Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 2
2
Accepted
Despite the urgency and ambition of its digital strategy, the Department does not yet have...
Recommendation
Despite the urgency and ambition of its digital strategy, the Department does not yet have a delivery plan to measure and track progress. The Department’s digital strategy sets out how it wants to share and exploit data effectively for information advantage and develop a skilled and empowered digital function by 2025. It will be difficult for the Department to achieve this given the scale of activity across more than 90 digital projects in its portfolio, its large legacy IT estate, and wide- ranging specialist skills shortages. The National Audit Office (NAO) report that the Department’s digital strategy is consistent with good practice, but that it lacks a complete delivery plan to measure its progress. Although the Department has plans in place for individual projects, it accepts that it needs to bring these plans together to show how they add up to the outcomes the Department wants. The Department is now working on a delivery plan that does this, which it intends to publish in April
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and will develop an integrated delivery plan underpinned by the Digital Strategy for Defence, aligned with the DX4D programme, with specific, tools-based metrics and measures building on portfolio management and transformation reporting.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. integrated delivery plan. This will use specific, tools-based metrics and measures that build on existing, robust portfolio management and transformation reporting in place for each existing digital transformation component. The plan will underpin the Digital Strategy for Defence, with line of sight to departmental strategy and aligned with the DX4D programme. It will provide options and support choices across the breadth of the department's estimated £4.4 billion per annum digital portfolio. It articulates delivery against the department's strategic digital outcomes and themes: exploiting game-changers and data at pace and scale; delivering and adopting technology to support the concept of ‘the Digital Backbone’; resetting cyber defence to materially reduce risk; enabling a step-change in digital delivery; routinely developing and accessing leading edge digital talent; embedding a unified digital function to improve pan- Defence cohesion.