State of Digital Government Review
On Jan 25th 2025, The Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology published this rapid review to assess how effectively the public sector uses digital technology to deliver services to people, communities and businesses. The review evaluates the technology base that supports these services and the readiness of public sector organisations, including central government departments, arm’s length bodies, executive agencies, the NHS, police and local government, to meet the government’s digital ambitions.
The State of Digital Government Review is grounded on a fact base covering perspectives from over 500 technical and non-technical leaders across 120 public organisations.
Summary
Massive Digital Resources: £26 billion annual spend, 100,000 digital professionals, millions of daily transactions.
Notable Successes: NHS app is the UK’s most used app; GOV.UK is a global benchmark.
Systemic Challenges: Digital progress often happens despite bureaucratic hurdles, not because of them.
Key Challenges Facing Digital Government
Declining Public Satisfaction: Service satisfaction dropped from 79% to 68% over a decade.
Under-Digitised Services: Almost half of central government and NHS services lack digital pathways.
Policy & Digital Disconnect: Digital teams often excluded from policy design, missing key efficiencies.
Falling Public Sector Productivity: £45 billion per year in unrealized savings due to inefficient digitisation.
Fragmented Technology & Data: Duplicate systems, siloed data, and underused AI limit effectiveness.
Aging Legacy Systems: 28% of central government systems are outdated, with some police and NHS systems up to 70% legacy-based.
Cybersecurity Risks: Critical outages and cyber threats are increasing across the public sector.
Underfunded Tech Investment: UK public sector tech spending is 30% below benchmarks, with legacy systems lacking funding.
Rigid Funding Models: Current financial structures don’t support modern, continuous digital improvement.
Slow Cloud Adoption: Central government leads in cloud use, but local authorities, policing, and NHS lag behind.
People & Skills Challenges
Overreliance on External Contractors: 55% of digital spending goes to third parties, driving higher costs and loss of institutional knowledge.
Shortage of Digital & Data Talent: Key public sector departments have fewer tech staff than private benchmarks.
Struggles in Talent Retention: Public sector digital salaries are significantly lower than private sector equivalents.
Lack of Digital Leadership: Digital is often not a top executive priority, unlike in the private sector.
Five Root Causes of the Digital Gap
Leadership: Digital transformation isn’t incentivized or prioritized in leadership structures.
Structure: Fragmented technology estates and service delivery create inefficiencies.
Measurement: Lack of standardised digital performance metrics makes improvement hard to track.
Talent: Uncompetitive pay and career paths limit digital workforce growth.
Funding: Budgets prioritize new projects over maintaining and improving existing digital services.
To Access the Report, click here.
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