Government ICT Conference Yvonne Gallagher January 2019

The interactions and accountability between central and local government are complex

Enablers and barriers to reform

Enablers and barriers: issues to consider

Data sharing Government has discussed improving data sharing for at least 20 years – for example, Modernising Government 1999; Service Transformation (Varney Report) 2006. Progress seems slow: The basic data doesn’t match – huge variability in the quality and format of data within the public sector due to a lack of standards across government and within organisations Interoperability issues – lack of standardisation across and within departmental families often prevents interoperability between IT systems, e.g. more than one police system; lack of information sharing between prisons and probation Legacy databases – organisations often can’t implement recommendations based on data because changes to data can’t be supported by legacy databases GDPR has added to an already unanswered question – if a shared dataset of personal data is brought together of equal value to different services, who ‘owns’ it and maintains its integrity and security (with the associated cost) There is an important role to help address cross-cutting issues such as standards and rules on shared dataset ownership and sharing protocols

Cloud transition Overview Major developments 1 Major developments 2 The primary characteristics are on-demand, self-service capabilities – in effect “renting”. There are a number of models (public, private, hybrid, community) and cloud services can encompass software, platforms and infrastructure Cloud services can be more flexible and secure than on-premises facilities, but introduce additional risks to be managed, primarily relating to loss of control over personal data Major developments 1 UK government has had a policy of “cloud first” (by which it means public cloud) since 2013, and this was reaffirmed in January 2017 by a Cabinet Office (GDS) announcement that, for the vast majority of government business, “the internet is OK” The major players are Microsoft Azure, Google and Amazon Web Services The pace of adoption of cloud in UK government was given a boost in 2016 by Microsoft and Amazon establishing UK-based data centres in order to alleviate concerns about data sovereignty and the possibility of UK government data being stored in, and potentially accessible by, overseas jurisdictions Major developments 2 In early 2017 it was confirmed that the PSN is being phased out with no central replacement Key observations Organisations may underplay risks and cite cost reduction as a reason for moving to cloud services, primarily through not having to maintain as great an in-house capability Organisations should not automatically assume that cloud will always work out cheaper. Gartner, for example, have estimated that overall UK government savings from cloud will be relatively modest