Recommendation 6

Defra does not yet know how it will meet Government’s ambitions for digital change within its existing resources. CDDO has agreed a set of challenging commitments with departments, and Defra is confident it can meet these. However, Defra received only 58% of the funding it bid for in the 2021 Spending Review and cannot deliver all its aspirations with the funding it has available. For example, it aims to digitise all of its 20 most used services but none of this work is yet funded. Defra has taken an ordered approach to prioritising its work, focussing on its riskiest digital systems first, such as those most likely to fail or at most risk of cyber- attack. It says it has saved money by decommissioning services as part of its review of legacy applications, and believes there is scope for it to save £20-£25 million if it modernised all its IT. However, Defra is unlikely to know the full extent of the cost savings and efficiency gains that are possible because it does not know all the additional costs of operating its legacy services, for example because of the need for manual processes. Recommendation 6: Defra should: a) strengthen its case for investment by developing its analysis of the efficiency savings that could be achieved through modernising its systems and processes; b) write to the Committee within a year with the results of this analysis and what action it plans to take as a result.