The chief executive of the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has provided formal support for its Securing Our Technical Future Programme.
In his capacity as accounting officer, Jim Harra has published his assessment summary of the programme, backing up an earlier conclusion by the department’s former accounting office Sir Jonathan Thompson that the programme will provide value for money and is deliverable.
The programme involves migrating from existing data centres to cloud based hosting or the Crown Hosting service, along with a review of any vulnerabilities in the legacy IT estate of more than 600 services.
Harra says this is costly to run and lacks agility, and that the new programme will enable HMRC to generate more cost-effective arrangements with suppliers and give itself a more resilient and flexible infrastructure.
He adds that there is no requirement for any legislative or regulatory change to make it happen, and that the programme takes in effective controls to protect data from customers and other government departments.
Milestones passed
The assessment acknowledges that there will be challenges but says the programme has already passed several milestones successfully, including an independent assurance review and HM Treasury approval of the business case. Further Treasury approvals are planned as the programme progresses.
Harra also says that if any of the main factors change he will produce a revised summary.
Image from GOV.UK, Open Government Licence v3.0
