staff must declare before onboarding, and the rules they must follow throughout employment so that we can clearly demonstrate that our decisions are not influenced by private interests.

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

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a basic (or equivalent) 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

Please note this Post is NOT regulated by the Civil Service Commission.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.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : Amber Shankland
• Email : amber.shankland@ofgem.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : recruitment@ofgem.gov.uk

Further information

Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles. You have the right to complain if you feel there has been a breach of these Recruitment Principles.

In the first instance, you should raise the matter directly via recruitment@ofgem.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response, you may bring your complaint to the Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission, please visit their website.

Attachments

DDSS Role Profile, Digital Portfolio Planner Opens in new window (pdf, 153kB)DDSS Candidate Pack, Digital Portfolio Planner Opens in new window (pdf, 706kB)Terms and Conditions Opens in new window (pdf, 335kB)