The UK’s digital infrastructure is hiding big problems

There is endless political discussion about how digital technologies can transform the public sector and create cost savings. 

But the truth is, digitalisation in the UK is not doing all that well. A brief survey uncovers a picture of a digital government that is failing. The infrastructure is old, antiquated, and costly – it is full of creaking, fragmented systems that are vulnerable to collapse or to cyber attacks. Without urgent action, the UK risks going backwards and falling behind internationally.

 The current situation is akin to a digital “landlord special”, where effort is devoted to making things look nice and pretty rather than addressing important problems that lie below. It would be easy to point out the service delivery failures, from recent to the.But beyond looking at the individual failures of specific services (of which there are many) many don’t know what is going on behind the scenes.