HMRC legacy overhaul, HM Treasury guidance, AI Opportunities Unit
In this month's edition of the Digital Government News roundup, HMRC's ￡42 million savings from legacy overhaul, HM Treasury's new guidance for agile and digital projects, and an informative blog on busting myths surrounding the product-centric approach in areas like IT infrastructure and operations.?
All this and more in our monthly update.
In this edition…
?? HMRC legacy overhaul: HMRC’s annual report showed the work the department is doing to deal with its legacy systems. Three years ago, it had over 600 services hosted on over 7,000 servers in legacy data centres. From 2023 to 2024, it successfully migrated 372 of 545 critical services, with 49 remediated.
From 2023 to 2024, transforming and modernising its IT systems contributed ￡42 million in new efficiency savings. “Our IT infrastructure is evolving and adapting to meet increasingly complex demands, and we take opportunities to replace legacy IT infrastructure wherever possible," it said in the report.
?? HM Treasury guidance: HM Treasury has issued new guidance for creating business cases for agile and digital projects. “This should realise the potential of the agile approach to produce better systems more quickly and cheaply than conventional IT planning and project management while maintaining effective business planning and spending control processes,” the guidance says.
?? AI Opportunities Unit: The Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology will form a new “AI Opportunities Unit” to pool expertise and reap the benefits of AI. Tech entrepreneur Matt Clifford will lead the plan.
?? Taxonomy for AI in government: The Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI), based within DSIT, has developed a taxonomy for AI in government, classifying projects not by policy area but by user and technical challenge. It also published a set of assurance principles to deliver AI for public good.
?? HMRC app adoption: The HMRC app is becoming a go-to digital companion for tax and benefit tasks. In the last year, it added services that encouraged millions to use the app.
What else you need to know…
?? Megha J. from Home Office busts five myths surrounding the product-centric approach in IT infrastructure and operations.
?? This interesting blog by Alex Robertson discusses combining content design techniques with a large language model to extract insights from service assessment reports.
?? Staying with content design, Jenn Brookbanks and Catherine Flack show how it can add value to projects from start to finish.
?? Disclosure and Barring Service were the first department to partner with GOV.UK One Login, find out about their experience with the programme in this blog from Allan Robinson .
领英推荐
?? Gordon Thomson explains the work DVSA's doing to improve digital services to offer a modern and efficient service to its customers.
?? James McBride and Emma Taylor on how DBT’s AI governance framework is enabling the responsible use of AI.
?? CDDO’s Fotini Tsekmezoglou on the rollout and implementation of the cross-government Secure by Design approach.
?? GDS launched a new strategy for the GOV.UK Publishing Service. Tobi Ogunsina and Jade Fryer discuss how this will make it easier and quicker for them to publish content and help GOV.UK become multi-channel.
And finally…
Making AI simple: How we've quickly added value to border security
Club Executive Clayton Smith says implementing AI needn’t be complex and gives an example of how Zaizi demonstrated its effectiveness in improving border security.
?? Read more
Why diversity is good news for government – and good news for Britain
According to the Sutton Trust, this is by far the most diverse cabinet in terms of educational background ever recorded. But why is it important? Our Chief People Officer Tracey Robinson, MCIPD reflects on her journey and those of our employees to show how a person's background should not be a barrier but a building block to success.
?? Read more
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