“Dysfunctional, damaging and sometimes dangerous”

“Dysfunctional, damaging and sometimes dangerous” That’s how the Public Accounts Committee describes government technology in the press release that accompanies their latest report, “Challenges in

What can politicians learn from Universal Credit?

The unfortunate saga of Universal Credit is a powerful reminder of the repeated failure to successfully integrate policy making with technology. A failure that comes

UK Government single sign-in since 2001

Here’s my attempt at a very simplified slide summary of UK cross-government single sign-in since 2001: If you have any difficulties seeing the embedded Google

The political cost of legacy systems

Passengers arriving at airports across the UK recently encountered irritating delays because of problems with the automatic eGates. One likely cause is the Home Office’s

remembering government.direct – the first interactive green paper

“Top 5% of all Web sites!” “Networking industry awards!” “Awards for excellence!” No, these accolades aren’t for GOV.UK. They’re for the much earlier 1994 central

The wellsprings of UK digital reform part 2 – separating porcine lip enhancement from transformation

Previously This is the second episode of a mini-series of blogs looking at the origins of the UK government’s digital reform programme since 2010. Part

the identity / data divide

Proving who someone is online and letting them access their personal data – such as their tax, welfare, pension or medical records – often get

the canary that ceased to be

Yesterday I resigned from the Cabinet Office‘s Privacy and Consumer Advisory Group (PCAG) nearly 6 years after I first became involved, initially as its Chair and more

NAO on ‘Digital Transformation in Government’

Yesterday saw the release of the National Audit Office’s report on ‘Digital Transformation in Government‘. The main conclusion from Amyas Morse, head of the NAO,

Escaping waterfall government and the myth of ‘digital transformation’

Writing with my colleague Cassian Young, in a new article in Computer Weekly we consider why an agile approach to digital programmes will not transform

“re-engineer government, abolish government departments”

Ed Vaizey MP, former minister at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), made the following comments in a recent interview: “I would completely re-engineer government.

dev, DevOps and trusted systems

Software’s coming home Software development and technical architecture design have been taken back in-house over the past 5 years – ending the era when Whitehall departments outsourced almost everything to