Old tech left by Tories wastes £45bn a year – with a quarter of systems outdated

Exclusive:

A new report to be published on Tuesday show the shocking state of tech in the public sector left by the Tories – with over one in four digital systems used by central government found to be outdated

Out of date technology is costing the taxpayer £45 billion a year in lost efficiency savings, the government says.

A new report to be published on Tuesday show the shocking state of tech in the public sector left by the Tories – with over one in four digital systems used by central government found to be outdated.

Examples include the need to register deaths in person, pointless burdens placed on small businesses – including forcing firms to put an advert in their local paper when they want to buy a lorry.

Some departments managing more than 500 paper-based services and nearly half of public services can’t be accessed online.

That means people are forced to spend time applying for support in person, on hold or travelling to council offices.

Public sector workers are also wasting time sifting through physical letters. This means response times are unnecessarily long with British citizens paying the price and wasting valuable time on government admin.

Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said: “Technology that sits at the foundation of our country has been left to wither and decay under the hands of the previous government, too often grinding to a halt and stalling essential public services – racking up a huge bill for the taxpayer.

“It doesn’t have to be this way – and it won’t be with our Plan for Change. There is a £45 billion jackpot for the public sector if we get technology adoption right, that’s twice the size of the blackhole we faced when we took office, and it’s not an opportunity we can let pass us by.”

The report that in the worst cases, as many as 70% of a department’s tech is out of date.

This outdated technology can rack up huge maintenance costs, ultimately resulting in the taxpayer forking out three-to-four times more than if the technology was kept up to date.

A growing number of these outdated systems are “red-rated” for reliability and security risk.

The report found that NHS England alone saw 123 critical service outages last year, often meaning appointments are missed and patients can’t get the care they need because staff were forced back to using paper-based systems.

The government will announce this week that a newly expanded Government Digital Service will search for vulnerabilities across the public sector that hackers could use to shut down essential services and stop citizens accessing critical support.

The State of Digital Government report, to be published on Tuesday, is based on insights from more than 500 leaders across 120 organisations, data from more than 100 entities, and input from 65 stakeholders across public, private, and third sectors.