Government 'has pimped out its front-end, but it has not changed its legacy engines', claims former HMRC CIO
Reliance on legacy systems will see government departments falter, says Phil Pavitt
The former CIO of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), Phil Pavitt, has claimed that many government departments are likely to fail in their quest to be truly digital because they are still reliant on legacy systems.
Speaking at Nimbus Ninety's Ignite conference yesterday in London, Pavitt, who is now the CIO of Specsavers, gave his views on how organisations should approach their digital strategies, before slamming the UK government for its current approach.
"Where the UK government has played it wrong in many of its departments, is that it has pimped out its front-end, but it has not changed its legacy engines - that is not truly digital," he said.
"That will fundamentally catch them out as it has caught out many companies in the UK and Europe already," he added.
But Pavitt suggested that many within government confuse what digital really is.
"People think digital is having an app - that's why people are getting it wrong and I know because I've worked for government for so many years, and for so many years they thought that the app was the front bit, but actually it's the whole experience," he said.
Pavitt said that when he joined HMRC, the organisation was only 20 per cent online and now that figure has grown to 92 per cent.
"It's one of the largest government bodies that's online anywhere in the world, but you try to do your taxes online - it's not the easiest thing is it?"
He added that failure was a key part of any digital strategy - something he emphasised in his first presentation at HMRC.
"I said ‘we are going to make so many mistakes it is going to be painful, we are going to be on a Daily Mail front headline and indeed we were several times," he said.
Don't listen to the consultants
Pavitt explained that many organisations were duped by consultants into thinking that a customer-centric design is not always about the user.
"The consultants that sell that to you are lying to you, they are selling their goods. It's about the ease of the user, and the subtlety is small but significant," he said.
But Pavitt explained that going digital does not necessarily mean having to invest heavily.
"Most organisations say that you have to spend a whole pile of money to do this, and I've personally never had that experience; I believe it's a fundamental lie from the IT supplier industry in that space," he said.
"Digital is something that has to come from the legacy engine to the very front end and if your digital stack doesn't do that or you're told you can only do it with a huge investment, that's not true," he added.