Demolishing DSIT risks losing focus, expertise and coordination

The Department for Science Innovation and Technology was set up in 2023 by Rishi Sunak to help achieve the aim of cementing “[the UK’s] place as a global science and technology superpower by 2030”.  ²² Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street, Donelan M and Sunak R, ‘Plan to forge a better Britain through science and technology unveiled’, GOV.UK, 6 March 2023, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/plan-to-forge-a-better-britain-through-science-and-technology-unveiled  Just over three years’ later, Andy Burnham has confirmed its dissolution.  

The new prime minister has split its functions three ways: science and innovation now sit in an expanded Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade; responsibility for all things ‘digital’ (including the Government Digital Service, GDS) has moved to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (once again gaining the word ‘digital’ in its title); and responsibility for AI sits in the new Office for the Prime Minister and Cabinet (OPMC) and the Cabinet Office.  ²³ Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street, Donelan M and Sunak R, ‘Plan to forge a better Britain through science and technology unveiled’, GOV.UK, 6 March 2023, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/plan-to-forge-a-better-britain-through-science-and-technology-unveiled  Most of this is a reversion to pre-DSIT days.

DSIT was a department that made sense  

The creation of DSIT was an all-too-rare example of a machinery of government change that was thought through and had clear logic: it brought together related policy areas, increased focus on specific priorities,  ²⁴ Durrant T and Tetlow G, Creating and dismantling government departments: How to handle machinery of government changes well, Institute for Government, 2019, https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/creating-and-dismantling-government-departments.pdf  and was warmly welcomed by business and the science and technology community.  ²⁵ Durrant T and Tetlow G, Creating and dismantling government departments: How to handle machinery of government changes well, Institute for Government, 2019, https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/creating-and-dismantling-government-departments.pdf  In creating it, Sunak also gave a strong political signal, which extended internationally, of the prioritisation of sectors which are particularly important to the UK economy and to the UK’s international standing. It spoke to the ambition for the UK to set itself up for the future, to build an “institutional production line” from its universities and science sectors into businesses.  

It is true that at the start DSIT struggled to exercise clout across government, while the move of responsibility for digital government to the department caused teething problems (around recruitment of senior roles and the amount of reorganisation involved).  ²⁶ Keenan H, Dunlop H, Worlidge J and others, Whitehall Monitor 2026, Institute for Government, 13 January 2026, https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/whitehall-monitor-2026/part-2-state-civil-service#digital-transformation  But even if this caused challenges, DSIT had finally got through the trauma of a machinery of government change – only for it now to start all over again.

Moving responsibilities around will create more uncertainty and lead to a loss of focus

Machinery of government changes cost time and energy and should not be embarked on lightly.  ²⁷ Keenan H, Dunlop H, Worlidge J and others, Whitehall Monitor 2026, Institute for Government, 13 January 2026, https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/whitehall-monitor-2026/part-2-state-civil-service#digital-transformation  The costs of restructure range from more obvious spending such as new IT and aligning the salaries of civil servants, to the hidden costs to productivity. This can run up a bill of hundreds of millions of pounds.  ²⁸ Durrant T and Tetlow G, Creating and dismantling government departments: How to handle machinery of government changes well, Institute for Government, 2019, https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/creating-and-dismantling-government-departments.pdf  Machinery of government changes also cause a lot of uncertainty – for civil servants but also in this case for businesses and scientific and research institutions that benefited from the dedicated focus and funding from the department.

The functions of DSIT are being – mostly – returned to where they were before the department existed, but it is hard to see the reason behind dismantling a department whose focus and expertise was an improvement on the previous arrangement. If Burnham was concerned about DSIT’s ability to work effectively, a better solution would have been to give DSIT the backing it needed.

This is exemplified in the decision to centralise AI and move GDS to DDCMS. AI is an expansive and ill-defined policy area; one of the benefits of DSIT was that it could consider AI in the round, alongside other emerging technologies and technology infrastructure and the wider digital strategy for government set by GDS. The new minister for AI, instead of having a united department behind him, now has split responsibilities between two departments, neither of which will host GDS (which now includes i.AI – the government incubator for AI – as a result of the previous reorganisation).  

Nor does centralising AI responsibility necessarily mean that it will improve the ability to drive AI adoption in the public sector. After all, GDS struggled to implement digital transformation from the Cabinet Office. Dispersal from one department to three, all of which have wider briefs than DSIT did, will make it that much harder to achieve the cross-government coordination and focus that is needed.

DSIT had established itself internationally and domestically as a strong supporter of critical UK sectors, and was starting to find its feet as a department preparing both the government and the UK for the future. Now three departments will need to work out their roles in this space, all while dealing with complex structural challenges.  

This machinery of government change is a mistake. But it is done now. So if Andy Burnham wants this latest structure to sustain, then he needs to demand more clarity of responsibilities. Otherwise confusion will reign and the DSIT demolition will lead to real harm to an area where the UK had been making progress.