All the priority reforms from “a blueprint for modern digital government”

For those that like their data dense, this is all 33 priority reforms scraped from the GDS & DSIT blueprint for modern digital government.

Introduce a Digital Wallet to store government credentials, and require services to issue a digital verified credential alongside any paper/card based credential or proof of entitlement eligibility by the end of 2027.
Establish a ‘once only’ rule, so that if people have provided information to one service, it can be reused by others with appropriate safeguards. It will start with central government services and commonly reused data, but be designed to scale over time to the broader public sector and more information.
Work towards all legislation being ‘digital ready’ to reduce complexities in service delivery and improve efficiencies, drawing on Denmark’s approach.
Stand up a new Service Transformation Team to look at whole public sector service transformation and the improvement of priority services, accelerating delivery of the Plan for Change.
Save money and effort by streamlining the procurement and provision of devices and tools – and cloud and compute resources in the future – and enabling public servants to work easily across organisations and at different security levels.
Build on the work of the Incubator for AI (i.AI) to provide rapid prototyping and innovation, identifying and buying or building solutions focused on public sector productivity including customer service, casework, prevention and policy work, working with other departments and public bodies who will continue to deliver the majority of AI solutions.
Offer specialist assurance support, including a service to rigorously test models and products before release.
Create an external Responsible AI Advisory Panel and a dedicated in-house team. The Panel will bring together expert insight from the public sector (including frontline workers), industry, academia and civil society groups to provide constructive challenge and advice, and shape standards based on best practice.
Build and regularly convene AI and data communities of practice across the public sector, to further shape our response to fast growing technology, and support practitioners across government by providing expert advice on AI and reusable technical solutions.
Build up a strong technical market intelligence capability to inform procurement and design decisions, recognising that AI and its uses are evolving rapidly.
Develop a sourcing and procurement framework for AI, including rapid procurement and mission-focused national tenders.
Create the National Data Library, making it easier to find and reuse data across public sector organisations; this supports better prevention, intervention and detection, and opens up data to industry, the voluntary sector, start-ups and academics to accelerate AI-driven innovation and boost growth.
Introduce a Digital Backbone: the integration, orchestration and instrumentation technology needed to share capabilities and build true end-to-end journeys, such as exposing, creating, processing and maintaining APIs across the public sector. We intend to open up the Backbone for industry to publish services and products for use across the public sector, providing a streamlined way to consume services from the market.
Mandate the publication of a standard set of APIs and events by public sector organisations. Starting with an expectation that every new service in central government departments will have an open API.
Develop and implement a more interventionist model for cyber security and technical resilience, acting as one to tackle severe and systemic risks, and help prioritise and identify the required funding for remediation, including legacy technology.
Deploy a new vulnerability scanning service for the public sector, to detect weaknesses and take preventative action on them.
Set up a Technical Design Council led by expert technology, data and AI practitioners, to tackle the toughest and most strategic technical decisions with the needs of the whole sector in mind.
Develop and assess the optimum employment models to attract, grow and mobilise expert digital talent.
Assess the overall package for digital and data professionals, including remuneration, with a view to ensuring our offer is competitive within the market, making the UK public sector an attractive and viable place for digital specialists.
Work with the Government Property Agency to establish a Digital Hub in Manchester, building on its already thriving tech sector and a number of existing public sector digital teams in the city.
Require that all public sector organisations have a digital leader on their executive committee and a digital non-executive director on their board by 2026 at the latest and publish this information publicly.
Establish a dotted reporting line to the Government Chief Digital Officer (GCDO) for all CDIOs in central government, including input into recruitment decisions, coaching support and feedback on performance.
Raise the status of the GCDO role to Second Permanent Secretary-level.
Launch tailored funding models for digital products and services, legacy remediation and risk reduction, and staged, agile funding that better enables exploratory work with new technologies.
Expand use of performance-based, outcomes-focused funding models that tie funding to metrics and accelerate the shift from ‘boom and bust’ transformation programmes to continuous funding of persistent, multidisciplinary product teams.
Define a comprehensive sourcing strategy for what we build, what we buy and how we partner, helping to drive greater efficiency across the £26 billion the UK government spends annually on digital technology.
Launch work on a Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence to identify opportunities for further reform and improvements needed to enable tech startups, scaleups and SMEs to access government contracts.
Empower public servants to work in the open to improve our services and build public trust. This means giving hard-working teams credit for their achievements, while being open about the challenges and learning in public from each other and from the wider world.
Create an inventory of services to measure the progress of service modernisation and publish a version of this in the open.
Set an expectation that all central government departments publish their public-facing product roadmaps at least annually and talk about what services they’re working on and why. Encourage other public sector organisations to do the same.
Co-develop a methodology for measuring the administrative burden including the ‘time tax’ government places on people, and track progress on reducing it, involving civil society groups in the design.
Require departments to publish metrics at least annually on the outcomes they achieve, including service performance, value for money, resilience, digital inclusion and AI adoption.
Hold Secretaries of State accountable for their department’s performance against these measures, including through regular reviews with the Digital Inter-Ministerial Group (annually for the largest operational departments).

Method

I scraped and transformed the nicely structured HTML from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-blueprint-for-modern-digital-government/a-blueprint-for-modern-digital-government-html by running the following in the browser console on that page

$$('[id^=priority-reforms]').map(x => {
  const url = `${window.location}#${x.id}`
  const items = document.querySelectorAll(`[id=${x.id}]~ul li`)
  return [...items].map(i => `<li><a href=${url}>${i.innerHTML}</a></li>`).join('')
}).join('')

and pasting the output into an <ol>

What’s next

When I get time I’ll turn this into a dashboard where we can track the progress on each one.

If it gives you other ideas let me know at https://bsky.app/profile/olizilla.bsky.social