The Government Digital Service (GDS) has published its first Cloud Challenge Book, setting out five national-scale challenges that it wants to tackle in partnership with industry as part of a broader drive to modernise public sector technology and develop the UK’s cloud infrastructure.
Developed by GDS, the Government Commercial Agency (GCA), the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Government Cyber Unit (GCU), the publication is intended to support the development of the National Cloud Infrastructure Programme (NCIP) and encourage suppliers to innovate around the government’s long-term digital priorities.
According to GDS, the initiative builds on commitments made in the Blueprint for Modern Digital Government and the Roadmap for Modern Digital Government.
“The Cloud Challenge Book is how we begin to deliver on those commitments at national scale,” GDS wrote in a blog co-authored by cloud and platforms service owner, Tommaso Spinelli, principal architect, Daniel Tea-Lewis, and government chief architect, Edward McCutcheon.
Supporting a national cloud strategy
The Cloud Challenge Book is designed to inform the National Cloud Infrastructure Programme, which is exploring how government can better coordinate cloud demand across the public sector while strengthening long-term digital capability.
According to GDS, the programme aims to support initiatives such as the UK AI Hardware Plan, encourage more outcome-based procurement approaches and establish a more strategic partnership between government and industry.
It also seeks to ensure that future investment in cloud infrastructure delivers both public sector and wider economic benefits.
“The Cloud Challenge Book demonstrates the challenges we want to solve with industry that are only enabled when government is clear about what it needs and committed to acting at national scale,” the authors said.
Five challenges for government and industry
The publication identifies five areas where government believes collaboration with industry could have the greatest impact:
- Eliminating legacy technology across the public sector
- Building digital infrastructure for the AI era
- Creating secure and resilient cloud infrastructure
- Developing cloud skills and capability
- Delivering greater commercial value through national-scale collaboration
Rather than focusing on individual projects or departments, GDS said each challenge has been designed to address issues affecting government as a whole.
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“The challenges in this book share a common thread,” the authors wrote. “They are ambitious in scale – designed to transform a nation, not just improve a process. They are adaptive, bringing together requirements and customer groups that might not obviously belong together to create solutions with real staying power.
“They are urgent because the public deserves better, and the current approach is not sustainable. And they are enabling and empowering – built around open, flexible solutions that grow UK capability in supply chains, skills and cloud adoption, rather than locking us into any single path.”
Tackling legacy systems
The first challenge focuses on reducing government’s reliance on legacy technology, which GDS describes as one of the biggest barriers to modern digital services.
“Cloud has been a critical enabler for legacy remediation. Yet, a considerable number of government digital services still rely on inefficient legacy systems,” the authors wrote.
They added that while funding for remediation has increased, “it is still insufficient for the size of the challenge”.
The remaining challenges explore how cloud infrastructure can better support AI adoption, improve cyber resilience, strengthen technical capability across the public sector and enable government to obtain greater value from its purchasing power through coordinated national approaches.
Invitation to collaborate
Rather than presenting fixed solutions, GDS said the Challenge Book is intended to begin a conversation with existing and future suppliers.
The publication “invites current and future industry partners to invest and innovate with government to address these challenges” and is designed to encourage collaboration around scalable solutions that can be deployed across the public sector.
By setting out the challenges before defining the solutions, government hopes to work more closely with industry to develop cloud infrastructure that supports future public services while strengthening UK digital capability and improving the long-term value of public investment.
