Don't believe the hype: UK's £455m Government Digital Service lacks a clear role – fresh audit

The track record of the UK's Government Digital Service has come under fire by the National Audit Office, which today said it has “unclear accountabilities". Many are bound to read the watchdog's latest report through the prism of their own confirmation bias. Those who believe that everything was great until former head Mike …

[Mike Pellatt]

The seventies and eighties called. Reads just like the history of the CCTA (Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency) all over again. Plus ca change.

[Allonymous Coward]

And the nineties and noughties. A short history of government digital strategies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but the CCTA was dead and buried by then. Lessons learnt, errr, not.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Or Jim Hacker's ministry of administrative affairs

[Andy Parker 1]

Since UK government departments can't agree on a single system of how to identify an individual, using paper or otherwise, I don't expect any digital system will necessarily work any better.

However, and as a major plus for us techies, I understand that there's still plenty of money to be made from the use of sealing wax, string, and various other adhesive substances, in an attempt to try to cross-reference the various population-scale databases that exist within the UK.

At last count I had about 7 or 8 "unique" identifiers that tell various government departments that I'm me. And I'm just a regular Joe :-).

[Doctor Syntax]

However, and as a major plus for all of us techies, I understand that there's still plenty of money to be made from the use of sealing wax, string, and various other adhesive substances, in an attempt to try to cross-reference the various population-scale databases that exist within the UK.

FTFY

[GruntyMcPugh]

"At last count I had about 7 or 8 "unique" identifiers that tell various government departments that I'm me. And I'm just a regular Joe :-)."

It doesn't help that the NHS changed numbering system either, it's now in a numerical 3-3-4 format, (which I don't know) but I can recall the 5-alpha 3-numeric I was issued with at birth.

But yes, it is awkward we have NHS, NI, Passport, Driver's License, EHIC, Polling ID, etc, all with different numbers. If the Govt had tried introducing ID cards saying it will simplify these disparate IDs on various databases and lower IT costs, they might have been more successful, but the 'it will safeguard us from terrorism' rhetoric fell rather flat.

[adam payne]

"One high-profile example of departments shunning the programme is that of HMRC choosing to to develop its alternative to Verify for self-assessment tax users."

Government departments not being able to agree on anything isn't a thing that is going to go away any time soon. Each department seems to be content in running their little island as they see fit and with an us and them mentality.

Do they care that this wastes vast amounts of money in the process? of course not.

[Anonymous Coward]

"GDS"? What happened to "GCF" -- did someone let on to management that everyone working on it mentally expanded it to "giant clusterfsck"?

[Miss Lincolnshire]

I was selected for an interview with HMRC digital transformation. It was absolutely baffling and centred on irrelevance, theory and jargon.

My interviewer seemed to spend his life reading blogs and appeared rather non-plussed when I explained that tended to do work.......

[Anonymous Coward]

Still at least Brexit is on track.

/sarcasm off.

If we're dependent on employees working for the "employer of last resort", we really do have a problem. And it's way bigger than Gubmint Digital Services.

[EnviableOne]

GDS was on a hiding to nothing to start with,

government departments, can't mange to come up with region or even office wide standards of working, how is GDS going to make something that works Government wide.

the mass of unique identifiers has its up and down sides, the positive being that if one is compromised it only unlocks a subset of the group, unlike in the US, where SSN is the key to everything, and has become the defacto standard unique identifier for all US based organisations

[Anonymous Coward]

The GDS tech guidelines are quite good - they can and should produce usable sites for the first tiem in the history of UK GOV. But getting under-paid, under-skilled civil servants to implement them is the problem - from what I've seen, the permies sit around moaning about pay and pensions, and the contractors do as little as possible. Management expectation is thus terribly under par in comparison with The Real World -- "can you produce a Google-like search box that searches all types of records, and produce the ElasticSearch backend in 12 months?" I had already implemented it before the meeting. Imagine what they'd've got if they'd paid and respected me.

Sour grapes? You bet.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Rot spreads

Uncanny how every word applies equally to Australia's Digital Service Delivery efforts - we are a near-total clone, albeit years behind. We're a literally exact clone in many areas in fact (we pull from UK's github)