The government needs to set out how it will achieve its vision of a modern digital state

Darren Jones, chief secretary to the prime minister, has declared his ambition for a “new digital state that delivers public services directly to you”. This followed the government’s new ‘roadmap’ for modern digital government, ²⁶ https://roadmap-for-modern-digital-government.campaign.gov.uk/about/  published almost a year after the release of A blueprint for a modern digital government. ²⁷ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-blueprint-for-modern-digital-government

Hosted on a dedicated ‘GOV.UK Campaign’ page, the roadmap has a different look and feel to previous efforts. The government clearly wants to convey that this attempt at digital transformation will be different. But while it has set out an ambitious vision, it is one that echoes previous strategies, roadmaps and plans from prior governments. The challenge is in actually delivering change – and this roadmap fails to set out an adequate path to do that.

Creating digital services centred around people is a positive vision – but not a new one

Darren Jones compared the scale of his vision to the 1945 Labour government, which “redefined what the public expected” from the state by establishing the NHS, social security and state pension systems. His vision of the GOV.UK app as the “front door” to this ‘digital state’, where people can access their records in one place with “new, personalised services” ²⁸ https://roadmap-for-modern-digital-government.campaign.gov.uk/join-up-services/  is potentially transformational. But not because of the app – the real change would be successfully joining up digital services and upgrading legacy IT. ²⁹ https://roadmap-for-modern-digital-government.campaign.gov.uk/join-up-services/

As ambitious as this may sound, this is not a new idea. In 2005, the last Labour government had a vision to use technology to create “personalised services” which met citizens’ needs. ³⁰ https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c658ee5274a7ee256730f/6683.pdf and Cabinet Office, Transformational government enabled by technology, 2025, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c658ee5274a7ee256730f/6683.pdf  The 2013 digital strategy, ³¹ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-digital-strategy/government-digital-strategy  published after the Government Digital Service was set up, said the public expects to “access services quickly and conveniently, at times and in ways that suit them” – and advocated for “increased personalisation and choice within public services”. ³² Cabinet Office, ‘Government digital strategy: December 2013’, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-digital-strategy/government-digital-strategy#foreword-by-francis-maude-mp  Digital transformation has not needed a new vision. It has needed a better plan.

The roadmap is not strategically or practically clear enough

There are some good initiatives in the roadmap. A dedicated team, GDS Local, will focus on stronger collaboration between central and local government and could re-energise attempts to modernise local government’s digital services. ³⁵ Government Digital Service, ‘GDS Local goes live’, 24 November 2025, accessed 26 January 2026, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2025/11/24/gds-local-goes-live/  The goal to improve the digital and data infrastructure underpinning the government’s technology estate is backed by tangible actions such as mapping the estate and upgrading IT systems that are no longer fit for purpose. But altogether, these still fall far short of mapping a path to a radically transformed state.

Instead, the roadmap presents a disjointed series of case studies. Some are positive. The Department for Education, for example, is leading cross-departmental work to improve support for children by linking datasets on safeguarding and welfare, underpinned by user research with safeguarding practitioners. But in most cases, the steps set out fail to meet the government’s stated ambitions. Digital ID, for instance, will “facilitate greater join up and personalisation of government services”. But how this will happen is not explained, and the only next step listed is a public consultation. 

The hard work of digital government lies in ‘back-end’ processes, not only ‘front-end’ change

Delivering a modern digital state requires focusing on how the state works, not just on how people will interact with it. Since GDS’s establishment, government services have been “digital by default”. Citizens are used to interacting with the state online. But the civil service has not changed how it works, and so the ambitions of previous digital strategies have not been realised. The roadmap includes welcome changes here, such as implementing a more agile funding model that allows services to be iterated and developed based on how well they are meeting people’s needs. But it fails to address key cultural, skills and organisational barriers.

Proactively anticipating people’s ‘user journeys’ requires civil servants to work across departmental boundaries and use different methods. Digital teams employ user-centred design to understand the steps someone takes to achieve their task and the barriers they hit along the way. One example of this could be as basic as naming a service in simper language, ³⁶ Downe L, 'Good services are verbs, bad services are nouns', blog post, 22 June 2015, https://designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2015/06/22/good-services-are-verbs-2/  like ‘Register your vehicle as off the road’ rather than users finding a page to submit a ‘Statutory Off Road Vehicle Notification’.  

Transforming the state means breaking these skills out of digital silos and integrating them across the civil service. Our recent work on the state of civil service suggested some ways to do this, including introducing secondments between digital and policy teams and working towards more integrated joint teams to tackle particular policy problems. 

New ways of working are crucial to join up services and understand where the challenges are to doing so. That is why the government needs a plan, not just an aspiration, for the new digital centre of government.