Digital Service Manager, mySociety- Fully Remote

mySociety is a small, purposeful charity which uses digital tools to help people to participate more fully in democracy, make governments and society more transparent and help people work together to address societal challenges. We’re looking for a Digital Service Manager who has experience managing complex, high-volume digital services. The ideal candidate will have a high level of understanding of the GDPR act, media law, moderating online communities and a passion for Freedom of Information. 

You’ll be working as part of a nimble, digital-first, and entirely remote team - you can work from anywhere in the UK! You will have the opportunity to meet your colleagues face to face at our quarterly in person team meetings.

The Service Manager is responsible for the day to day running and management of  mySociety's online services, including WhatDoTheyKnow, FixMyStreet, TheyWorkForYou and WriteToThem. WhatDoTheyKnow, as our biggest transactional service, represents the vast majority of the work.

They have overall responsibility across all our services for user support, handling rights-based requests, ensuring queries from the routine to the complex get resolved appropriately and providing front line support for complex priority issues, and wider governance, including risk management and escalation, understanding key legislation and implementing related policies, processes, monitoring and reporting where relevant.

The role is both hands-on and strategic, requiring understanding of technical information and legislation and proactive consultation with the wider team and external stakeholders. The role holder will manage a User Support Officer and have the support of the WhatDoTheyKnow volunteer team, and work closely with other roles to share feedback on how the services are running and contribute to ideas for improvement.

This is a full-time role to start as soon as possible.

No recruiters or agencies, please.

What does the role involve?

• Ensure our services run smoothly, with high-risk support cases identified and dealt with promptly and efficiently
• Ensure our frontline user support staff and volunteers are productive and motivated in supporting our users
• Maintain the high level of legal and governance compliance we have within the services, ensuring processes and procedures are fit for purpose and regularly reviewed
• Contribute to the ongoing improvement of our services, identifying opportunities to advocate for and support their use

User support and operations

• Ensure incoming support cases are triaged, prioritised, handled and escalated appropriately
• Ensure high-risk cases and cases with legal obligations are tracked and resolved within deadlines, managing further escalation and response as required (e.g. GDPR rights based requests, Online Safety Act reports, etc)
• Ensure all other issues are routed and dealt with in the most appropriate and efficient way, coordinating with volunteers and mySociety staff to keep track of any follow-up actions to fully resolve them

• Manage the pool of staff and expert volunteers who contribute to frontline user support, picking up and resolving cases as necessary, handling escalations and ensuring cover, and creating a productive, motivating and safe environment for them to work in
• Coordinate and optimise our user support processes across our services
• Work closely with service/product area owners, helping them understand trends in use, and identifying areas for improvement
• Contribute to the improvement of our help and support pages on how best to use the services for impactful outcomes

Governance

• Ensure that we have adequate policies, processes and systems in place for operating our services
• Ensure that we comply with relevant legislation and legal obligations in the running of our services
• Manage day-to-day risk, keeping mySociety senior management team up to date and informed of the running of the service and any relevant issues

• Raise any data protection challenges and changes required and ensure that they are followed up on and resolved
• Schedule, prepare agendas for, and facilitate regular calls across various operational and strategic areas and produce reports on service use as required

Skills/experience

We think this position would suit you best if you have some or all of the following:

• Experience managing complex, high-volume digital services. Proactive and organised, with sound judgement and ability to make good decisions in dynamic and ambiguous environments.
• Goal driven and autonomous, motivated by improving service, quality and efficiency. Skilled in overcoming operational constraints to deliver a successful service.
• High level of understanding of the GDPR act and handling information rights requests.
• Experienced in meeting the needs of users. Able to bring insight and expertise in how user needs have changed over time to ensure these are met by the organisation. Applies strategic thinking in how to provide the best service for the end user.
• Previous experience around Freedom of Information, media law or moderating online communities
• Able to identify problems, document their causes and implement remedies. Understands how problems fit into the bigger picture, and builds problem-solving capabilities in others.
• Able to develop a long-term vision and objectives. Discerning and disciplined in focusing on what is important and most relevant, taking into account the wider context.
• Excellent people and communication skills and written English.
• Comfortable in a remote workplace with a geographically distributed team and  working with and supporting volunteers.

Interested in applying but not sure you have all the skills? Please apply anyway! We support learning on the job and rearranging tasks within the teams to suit the skillsets of the best applicant. Please let us know in your covering letter what your relevant experience is and where you might need to learn as you go.

Have any  questions? Drop an email to Yolanda Gomes  on recruitment2025@mysociety.org.

This is a permanent role with a salary in the range of £45,000 to £55,000 (FTE) per year, plus pension (4% employer, 4% employee).

You must be based in the UK and you need to have the right to work in this country (sorry, but we can’t offer help with visas or relocation expenses).

You can read more about what it’s like working at mySociety at https://www.mysociety.org/about/careers/culture/

We want you to enjoy being a part of the mySociety team,  so we’ll do everything we can to support you in making your job work for you. We’re always willing to discuss flexible hours or co-working spaces. Wherever you are in the UK, and however you want to work, we’ll do our best to make sure you have everything you need to do your job well. 

Deadlines and dates

The application deadline is Thursday 15 May 2025 and interviews will take place the following week via video conference. We will aim to notify applicants of whether or not they will be invited to interview by the end of May 2025. 

Application instructions

Your application should consist of a CV and covering letter. We’ll rely on your covering letter to show us why your skills make you a good fit for this role when we are shortlisting candidates, so take your time getting it right.

We are particularly interested in improving the diversity of our team and we welcome applications from all suitably skilled and experienced people, and particularly from candidates with Black, Asian or other Minority Ethnic heritage, in line with our EDI strategy. 

We are monitoring our recruitment processes to ensure we are doing everything we can to encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. We would ask you to please complete our optional equalities monitoring form. The information you share in the form will be anonymous and will not influence the assessment of your application.