If those acronyms mean nothing to you then this blog post is not for you. It’s written in response to the news that the Government Digital Service (GDS) and the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO), and the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI) are moving from the Cabinet Office to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) under the responsibility of Peter Kyle as the responsible minister.

At the OECD one of the things we would emphasise was the importance of a mandate and authority for providing leadership of digital government across the entire public sector. GDS was the poster child for this idea. Many countries have established their own Digital Government Units similarly located at the centre of government and operating in proximity to the country’s political leadership. In more than one country the digital function has been given even more prominence and made an extension of the President or the Prime Minister. This has been critical in ensuring that the agenda receives support at the highest levels and made a priority.

In the UK, GDS benefitted from Francis Maude as the Minister for Cabinet Office (MCO) with his leadership backing the wave of transformation through to 2015. Under his watch many of the things that established the culture for digital transformation bedded in. And then in 2015 there started a sequence of 12 MCOs in 9 years. Not many of them showed the same aptitude for leading digital transformation as Maude.

Along the way the clarity of responsibility for digital started to fray. Digital inclusion, some aspects of data, some parts of Artificial Intelligence, and some parts of digital identity moving over to what is now DSIT.

GDS continued to be responsible for delivering things like GOV.UK as well as a selection of Cabinet Office products, plus holding oversight of the wider governance of digital government (like spend controls and the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) profession). This combination needed to be clarified so I welcomed the distribution of GDS activity into a Cabinet Office Digital function, the CDDO (for the oversight and leadership), and GDS (for the delivery).

But no amount of technology can offset the chaotic leadership and policy direction the country has faced, while multiple crises have made the last few years difficult. However I am sceptical about whether the CDDO/GDS split maintained the necessary strength of leadership and clarity of vision. I am underwhelmed by what I have understood in terms of the strategic ambition and delivery intent when set against fundamentals that are still not where they need to be. And while the UK continues to rank highly in the OECD Digital Government Index there is absolutely no room for complacency. The 2023 Index shows significant progress in many countries but stagnation (at best) within the UK.

But this wasn’t supposed to be a post on the ‘state of digital government in the UK’ it was supposed to be limited to ‘what do I think about the news of the change’ so that’s more than enough background.

Those five thoughts

1

I think it is the right place to start in trying to heal the fragmentation caused by removing some parts of the digital brief from GDS. The UK needs to address fundamental and structural weaknesses with data and digital identity and it has clearly been unhelpful to have had policy for the private sector and policy for the public sector in different places. The same thing is also true for digital inclusion which has not had a dedicated strategy since 2014 (when the policy was under the stewardship of GDS).

2

I think this change is indicative of greater digital maturity in the government. This Cabinet is the most digitally native Cabinet we’ve ever had. Perhaps the government understands the value of digital as an enabler to the transformation of government and considers the progress that has been made sufficient to operate out of DSIT rather than coming under the wider responsibilities of the Cabinet Office (which presumably has plenty of other work to be getting on with).

3

If the Big P Politics of digital are less in need of a ‘big beast’ to champion it, are we also into an era of government where we’ll see less factionalism and jostling for position between different departments? While the country is firmly in the afterglow of the change in government there is a window of cooperation that may need less of the ‘grab you by the scruff of the neck’ model that definitely accompanied the original cry of ‘Revolution, not Evolution‘.

4

I’m less certain that the small p politics of the civil service are quite as clean. The positive take would be that the Cabinet Office does not need to operate the GDS/CDDO/iAI models because DDaT professionals are distributing the right culture and practices throughout government. And, as a result Cabinet Office no longer needs to stand as an arbiter. The more sceptical view is that DDaT has become a recreation of the old IT function and the digital capability baseline of the civil service is not yet high enough to support successful transformation.

5

The final thought is a reflection on my time at the OECD. The tension between digital economy and digital government was pretty much constant. Both sides treated digital like a thing they could own and not the foundations on which everyone else was building. That led to all sorts of perverse behaviours and incentives. I believed that combining digital government and digital economy could make for a healthier and more productive environment and put our focus where it needed to be – on our users.

Digital is too important to give it special treatment

So, my overall feeling is that all the digital expertise under the same Minister is a good thing, as is moving the leadership responsibility away from the ‘centre of government’. I don’t believe this diminishes the importance ascribed to digital government but rather reflects an overall maturity of the new UK government. It feels to me like they’re saying “digital is too important to give it special treatment, let’s just make it an ordinary part of functional government”.

Update on 25/07/2024

Today the news has broken that the government has recruited Emily Middleton to be the Director General, Digital Centre Design. For the last few years Emily has been part of the impressive team at Public Digital doing impressive things. More recently she’s been working closely with Peter Kyle and the Labour Together think tank. The indicators here are all excellent and definitely increase the optimistic feelings I had above.

As time has settled on my thoughts I think I firm up three things:

  • If Francis Maude had stayed in post and if there hadn’t been Brexit (and if my aunt had wheels she’d be a bicycle) then I feel like the merger would have happened by 2018 . Matt Hancock’s decision to take certain aspects of the brief to DCMS and not others wasn’t that helpful but I don’t think the ‘centre of government’ has had the same value for CDDO and GDS over the last 5 years that it might have had before. Moving this into its own focused environment is A Very Good Thing.
  • My confidence is increasingly in the newly elected politicians and those who are advising them some of the civil service leadership. Emily’s appointment is hugely encouraging for the next chapter in the as-yet-underwhelming story of CDDO.
  • No amount of machinery of government change will alter the need to fix data (along these lines), sort out digital identity (opinions on which I certainly have a few), and have confidence that the baseline of 21st century and digital gov skills are where they need to be across the civil service (and if I might thrown in a plug for that being in line with the OECD Framework for Digital Talent and Skills in the Public Sector).