With a change of Prime min­is­ter in the UK, there comes with it a very big shake up of the tech­nol­o­gy aspect of gov­ern­ment. The clo­sure of the Depart­ment of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (DSIT) with many of its respon­si­bil­i­ties being sent to the busi­ness depart­ment or the cab­i­net office. One of the big sur­pris­es is the move of the Gov­ern­ment dig­i­tal ser­vice (GDS) into the renamed Depart­ment of Dig­i­tal, Cul­ture, Media and sport (DCMS). This comes only a cou­ple of years after GDS was moved out of the Cab­i­net office where it was found­ed and had a cross gov­ern­ment role, to be relaunched as part of DSIT. The Machin­ery of Gov­ern­ment changes fact sheet details that GDS mov­ing into DCMS is so that it can con­tin­ue the pro­gram of mod­ernising gov­ern­ment ser­vices, whilst refer­ring the the split of DSIT as want­i­ng to embed tech­nol­o­gy into all parts of gov­ern­ment. Oth­er high­lights are AI pol­i­cy mov­ing to the cab­i­net office and the new office for the Prime min­is­ter, and the new min­is­ter for AI.

Some aspects seem to have come out of want­i­ng to not seen as a sep­a­rate line item that runs on it’s own. There also seems to be a realign­ment of tech­nol­o­gy pol­i­cy in gov­ern­ment that is in con­trast to the pre­vi­ous Starmer admin­is­tra­tion. It’s notable that one of the key polices on the first day of Andy Burn­hams pre­mier­ship was to can­cel the Dig­i­tal ID scheme, to fund a VAT cut in elec­tric­i­ty. But I think this also rep­re­sents a shift­ing atti­tude to tech in gov­ern­ment, less focus of big bang dig­i­tal pro­grammes and more empha­sis on help­ing peo­ple right now with pro­grammes that have a direct benefit.

The move of GDS to the cul­ture depart­ment though has caused a lot of con­fu­sion, with many of those who work in or around the dig­i­tal gov­ern­ment sec­tor com­ment­ing on it being a strange move, that a ser­vice that dri­ves it fur­ther away from it’s posi­tion of influ­enc­ing change across all of government.

You’re not seri­ous about devo­lu­tion if GOV.UK One Login isn’t polit­i­cal­ly backed to pri­ori­tise local author­i­ties and MSAs over White­hall. DCMS doesn’t have and nev­er will have that polit­i­cal cap­i­tal. Devo­lu­tion requires White­hall to pro­vide local gov­ern­ment and MSAs with the dig­i­tal plumb­ing under­pin­ning all mod­ern pub­lic ser­vices, a gar­gan­tu­an cul­tur­al shift need­ing gen­uine ser­vant lead­er­ship from the centre.

Tom Loose­more — Deckchair shuf­fling is for the unserious

He goes on to point out the there are a range of sig­nif­i­cant ser­vices, Gov Noti­fy and Gov Pay amongst them, that have become com­mon plat­forms across gov­ern­ment and in local coun­cils. These ser­vices sim­pli­fy imple­men­ta­tion and address com­mon needs (send­ing mobile noti­fi­ca­tions and emails and han­dling pay­ments) with­out hav­ing to pro­cure a sep­a­rate sup­pli­er at addi­tion­al cost. He asks the ques­tion that is a pol­i­cy depart­ment real­ly able to deliv­er the heft need­ed for build­ing gov­ern­ment tech foundations?

I also won­der what will hap­pen to new­ly born GDS pro­grammes. Cus­tomer first is try­ing to find new user cen­tred approach­es to joined up gov­ern­ment ser­vices, and GDS Local which was about enhanc­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion between cen­tral and local gov­ern­ment in tech­nol­o­gy, and try to help with some of the knot­ty prob­lems like pro­cure­ment at a local lev­el. In some way, I’m sur­prised GDS did­n’t make it into the new Num­ber 10 north, act­ing as a dri­ver for dig­i­tal and tech with­in gov­ern­ment, but also push­ing that out to the regions and to local author­i­ties so that all lev­els can ben­e­fit from GDS work equal­ly, and even some of the work done at a local lev­el in front line dig­i­tal teams can push up and be used at a nation­al level. 

We will have to watch as the sit­u­a­tion unfolds, I’m hope­ful that this is more about allow­ing tech­nol­o­gy pol­i­cy and ser­vices to become much more embed­ded into all aspects and lev­els of what the gov­ern­ment does, and hope that this is not GDS being sent to the out­er reach­es to be for­got­ten about.

Fea­tured image — GDS Logo — Crys­tal ball Pho­to by Monique Pon­gan on Unsplash