The government has unveiled a digital government blueprint to improve how public services buy and use technology. The first breakthrough is believed to be a national password reset with a commercial strategy, a steering group and a panic button.
The plan covers around £23 billion of annual public sector technology spending and proposes a Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence. Procurement can now approach the dignity usually reserved for a new bypass, a royal opening or a cake made entirely of staplers.
At the Unit for Responsible Clicking, programme lead Norman Dropdown welcomed the announcement. “Technology needs discipline,” he said. “The printer has asked whether the Centre of Excellence comes with better toner.”
The blueprint encourages public bodies to negotiate technology contracts together. Councils and departments may combine their buying power, allowing one enormous invoice to replace several smaller invoices that previously arrived with different logos and identical despair. Somewhere, a spreadsheet has just been promoted to strategic partner.
The government’s state of digital government review identified a potential £45 billion productivity opportunity. A consultant has already placed the opportunity inside a pie chart and labelled it ‘actionable potential’. The pie chart has requested a four figure day rate, a discovery phase and a room in which to mature.
The plans also promote artificial intelligence, improved data sharing and digital services that work across organisational boundaries. Analyst Gloria Login called this bold. “We have drawn a line through the silos,” she said. “The silos have asked for a second opinion, a governance framework and six months to locate the line.”
Officials want public services to stop making people repeat the same information to different organisations. This should be useful for anyone dealing with multiple services, provided the new system does not first require them to prove that they have previously used the old system, remember the old password and identify which department lost the form.
The government is also introducing a package of civil service AI tools known as Humphrey, including systems for analysing consultation responses, transcribing meetings and searching parliamentary debates. The name honours the fictional Whitehall official from Yes, Minister. The tools may be faster, but they already understand the vital principle that every answer can be converted into another question.
The blueprint promises to cut waste, modernise delivery and make technology easier to maintain. One old database has rejected the word ‘legacy’. It prefers ‘historically well connected to a single server under a desk’, which is also the database’s preferred job title.
The panic button has now formed a technical design council, commissioned a review of its readiness and scheduled an away day to decide whether pressing it would count as successful digital transformation. It has also asked for a second panic button, in case the first one becomes a single point of failure.
Real story: UK Government.
