Institute for Government: Whitehall's digitalisation drive is running out of steam

Institute warns that the government needs to do more to continue Whitehall's digitalisation drive

Whitehall's digitalisation drive is running out of steam, the Institute for Government thinktank has warned in a report, while the government itself has become distracted by the demands of Brexit and is failing to get a grip on what's required to take it forward.

"Taking digital government to the next level will require sustained attention. This is not currently in evidence," warned the Institute. "Ministers are distracted by preparing for Brexit and the leadership of government departments often do not understand what needs to be done to implement digital changes."

It continued: "Taking digital government to the next level will require sustained attention. This is not currently in evidence. Ministers are distracted by preparing for Brexit and the leadership of government departments often do not understand what needs to be done to implement digital changes."

The Institute examined five public sector organisations at different stages of digital development, and claims that it found some encouraging signs. However, in addition to the reduced drive from ministers, it also identified five key challenges.

These include moving from small-scale changes to department- and service-wide transformation, bringing policy and implementation together, and tackling legacy IT, which often holds back digital transformation projects. In-sourcing might be required as a first step to tackling legacy IT, the Institute suggested.

"Some big public services run on computers from the 1980s. These legacy systems are slow, keep data fragmented and prevent services from being joined up. New IT is more flexible and can work as an ecosystem, rather than as a series of silos, creating economies of scale and joined-up services. Bringing IT in-house by ending large contracts is often necessary to make these changes."

Government also needs to shift from dictatorial ‘waterfall' methodologies to more flexible agile development - while still keeping short-term and often political changes from ruining projects.

"Whitehall's traditional approach to the control and assurance of projects (governance) was to lock down requirements at the start of a project, set a timetable, and then progress in a linear fashion from design to implementation (in a ‘waterfall').

"But the digital world has found that people do not know what they want until they see it, and that locking down requirements early on leads to software that people do not want to use," suggested the report.

Other issues include skills, with government often out-bid for the best IT staff, while failing to develop staff skills and not taking the same kind of robust attitude to staff whose work is not up to scratch that the private sector generally does.

It also questioned the role of the Government Digital Service (GDS), which has championed much digitalisation in Whitehall, whose future is now up-in-the-air following the departure of Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude who had championed the GDS as a tool for driving digitalisation and cost-savings across central government.

However, new GDS director general Kevin Cunnington has promised that the organisation won't be broken up.