The Parliamentary Digital Service (PDS) has unveiled a new digital strategy for the UK Parliament, set to run until 2025.
The document emphasises that it is aimed at supporting changes in the operating model for Parliament, refraining from detailed plans but laying down four priorities and six areas on which the PDS will focus its activity.
Parliament’s chief information officer and managing director of the PDS David Smith (pictured) has provided an outline of the strategy in a blogpost, saying it has been developed with colleagues from the House of Commons and House of Lords.
The priorities cover: ensuring digital services are flexible, secure and resilient; keeping pace with advances in technology to support parliamentary functions; making digital more sustainable and scalable; and enabling Parliament to make the best use of its data and information securely.
Areas of focus include defining and managing enterprise standards for IT and digital, delivering a digital transformation to Parliament’s core services, and ensuring an improvement in the availability, quality and accessibility of data.
These will be accompanied by a reduction of legacy technology, a continued effort to build digital skills – notably in cyber security and software engineering – and improving the digital culture and community. The latter will involve greater integration of business and digital roles.
Supporting key functions
Smith commented: “It is intended to support Parliament’s key functions of legislating, scrutinising the government, controlling expenditure, and representing the citizen. It’s also designed to support however the parliamentary estate develops in the future and the recent and rapid extension in hybrid ways of working.”
The strategy will be reviewed annually and subject to a measurement framework to be developed by a strategy board.
