When the Government Digital Service was formally unveiled in late 2011, its founding leader Mike Bracken declared that government “now has a digital home, and it’s from here we can help drive a new generation of digital public services”.
Some 13 years have elapsed since then – a period of time that represents just under a generation in human terms, but several generations in the fast-moving world of technology.
It seems fitting, then, that the dawn of the next generation brings with it a new “home” for all things digital across government. GDS – as well as its sister agency, the Central Digital and Data Office, and the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence created last year – have all now taken up residence in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Under plans announced by the new Labour administration just a few days after the general election, the trio of tech units have moved from their former location of the Cabinet Office.
In doing so, they are replicating the journey made six years ago by two small, but significant functions.
In March 2018, the government announced that responsibility for data policy, governance, and sharing was being shifted from GDS to the then-Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Just a few months later, policymakers in the area of digital identity made the same move.
The two moves prompted concern about the impact of separating key parts of the digital agenda, as well as the implications for the cross-government influence of GDS. There was speculation about whether the digital unit might be instructed to make a wholesale switch to DCMS – particularly as the department was, at the time, overseen by prominent tech advocate Matt Hancock.
The modern-day DSIT is also helmed by a minister known as a digital enthusiast, in the shape of secretary of state Peter Kyle. In a statement with striking similarities to Bracken’s comments trailing the 2011 unveiling of GDS, Kyle said that, following the departmental shake-up, “DSIT is to become the centre for digital expertise and delivery in government, improving how the government and public services interact with citizens”.
As the formalities of the moves were completed, prime minister Keir Starmer added that the principal benefit of the rejjg will be to “embed the delivery of digital services and levers to drive public and private sector innovation within a single department”.
While these upsides appear obvious, they are surely accompanied by questions and doubts that are equally clear – in particular concerning the ability of GDS and CDDO to drive reform, as well as enforce standards and controls, without the cross-department reach of being in the centre of government.
CSW put some of these questions to a selection of independent experts. Here are their responses.
Gavin Freeguard, associate at the Institute for Government and Connected by Data, and special adviser at the Open Data Institute
This could be a very good thing if they get it right. I think the crucial question is: can a relatively new department that is not a traditional department of the centre do the coordination across government that it’s going to need to do? On the one hand – and on the positive side – you’ve got a secretary of state, in Peter Kyle, who seems to be pretty close to the prime minister and seems to have good relationships with the Cabinet Office and Treasury. And I think there’s also quite a clear political vision around using DSIT to serve citizens, which is perhaps not rhetoric that we’ve heard coming from politicians for quite some time. So, I think there is an opportunity in bringing all of those things together to actually make that happen, while also aligning that with DSIT’s existing brief for thinking about digital across the wider economy and society. If those things can get aligned, I think that could be really powerful.
On the other hand again: will DSIT have the cross-departmental clout? And will the personalities continue to work together – especially if we get reshuffles in the future? I know that Keir Starmer has said that he’s intending not to do that so much – and that’s very welcome. But, if we do end up with those personnel changing, will it have the same cohesion across government and the same power?
I think there is also a risk – given that there’s a lot of tech utopianism at the moment – that the economic focus could actually distract from serving the public. So I think those are the opportunities – and the potential pitfalls.
“I think there is a risk – given that there’s a lot of tech utopianism at the moment – that the economic focus could actually distract from serving the public”
Something that we really, really need to do is learn from what’s gone before. There’s quite a lot in what’s being said which sounds familiar to anyone who remembers the creation of GDS. If you look at Labour’s proposed National Data Library, there are so many antecedents to that – depending on what you think it’s going to end up looking like. Can we benefit from the experience of the people and the projects that have gone before? What worked, what didn’t and – crucially – why?
Joe Hill, policy director, Reform
There are always trade-offs involved in where you locate different kinds of capabilities in central government. And, to some extent, it’s not the be all and end all of whether these things succeed or not. But I think there’s a good argument for trying to bring together government expertise in technology policy and development in one place.
I also think that the Cabinet Office seems to have grown a huge amount over the last decade or so, and taken on lots of different responsibilities. I think it probably has too many very varied responsibilities, and struggles to do a good job of all of them at the same time. So I think moving this out and aligning it with the wider technology unit is probably a pretty good fit.
Some people who are more critical of the merger would say, when CDDO, GDS and i.AI need other departments to do things, will that come with the same level of authority if it comes from DSIT, rather than from the Cabinet Office? Which I think is a fair argument.
But I think, equally, if the Cabinet Office is so overwhelmed with the many different kinds of things it is trying to coordinate across government, then the value of that central role seems less.
An obvious win is that, if government is trying to make the case for much greater datacentre investment in Britain by big technology companies, then it may well want some of that capacity to go into the public sector. Now they can do that in one place and, hopefully, also get better outcomes, and attract more investment and better funding.
Heather Cover-Kus, head of central government programme, techUK
My initial take was that this does not sound like a great idea – the departments do very different things and have very different styles. And moving things out of Cabinet Office could take away that convening power to pull different teams and different departments together. And there are questions about whether they’d still be able to do that as, essentially, another equal department to the likes of DWP or HMRC.
On reflection, however, I feel a bit more optimistic, especially after talking to some people within GDS, who were very excited by the move. There might be some gains to be had in having the policy and delivery aspects of digital government together in one place. There could be some efficiencies to be made, and particularly when put in the context of the five mission boards of the new government.
"An initial concern was for the Incubator for AI – because that came right out of No.10, and was a project driven by Rishi Sunak"
From what I understand, the plan is for tech and data to really play a supporting role, and an enabling role, in all of those different missions. And they will have a presence on each of the boards. But it’s still early days, and we’ll have to see how it plays out and whether this new consolidated look and feel has been effective in being that enabler for all of the other missions.
Another of my initial concerns was, in particular, for the Incubator for AI – because that came right out of No.10, and was a project that was driven by Rishi Sunak. And they have leveraged the power that came with that to really drive the things that they wanted to do. So, to move that away from No.10 was a risk. I was most concerned about i.AI and how that would be absorbed into DSIT, and whether they would be as effective under that new arrangement. However, even then, there could be benefits to having i.AI and the AI Safety Institute in the same department. There is the potential for more effective deployment.
Ben Welby, former lead product manager at GDS; ex-policy analyst, digital government and open data at OECD
I joined GDS in 2012, and was there for six inspiring years that left me pretty confident that the UK was in the vanguard of digital government – because there was very good PR and storytelling around what we were doing. I left to join the OECD where one of the things I worked on was the Digital Government Index and, while the UK performed really well, I realised we were really scratching the surface of what some other countries are doing. It was shocking, actually, the reality of where the UK was on certain fundamental things, and some of the public discourse that we’re not able to have in a grown-up and sensible way – especially about data and digital identity.
Despite a lot of good work in difficult circumstances, these were challenges during my time at GDS, and I’d say they continue to be barriers to transformational ambitions. And I don’t think it has helped in either case to separate the focus on the digital economy from a focus on the public sector. Because, on the one hand, the question is: “how do we unlock public value?” – where that value is measured in terms of GDP. And, on the other, you’re asking: “how do we protect public value?” – in terms of the benefits you can give to citizens in meeting their needs, by not only overcoming the obstacles they face, but also doing it in a way that safeguards, builds, and restores trust. Because trust in this country is in an abyss, and having the two worlds sort of fighting over it has been very unhelpful. I think it’s fed into what I would perceive as a competing focus.
There is so much time and energy and money that’s being lost to a seemingly permanently unresolvable discussion about “fixing the plumbing” of data and digital identity. When most of the rest of the OECD world – as well as several from beyond those “most developed economies” – have met these needs and put a ubiquitous tool in the pocket of their citizens.
My personal view is that you can’t fix data without fixing identity, and you can’t fix identity without fixing data. And having them under one roof might allow someone to take that step back and ask “how do we actually stop spinning our wheels on this topic, and make the progress we need to?” Not just to protect the public and unlock economic value, but to really make it possible for government to do all the things that everyone thinks government should be able to do in the 21st century.