3.2 Designing and delivering public services: analysis of the UK
Estimated read time: 29 minutes
A modern digital government does more than simply move services online. It reimagines how government interacts with citizens, putting people at the heart of policymaking, service design, and operational delivery. The UK’s experience since the creation of GDS in 2011-12 is a study in both ambition and the messy reality of transformative change. This chapter explores how the UK’s digital government journey measures up against how the OECD judges ‘what good looks like’ in this area.
User-centred design and inclusive access
When GDS was born it championed a radical shift away from traditional, top-down service provision to a more user-centred mindset. The original digital principles and subsequent government design principles placed the emphasis on the user and their needs. Those values were embodied by GOV.UK, stripped of departmental branding and structured around simpler, clearer content. It has become a global exemplar, studied and emulated worldwide, signalling a coherent vision from the UK government of meeting the public where they are.
The Digital By Default Service Standard, introduced in April 2014 after a year-long beta, cemented these ideas. It mandated user research, iterative design, and many other concrete ideas as non-negotiables. Over time, the standard evolved (a story superbly documented by Vicky Teinaki) to recognise that service design transcends mere technology.
Yet today, it is jarring to find “Digital by Default” so prominent. Originally embraced as a slogan motivated by good intentions of modernising interactions and cutting costs, the push to move services online inadvertently marginalised those unable to navigate digital channels. “Assisted Digital” strategies, meant to bridge this gap, vary widely and are outsourced to voluntary sector partners like Citizens Advice Bureaus rather than being treated as core to an integrated government approach. It means that truly inclusive service design—something that was once championed as fundamental to the mission of GDS—risks slipping backwards, particularly for those outside mainstream digital participation.
I find this tension in the rise and fall of the Empathy Lab at GDS. Once a hub for inclusive innovation it was open to any public sector employee to access tools that could simulate impairments and give a sense of experiencing services through the lens of excluded users. Although GDS closed the Empathy Lab in 2022, its ethos has survived in pockets of government. However, the loss of such a clear demonstration of central leadership does raise concerns about the placement of accessibility in GDS priority setting.
The separation of GDS and CDDO (discussed in Chapter 1.2 (26 minutes to read)) has diluted the once-thriving culture around the Government Service Manual. Dedicated user researchers are in place in many departments, but their influence varies depending on senior leaders’ commitment to inclusive design and willingness to challenge long-established policy assumptions. In a system where ministerial priorities (or the ministers themselves) can change overnight and budgets are perpetually under scrutiny, the discipline of engaging with users early and often can end up relegated to the margins.
What we see, then, is a tension: the UK’s leading services are clear, effective, and accessible, while in the long tail others are held back by legacy practices, an inconsistent appetite for truly user-centred design and the constraints of policy inertia rather than user needs. Even so, the UK remains an international reference point. Many countries still emulate GOV.UK’s simplicity, and dedicated teams continue pushing user-centred ideals forward—proof that the original vision, though battered, endures.
Omni-channel service delivery
While “user-centred” defines what services feel like, “omni-channel” determines how users engage—online, by phone, in person, or by post, depending on individual needs and preferences. True omni-channel design means every route works harmoniously, with consistent information and minimal duplication.
In the UK, this ideal collides with reality with different channels still being thought of as separate entities. A citizen might begin an application online, run into a snag that requires a phone call, and be asked to repeat everything they already entered on the website. Or worse, they might discover that the paper form differs from the online one and needs entirely different documentation. The mismatch between digital and non-digital channels, along with departmental silos, undermines the sense of a seamless, omni-channel experience.
This is especially true when it comes to the physical, in-person experience of engaging with the UK government. The UK has long recognised the potential savings that can be derived from channel shift from physical locations to the internet. Over time the publicly accessible physical service channel footprint of the UK public sector has shrunk considerably. While local authorities may still operate in-person service centres today it is only DWP’s network of Jobcentre Plus that stands as a Great Britain and Northern Ireland wide presence of central government in our communities.
The drive to save money and promote channel shift online has left a vacuum for people who need in-person help. Removing channels does not remove those needs but instead sends people to any other available source of help and assistance. That could be a library, a GP surgery, a court, a school, a place of worship, A&E, the police station—spaces never designed for the support they are being required to provide.
There is so much potential for reimaging the built environment in the same way that we reimagined the Internet. What if “GOV.UK on the High Street”1 took the same approach to GOV.UK in seamlessly combining services under one roof as an in-person reflection of the online experience? In this way the UK could learn from Canada, Chile, Greece, and Portugal (among others) who have successfully blended the online experience with the ‘real’ in order to provide the most human, accessible and effective services to those with the greatest needs. If digital channels are more efficient and cheaper, government must ensure that the non-digital options remain robust, particularly for those on the wrong side of the digital divide.
Without this, the promise of omni-channel service remains unfulfilled. While the UK embraced digital channels early and effectively for certain high-volume services the omni-channel user experience can still feel disjointed. Closing the gap demands deeper collaboration between agencies, stronger data-sharing policies, and the political will to invest in robust offline support.
Proactive citizen engagement and co-design
Modern service design means more than retrofitting user feedback into prebaked policies. It requires involving users from the earliest stages of research and policy formation. This “proactive engagement” can range from co-design workshops to ongoing user panels that shape iterative improvements. It also implies that governments look beyond typical, digitally savvy participants, intentionally reaching out to underrepresented groups, rural residents, or those who might be excluded due to disability or limited digital literacy.
The UK has always been able to point to good examples of these sorts of activities taking place in limited ways. GOV.UK went through public alpha and beta phases and published much of its code base openly as well as frequently blogging, publishing roadmaps and even making backlogs openly accessible. Some departments and agencies maintain a proactive posture—hosting hackathons, forming citizen advisory boards, or working with charities to craft new digital tools for specific communities.
Yet, in general, this ambition flickers inconsistently. Politically sensitive areas, such as welfare, or immigration, are rarely able to embrace participatory methods. The barriers are familiar: tight budgets, risk aversion, and a civil service environment and political climate in which formal consultation can feel tokenistic rather than genuinely collaborative. In many cases, departmental teams lack the resources or the mandate to embark on robust co-creation with citizens, especially when timeframes are compressed by ministerial demands.
Additionally, tensions between political imperatives and user-centred evidence can erode trust in the process. If a co-design workshop highlights user frustrations that imply a need to change a policy direction, but the ministerial line remains fixed, civil servants can feel stuck. The result is “pseudo-engagement”—an appearance of collaboration, but without a real willingness (or authority) to alter the fundamentals. Over time, the public may become sceptical of such exercises, perceiving them as checkbox activities. The net effect is that the UK’s once-ground breaking approach to citizen involvement risks losing momentum or even credibility.
And yet, the OECD’s 2023 Digital Government Index ranked the UK 1st in the User-Driven dimension, and 6th for Open by Default, a reminder of the residual strengths of the country. The challenge is how to expand genuine co-design beyond digital elites, ensuring rural residents, disabled citizens, and digitally excluded communities can play a role in steering service reform. Without this, the UK risks reducing participation to a performative exercise that might influence the design of a website but not the underlying policy.
Commitment to reducing digital divides
Modern public services deliver immense value only if the people who most need them can actually access them. The pandemic laid bare a harsh truth: digital exclusion isn’t a niche issue—it’s structural.
For the 2.6 million UK households struggling to afford mobile data, the 1.9 million without broadband, and the one in six adults (8 million) lacking essential digital skills, ‘digital by default’ isn’t a convenience, it’s a barrier.
Yet the UK hasn’t had a digital inclusion strategy since Frances Maude’s era, in December 2014. It is genuinely shocking to discover that a single, cohesive plan has been absent for ten years. Of course departments have launched various initiatives to improve connectivity or teach digital skills—sometimes in partnership with local charities or the private sector—but the overall picture remains fragmented and unable to stem the tide. Households below the Minimum Digital Living Standard now include 45% of families, while 570,000 young people lack both devices and home internet. These aren’t individual failures; they’re systemic fractures.
The retreat from physical services compounds the crisis. While moving services online promised financial savings, it also reduced the physical presence of government in many communities. People who either lack digital skills or the financial means for devices and connectivity find themselves stranded—sometimes forced to travel long distances or rely on patchy volunteer-led assistance. The cost-of-living crisis heightens the urgency: if someone struggles to afford broadband or data for a phone, then every digital service effectively becomes a barrier.
Bridging this divide demands more than stopgaps. It requires treating internet access as a utility, subsidising devices for low-income families, integrating digital skills into adult education, and designing omni-channel services. Most critically, it needs a central strategy—one that coordinates Whitehall, local councils, and civil society. Until then, the UK’s digital ambition will remain a tale of two nations..
Agile and iterative service delivery
The UK’s early digital reforms marked a seismic shift: agile methodologies replaced the era of monolithic, years-long IT projects that routinely overran budgets and underdelivered. GDS championed short development cycles, cross-functional teams, and relentless user testing. For a time, this felt revolutionary: the migration of hundreds of departmental websites into GOV.UK in 15 months showcased the power of a philosophy to release early, gather feedback, iterate often.
Yet this momentum stalled. While agile rhetoric persists, its practice has collided with Whitehall’s institutional DNA. Departmental hierarchies, risk-averse procurement rules, and frequent leadership turnover have diluted the model. Senior civil servants and ministers—many rotating through roles in less than a year—rarely internalise agile’s core premise: that user needs, not prewritten specifications, should drive design. Without consistent champions, agile becomes a veneer. Teams churn out lengthy requirements documents, navigate labyrinthine sign-offs, and conform to rigid procurement cycles that mock the very principle of iteration.
But the UK already holds proof of the possibilities. DWP’s initial approach to Universal Credit was a byword for a typical UK government IT failure as it collapsed under the weight of outdated “big bang” delivery. The replacement approach, rooted in agile principles, has quietly onboarded millions of households with minimal friction—proof that iterative design, when given political and organisational cover, can deliver at scale. The programme’s controversies stem from policy choices, not technical execution. Ten years ago, few would have predicted this outcome.
Yet this success is not the story most would highlight. They are more likely to highlight the Horizon scandal. That catastrophic failure of waterfall development was built on opaque specifications and a near-total disregard for user research—precisely the pitfalls agile seeks to avoid. The human cost—lives ruined, reputations destroyed—stands as a grim monument to the dangers of rigid, unaccountable IT procurement. Maybe agile’s emphasis on transparency and adaptation could have prevented this tragedy. Instead, the Post Office doubled down on denial, mistaking silence for stability.
While agile successes like Universal Credit are now the norm, the UK’s digital narrative remains skewed. High-profile failures (nearly always tied to the very approaches that GDS warned against) dominate public memory, while incremental triumphs go unnoticed. To reclaim its promise, the UK must confront this divide. Iteration cannot thrive where only failure is visible. It requires leaders willing to defend experimentation and shield teams from short-term political noise, procurement frameworks that reward learning over compliance, and a public discourse that celebrates adaptation as much as outcomes. The tools exist—the Service Manual remains a blueprint. What’s missing is not the expertise but courage: the courage to trust teams, to tolerate small stumbles, and prioritise user needs over political whims or vendor lock-in. Without this shift, the UK risks repeating the mistakes of Horizon while squandering the promise of Universal Credit.
Collaborative partnerships and open innovation
Thriving digital ecosystems rely on partnerships that stretch beyond government’s walls—harnessing private sector innovation, academic expertise, and non-profit insights. The UK’s journey here is one of partial success: bold early strides in fostering competition and collaboration, tempered by institutional inertia and a reluctance to fully embrace open innovation.
The early days of GDS saw a deliberate push to break up mammoth contracts, encouraging SMEs and startups to bid for smaller, more manageable pieces of work. This shift was both a reaction to years of high-profile IT failures under large system integrators and a belief in the dynamism smaller firms could bring. Yet, despite these intentions, incumbents remain the safer bet for many departments. Procurement processes are complex, requiring significant legal and financial overhead that often deters smaller players. Decision-makers, wary of managing multiple SME relationships, frequently default to familiar giants.
The UK introduced the Digital Marketplace with the G-Cloud and Digital Outcomes and Specialists (DOS) frameworks to open up competition and support more flexible sourcing. In 2023/24 the Crown Commercial Service dashboards indicate £4.4bn was spent through G-Cloud and DOS in 2023/24 with Small and Medium Enterprises accounting for 39.3% of that total. There is a strong challenger element to the UK’s GovTech supplier community but the top earners remain the usual suspects.
| G-Cloud 2023/24 (total £3bn) | DOS 2023/24 (total £1.4bn) |
|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services (£250m) | CapGemini (£122m) |
| IBM (£67m) | PA Consulting (£89m) |
| CapGemini (£59m) | Deloitte (£81m) |
| Civica (£44m) | Equal Experts (£72m) |
| Softcat (£41) | Kainos (£65m) |
| Gartner (£34m) | Cognizant (£60m) |
| Accenture (£34m) | TPX Impact (£41m) |
| Microsoft (£32m) | 6 point 6 (£39m) |
| Deloitte (£31m) | CGI (£39m) |
| KPMG (£30m) | BJSS (£35m) |
The more visible interest in disrupting and shaping the supply side of digital government seems to have waned. However, while the envelope may not be pushed as dramatically as it was, it would be wrong to overlook the significant progress that has been made. The norms of 2024 are unrecognisable from those of 2010. Multi-disciplinary teams now own services across the public sector, releasing improvements regularly, understanding their users, and responding to real-time data.
There remains an ongoing need to embed these practices into funding models, securing senior leadership buy-in, and reforming procurement regimes. It is the combination of leadership from HM Treasury, individual organisations, and external suppliers that will mean this becomes boring and ordinary practice and no longer an argument about transformation.
Collaboration in the UK also includes relationships among government agencies themselves. Central and local government have often wrestled over control of data, digital platforms, and infrastructure. The two-tier local authority structure introduces additional complexity, with counties and boroughs managing overlapping responsibilities. While some regions—particularly those with devolved powers—have forged innovative cross-sector partnerships, the overall picture remains fragmented. The NHS operates its own digital infrastructure, with limited integration into wider government systems. Policing has its Police Digital Service, Parliament its Parliament Digital Service, and schools and universities rely on local decision-making with no cross-cutting support.
This fragmentation is starkest in local government. Councils face unique challenges: shrinking budgets, legacy systems, and citizen expectations shaped by GOV.UK’s seamless UX. While some of the common components have been made available for local authorities this is as a dividend from the work of central government, for central government and not from a response to the needs of local authorities or local residents. For over a decade, there has been debate about whether central government should create a Local Government Digital Service to provide tools, guidance, and technical solutions for common challenges2. The shape and nature of the right vehicle to provide that support is legitimately up for discussion and while opening up central resources is a start, local authorities need more than hand-me-downs—they need co-designed solutions that empower them to focus on their communities’ specific needs.
The UK’s digital transformation has made remarkable strides, but its next phase demands a renewed commitment to collaboration—across sectors, across tiers of government, and across public and private boundaries. This means reforming procurement to level the playing field for SMEs, scaling best practices and common components, and empowering all sectors with tailored support to respond to the challenges they face.
Continuous improvement through feedback and measurement
Data-driven decision-making lies at the core of a mature digital government and will be picked up in detail in Chapter 4 (2 minutes to read). When GDS introduced dashboards and the Performance Platform, it ushered in a new level of transparency around service metrics—citizens and officials alike could see real-time performance data on usage, completion times, and more. This transparency encouraged teams to spot bottlenecks, refine their services, and respond to user needs based on tangible evidence.
Regrettably, the Performance Platform was eventually retired, leaving many services without a shared, public reporting mechanism. In the absence of a uniform platform, there is now incredibly limited information available about the services in government or their performance data. Even within the services operated by GDS there is no performance data available for GOV.UK and the approaches taken by GOV.UK Notify and GOV.UK Pay offer no ability to understand trends over time.
Indeed, the narrative that accompanied the idea of the new “Great” standard for evaluating the top 75 government services indicated that there would be some effort to re-establish performance criteria but the public documentation of progress and access to the methodology remains limited, making it difficult for anyone outside government to verify claims of improvement. A blog post from May 2024 indicates that 21 of the 75 are now “Great” but there is no public information as to what, how or why that statement has been made. It is a far cry from the way in which the exemplar services were communicated or the Performance Platform operated.
Yet the principle of continuous improvement remains an underlying strength of the UK’s digital story. Far from simply paying performance data lip service in order to tick off a criteria on the Service Standard many civil servants believe passionately in measuring outcomes, iterating on the basis of real data, and maintaining an honest conversation about what is working. If the government can recapture its earlier approach to transparency and unify its performance metrics, the path to continuous improvement could once again be a defining feature of UK digital governance.
Proactive and seamless service delivery
The most ambitious vision for digital government is proactive, seamless services: anticipating needs, eliminating redundant steps, and cutting across departmental boundaries. Rather than forcing people to re-enter the same data for different benefits, government does the heavy lifting—joining up entitlements and processes in a frictionless user journey.
Yet, in the UK, progress toward this vision is halting. There is a significant role played by data (which we will come back to in Chapter 4 (2 minutes to read)), other organisations in government (not least local government), and the in-person challenges of real-world interactions from various actors but I would argue that one of the most critical challenges when it comes to this vision is the country’s stunted approach to digital identity.
Internationally, digital identity has emerged as a cornerstone of modern governance. In Estonia, digital identity enables citizens to vote, access healthcare, and sign contracts in seconds. The EU’s cross-border Digital Identity Wallet, set for 2026 rollout, promises seamless public and private sector integration across 27 nations. By contrast, the UK ranks among the OECD’s least advanced digital identity ecosystems (although, in fairness that could be said about other members of the G7 as well).
This divergence reflects decades of unresolved debate. Since the collapse of Labour’s 2006 ID card scheme—a casualty of public backlash over privacy—the UK’s discourse on identity has been dominated by suspicion rather than solutions. Concerns about state overreach, while valid, have calcified into policy paralysis. The result is a landscape of confusion: no unified strategy for public and private sectors, no recognition of entities (‘legal persons’), and no clarity on how to reconcile competing systems.
Take the current patchwork. Central government pushes GOV.UK One Login for central government citizen services, while DSIT develops a Trust Framework for use by the private sector. Neither addresses entities, and neither interacts with the NHS identity solution, which post-pandemic is probably the most widely adopted and accepted digital identity in the UK. This fragmentation isn’t just inefficient; it’s self-defeating.
The UK keeps trying to embrace digital identity without actually embracing digital identity. GOV.UK Verify was a clever and sophisticated approach to the problem space and while it had many flaws it is over simplistic to dismiss it as an abject failure without stating the case for what could or should have been done instead, given the constraints of a politics disinclined to engage with the public discourse. We’re now building an iteration of a broadly similar premise and it may well go on to enjoy greater levels of adoption by users and government alike. But are we sure that when we go through this round of time, energy and money that the UK be closer to seeing digital identity as the ubiquitous good it is in countries around the world?
Any viable solution for digital identity has to work in the analogue world as well as online. The furore over voter ID was a good opportunity to consider these opportunities. People were unable to vote because of voter ID but digital identity did not feature in the debate at all, indicating just how difficult it is to engage with the possibilities that digital identity might offer if we recognised the need for digital identity as a cornerstone to modern Britain.
Regardless of the solution there is a gap in the UK experience when it comes to having access to the tools that can help reassure people that they can trust what is being done at the intersection of their identity and their data. Such tools to provide insight into the use of data or the management of consents exist in many other countries.
Perhaps the proposed GOV.UK app will bring these conversations to a head by rooting its activity firmly in the needs which app-based persistence can meet. Nonetheless, I am personally deeply concerned that the app should be announced in pursuit of nebulous ideas of ‘growth’ that owe more to the world of publishing content than proactive, seamless experiences of government services at hand as and when they’re needed. ‘Growth’ as a concept is the complete opposite of the desired outcome for digital government. When government does the hard work to proactively meet our needs then it minimises the need for us to make government content and transactions anything other than an ad hoc, marginal, part of life.
Meanwhile, the world moves forward. At the OECD I led work on the OECD Recommendation on the Governance of Digital Identity which has heavily influenced the G20 General Principles on the Governance of Digital Identity. There is a growing global consensus positioning digital identity as a cross-border enabler of trade and border management. The ambition of eIDAS 2.0 in the EU imagines that Slovenian entrepreneurs will access Spanish contracts with a click, while Austrian families set up home in Sweden with ease. The UK risks further isolation. Our siloed systems ignore the interoperability that is increasingly defining digital economies
Thus, while the UK’s strategic goals gesture toward a proactive service model—evident in the aim to bring 50 of the government’s top 75 identified services to a high standard by 2025—aspiration clashes with reality. A seamless state demands more than piecemeal fixes. It requires treating digital identity not as a technical add-on but as a public good: universally accessible, trusted across sectors, and designed for both the online and physical worlds. Without this, the promise of proactive government will remain just that: a promise.
Standardised, common components to move at scale and with pace
The UK’s vision of “Government as a Platform” (GaaP) began as a radical proposition: stop rebuilding the same wheels. Instead of letting every department design its own payment system, notifications tool, forms, or website, why not invest that energy into shared components that all services could reuse? This would free service teams to focus on user needs, not duplicated infrastructure.
GOV.UK was the original platform, proving the value of common solutions and demonstrating an ongoing, continuous commitment to improving the experience for civil servants as well as members of the public. The exemplar programme of 2013-2015 identified other common needs as teams worked across the country on 25 high profile services. GOV.UK Pay emerged to streamline payments: over 1000 services now use it seamlessly in their digital services or, through its payment pages functionality, as part of services offered via any channel and without requiring any technical knowledge. GOV.UK Notify has become the backbone of citizen communication, sending millions of emails, text messages and letters at a fraction of legacy costs. These tools weren’t just functional; they reshaped expectations. Citizens began to experience government as a cohesive entity, not a maze of disconnected entities.
The quiet hero of this story is the GOV.UK Design System. Built by the community of designers and researchers across government, it codifies accessible, user-tested patterns—buttons, forms, questions, error messages—into flexible standards. This isn’t uniformity for its own sake; it’s democratising best practices from the public sector for the public sector.
Yet alongside these successes are cautionary tales. GOV.UK Platform as a Service, GOV.UK Registers and GOV.UK Verify were all decommissioned without being able to prove their value and earn sustainable levels of adoption despite the incontrovertible needs for securely built, continuously improved, hosting, data and identity. Most glaringly, the GOV.UK Submit team—prototyping reusable forms—was disbanded in 2017, despite robust user research. It took six years to resurrect the work as GOV.UK Forms, a delay that stifled progress for all services reliant on paper applications and without access to the budget or capability to carry out their own digital transformation.
The problem isn’t really technical—it’s cultural. Shared components thrive in collaborative ecosystems but Whitehall still behaves like a federation of fiefdoms. Some of the highest profile services in the UK government continue to prefer bespoke solutions or are locked into contractual obligations. Each time a major contract comes up for renewal, there is a chance to pivot to shared platforms—but it hasn’t always happened (there are some surprisingly high profile services that don’t use GOV.UK Pay or GOV.UK Notify).
There are bright spots. The Government Technology Code of Practice and the Service Standard emphasise reusability, interoperability, and open standards. There may well be opportunities for departmental digital teams to show leadership and build their own components that slot into the broader ecosystem. It will be interesting to see the extent to the which the GOV.UK app further offers opportunities for services to be assembled that build on these components. However, the UK’s modular tools have not enjoyed the clarity of vision in recent years to really revolutionise the user experience of citizen, and public servant, in the ‘long tail’ of delivery. Standardised, common components are a public good in theory but optional in practice.
The UK’s GaaP journey feels like a story of half-won battles. The tools exist, the case is proven, but without the leadership to prioritise collective endeavour over departmental autonomy, the revolution stalls. To move at scale and pace, government must treat shared components not as optional extras, but as public infrastructure—the invisible rails on which user-centred services run.
Scalable, cloud-based infrastructure for flexibility and agility
Cloud computing promises elasticity, the capacity to meet surges in demand, and a reduction in legacy overheads. The UK officially adopted a “cloud-first” policy in 2013, encouraging departments to migrate services wherever feasible. In many cases this migration has been successful and transformative.
Still, “cloud-first” in policy does not necessarily translate into uniform practice. Departmental cultures, procurement red tape, legacy vendor lock-ins, and internal security concerns often complicate transitions. Some parts of the public sector remain saddled with on-premise data centres due to intricate legacy systems that are costly or risky to modernise. Others worry about the legal and compliance ramifications of storing data in commercial clouds—especially if the cloud provider’s servers are located outside the UK.
Moreover, the potential for microservices and modular architectures—so vital to agile development—can only be realised if the underlying infrastructure supports them. While pockets of microservice-based solutions exist, particularly in newly built services, older platforms can still be monolithic. Large-scale re-platforming efforts involve significant cost, risk, and time. In an environment where ministers often demand visible deliverables within short electoral cycles, comprehensive modernisation projects can stall.
Cloud adoption is also uneven at local levels. Smaller local authorities or agencies may lack the budget, expertise, or confidence to manage cloud migration. They rely on older frameworks or depend on commercial providers that are not fully cloud-native. The result is a mixed environment across the wider UK public sector—some advanced, some lagging behind.
Security is another critical dimension. Moving to the cloud does not automatically solve cybersecurity challenges. Although modern cloud setups can offer robust security measures, the shift requires new skill sets among IT teams, strong governance for identity and access management, and comprehensive risk assessments. Legacy systems remain especially vulnerable—particularly if they are only partially integrated with modern cloud-based layers, creating potential attack vectors. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) provides guidance, yet the sheer scope of government IT means consistent adherence is often patchy.
Notwithstanding these hurdles, cloud-based infrastructure has established itself as a default assumption for new projects. For most new services, “on-prem” solutions are no longer the norm. If the political environment stabilises enough to fund wholesale legacy migration, the UK could see significant gains in responsiveness and cost-efficiency. But that requires cross-departmental coordination, robust financing models, and an enduring commitment to the principle that cloud is more than a cost-saving measure—it’s a foundation for agile, user-centred governance.
Building trust through accessibility, security and transparency
Public trust forms the bedrock of any digital government initiative. Citizens must feel confident their data is safe, that services are built to high standards of accessibility, and that government as a whole is transparent about how it operates. This trust is not a mere by-product; it is an essential enabler of digital uptake, particularly in times of rapid societal change.
On security, the UK has taken commendable steps with the establishment of the NCSC, setting security standards for public bodies, and emphasising “Secure by Design” principles. Newer digital services incorporate these standards, but the challenge is the older estate: some legacy systems remain vulnerable, with patching and modernisation efforts perpetually lagging. Given the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks, the public sector’s capacity to defend itself is under continued pressure. A breach involving sensitive citizen data could significantly erode confidence in digital transformation overall.
Accessibility, as noted earlier, also underpins trust. People must be able to use government services without extraordinary difficulty, regardless of disability, device constraints, or language barriers. While the UK has mandated compliance with WCAG standards for public sector websites, enforcement remains patchwork. Citizens who encounter flawed online forms, poorly labelled buttons, or inadequate alternative text for images may lose faith in the competence of the system. Meanwhile, the retreat from physical offices leaves those who depend on in-person support feeling marginalised.
Transparency once emerged as a particular strength for the UK. Under GDS leadership, open source principles were championed, and the Performance Platform gave near real-time insights into how services were functioning. These initiatives cultivated a sense that government was open, data-driven, and accountable for results. More recently, the retirement of the Performance Platform and reduced impetus behind open data have dampened that impression. Inconsistent publication of service metrics can create a perception that government is less forthcoming, even if data collection is still happening behind the scenes.
Further complicating matters is the sense that policy changes often overshadow best-practice design. Citizens who see services shift unpredictably due to ministerial changes—perhaps with the removal of certain features or new rules about eligibility—may perceive government as inconsistent or lacking a coherent direction. Trust erodes when people sense that good digital design can be undone by short-term politics.
Nevertheless, trust remains salvageable. Many pockets of government demonstrate unwavering commitment to robust security, meaningful accessibility, and accountability through public reporting. If these commitments become more uniform, if the centre invests properly in modernising older systems, and if leadership once again recognises that transparency is a powerful driver of public confidence, the UK could reclaim a position as a global standard-bearer in digital government.
- Not every community that needs such a service will have a High Street ↩︎
- Including these thoughts of mine from 2014 ↩︎