Because otherwise the effort will end up in the quagmire of civil service politics, the sort of stuff you see on "Yes Minister" (greatly exaggerated, of course, in the same way "Silicon Valley" exaggerates Californian startup culture).

With a direct line to the PM, every time a mandarin tried to block things (likely in order to favour his golf buddies from this or that vendor), GDS could go "ok, shall we take it up with the PM then?" and that would be the end of it.

It's effectively the nuclear option, in terms of civil-service management, but sometimes it's the only way to get stuff done.

> greatly exaggerated, of course, in the same way "Silicon Valley" exaggerates Californian startup culture

Which is another way of saying it conveys the reality more realistically than a documentary could ever get away with.

> every time a mandarin tried to block things (likely in order to favour his golf buddies from this or that vendor)

There seems to be a much longer history of MPs and PMs being corrupt than the mandarins.

Gov.uk is _the_ primary way that anyone interacts with the UK government. Why shouldn't it be one of the highest priority aspects of government? I don't think the Prime Minister was sitting in on daily standups and sprint planning, but it makes sense that they should have a good overview of progress and development in GDS during its infancy.

Effectively it was in the PM's department directly, which means it was not subject to cross-department jealousies etc. Watch some series of Yes Minister, even though set in the 1970s and 80s, it's still all true.

The Thick of It is supposedly not far from the reality either.

Armando Iannucci is a national treasure and a credit to the Italian diaspora (and to Scotland).

If anyone deserves a knighthood for services to comedy, Iannucci would be one of my top contenders!

If there is an alternative approach that has been showing similar or better results, I'm ears.