Why the UK government can’t afford to ignore the cloud

Hyve is a Business Reporter client.

The age of data is straining the UK government’s legacy systems to its limits. And while the 2022 government analysis sees simple online citizen transactions prioritised for digital transformation, critical functions such as pension management, criminal records and border control continue to run on outdated systems.

This cannot last, as efficiency savings is one of the government’s primary struggles. The operational landscape is complex, and the challenge of collecting and managing data will only continue to grow as modern society develops.

The private sector, on the other hand, has long since solved this problem using the cloud. If the government wants to follow suit, it should consider its existing legacy IT systems to determine which critical workloads are ready to adopt secure IT solutions to drive productivity.

It must act – and it must act swiftly, before it buckles under the digital weight of the data age.

The current situation

The government’s operational landscape is vast and complex. It requires over half a million employees to run, and the day-to-day operational costs of its public services, grants and admin were estimated at £456 billion in 2020-21. Evidently, it’s a monumental undertaking.

The sheer scale of the landscape is what makes it so hard to implement a coordinated, system-wide digital transformation. Although, it’s not for a lack of trying. Over the last 25 years, the government has launched 11 digital strategies to address these issues of usability and efficiency. And, according to the HM Treasury’s 2021 Spending Review, the government is set to invest another £8 billion in digital, data, and technology transformation by 2025.

But, as with any large organisation, modernising that which isn’t broken is easier said than done, especially with continued budget freezes and reductions across the public sector.

As a result, many of the government’s systems are now decades old. While they may not be “broken”, they’re unable to keep up with the rising tide of data, and their outdated performance represents a major constraint to efficiency. Not only does this make tasks unnecessarily complicated and time-consuming, it also exposes the government to service disruptions, downtime and cyber-attacks.

Talents migrate to the professional sector

To make matters worse, the government is losing the war for IT talent. Currently, only 4 per cent of civil servants are digital professionals, compared with the industry average of between 8 and 12 per cent. There’s also a 20 per cent reduction in digital, data and technology apprenticeships, and a 7 per cent increase in these vacancies from April 2022 to October 2022. Naturally, this is unsustainable. Costs will soar if things continue at this rate, and it’ll also force the government to outsource its cyber-security – adding yet another cost to the list.

Naturally, the government’s legacy systems contribute to this migration. Working with any kind of outdated tool is frustrating, but because of the speed with which technology develops, falling too far behind can cripple the future of an IT career. Conversely, strategic businesses take advantage of this speed, using the newest technology to attract talent. In other words, tackling legacy systems may be difficult but neglecting them is far worse, resulting in a vicious spiral of rising costs and talent droughts.

Change must happen. And it must happen now.

Solutions in the cloud

The cloud can be one such change. By implementing this technology, the government could easily enhance its adaptability and flexibility when collecting and managing data. It would be especially effective to services such as the Pension Services Computer System, for example, which manages records of people receiving state pensions and/or pension credits. Annual state pension payments total around £104 billion, and pension credit around £5 billion. Yet it’s still being handled manually through legacy systems.

Another great area for cloud tech would be the Police National Computer – the UK’s main database of criminal records used by all frontline police forces – which was introduced in 1974. And no, that’s not a typo. This age-old system handles around 150 million searches, updates annually and is in desperate need of an upgrade. Similarly, there’s the Warnings Index, which stores and presents the watchlist for people entering the UK.

Evidently, these systems run critical missions that matter greatly to society. Downtime, disruptions (or worse) and inaccuracies due to old data will have severe consequences in both the short and long term. To summarise, the cloud would provide the government with:

The bottom line

To accommodate the age of data and turn the tide of the talent war, the government must act. Currently, only simple online citizen transactions are being prioritised for digital transformation – and that’s not enough. The government must go further. While it cannot – and should not – upgrade every system blindly, it needs to evaluate its IT ecosystem to identify which of its critical workloads are ripe for migration to the cloud. The longer it waits, the bigger the bill grows.

And we all know who ends up paying for it.