Recommendation 3

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. The Cabinet Office concedes that too often operations and services fail to recognise the fundamental 6 Challenges in implementing digital change inefficiencies of legacy systems and their data; and instead build new systems on top of these using the old data. Programmes have not sufficiently considered the potential and longer-lasting benefits for the citizen of redesigning and transforming public services around new business processes, data, and emerging technologies. Government has developed several new systems in response to specific needs arising from EU exit, but these were all developed to meet a narrow purpose by fixed deadlines. We recognise the delivery of initiatives such as GOV.UK Notify and Pay, but we note these are relatively straightforward commodity services that are widely available commercially. We are not convinced these demonstrate government’s ability to secure the deeper levels of transformation needed to achieve a more fundamental redesign of business services for the digital age. Cultivating better systems analysis, data analysis and design skills would help government gain a greater understanding of where to focus its efforts. Recommendation: The Cabinet Office and departments should introduce a structured way of deciding whether the changes they are making represent incremental improvements to existing systems, or a more transformational redesign of business processes. The Cabinet Office and departments should reflect this in the depth and rigour of the initial scoping and design of programmes.