Government’s digital transformation failures coming at a high cost

The UK Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has issued a damning report into the failure of government to implement digital change, noting the financial and human cost of its failures.

The report said that despite the UK government spending around £20 billion each year on IT transformation, the PAC noted a number of complex, large-scale digital programmes that are failing and the impact this has on important government services and taxpayers’ money.”

It said “failures in NHS England’s efforts to transform primary care services potentially put patients at risk of serious harm. More recently, the Home Office’s programme to replace the police national computer has been delayed by at least five years with an associated cost overrun of more than £400 million.”

Among its findings, the Committee noted:

• Too many senior government leaders are not equipped with the knowledge and know-how required for making good decisions and to drive digital business change.
• There is no clear plan to replace or modernise legacy systems and data that are critical to service provision but are often old, unsupportable, vulnerable and a constraint on transformation.
• Departments have failed to understand the difference between improving what currently exists and real digital transformation, meaning that they have missed opportunities to move to modern, efficient ways of working.

In its summary, it said it is clear that “government faces significant long-term barriers to successful digital change that will take much time, effort, and money to overcome.”

It cited a lack of digital skills and capability among government’s senior non-specialist leadership, and the problem of embedded legacy systems.

“Such systems are widespread across government but can be unreliable, hard to support, and frustrate efforts to modernise services. This situation is not helped by the scarcity of specialist digital, data and technology skills across both the public and private sectors,” said the report.

“We have heard about progress made over the last decade and what government feels are some important recent success stories, such as the Covid-19 furlough schemes. However, most of these are not large-scale transformational programmes and we remain sceptical of the ability to succeed in this area given the examples we have seen of recent programme failures.”

“The taxpayer deserves a better service”

The Committee said it welcomes efforts from the centre of government towards tackling the long-term barriers that prevent modernisation. However it added that “there is much to do at both the centre and within departments if effective digital change is to become business as usual for government.”

In addition, the PAC noted that Ministers generally spend a relatively short time in any one post, while Permanent Secretaries typically only serve five-year terms. As such, “neither is likely to remain in post for the entire duration of a major digital change programme.”

It urges Whitehall to make digital change planning a core activity as some programmes could take up to 20 years to deliver fully.

“The citizen and the taxpayer deserve a better service and we will continue to challenge departments in front of us about how they are delivering on these ambitions,” it said.