Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much their Department spent on (a) current and (b) legacy IT infrastructure (i) in total and (ii) purchased in 2013 or earlier in each of the last three years.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The spend by the Ministry of Justice on its IT infrastructure as set out in the question is provided in the table below, covering the previous three years:
| 2020/21 costs | 2021/22 costs | 2022/23 costs |
Current IT infrastructure | £191,003,356 | £186,076,175 | £190,539,822 |
It has not been possible to separate out costs in a meaningful way between current and legacy systems, or identify costs for pre-2013 systems. This is due to both the complexity of the IT estate, which includes outsourced services, and the finance systems in use across the department not being set up to operate in that way that facilitates this.
The costs in the table include the costs of networks, devices, voice and video infrastructure, print services, wifi, software licences that underpin the operation of the department (eg Oracle, Microsoft) and hosting. They do not include costs of bespoke software. The costs are the external (contract) costs to purchase infrastructure outright or as a service but do not include costs related to people or processes or documentation within MoJ.
The Ministry of Justice is actively managing its legacy estate and are either seeking to fund or are seeking to exit legacy systems via our existing change plans. The right approach varies: work under way includes upgrades, complete system replacements and migration to public cloud.
The Ministry of Justice regularly assesses the most critical services within its IT estate including those using legacy systems against its own framework. There is a significant programme of activity in place to mitigate these risks through decommissioning, migration to more modern environments and upgrades.
Earlier in 2023, an assessment was carried out on the top 10 most critical legacy IT systems. Out of these 10 systems, 5 were identified as red-rated IT systems as defined in the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) Legacy IT Risk Assessment Framework
The Ministry of Justice is in the process of assessing all of its critical systems against the CDDO framework which will provide data on how many of these are red-rated within this framework.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what is the annual cost to the public purse of his Department's expenditure on (a) IT infrastructure, (b) IT infrastructure purchased prior to 2013 and (c) legacy IT infrastructure for each year since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The total main technology services costs are below for each year from 2018/2019 for Defra, the Environment Agency, Natural England, the Rural Payments Agency, the Animal and Plant Health Agency and the Marine Management Organisation. We cannot provide this information pre 2018/2019 as IT services, and therefore costs, were disaggregated across all parts of Defra group before 2018.
Departments are actively managing their legacy estates and are either seeking to fund or are seeking to exit legacy systems via their existing change plans. The right approach varies: work under way includes upgrades, complete system replacements and migration to public cloud.
2018/2019 | 2019/2020 | 2020/2021 | 2021/2022 | 2022/2023 |
164,966,582 | 158,456,692 | 180,763,658 | 181,673,444 | 196,388,040 |
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Central Digital & Data Office's guidance entitled, Guidance on the Legacy IT Risk Assessment Framework, published 29 September 2023, how many red-rated IT systems are used by his Department as of 21 November 2023.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As of 21 November 2023 Defra, as a Ministerial Department, has to date identified one red-rated legacy IT system as defined in the Central Digital and Data Office Legacy IT Risk Assessment Framework, but work to continually refine and broaden our use of the risk framework continues. Departments are actively managing their legacy estates and are either seeking to fund or are seeking to exit legacy systems via their existing change plans. The right approach varies: work under way includes upgrades, complete system replacements and migration to public cloud.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how much his Department spent on (a) IT infrastructure in total, (b) legacy IT infrastructure and (c) IT infrastructure that was first purchased in 2013 or earlier in each of the last three years.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
(a) As of 21 November 2023, the IT infrastructure spend is £12 million in the last 3 years. The figure includes infrastructure (private/public cloud and data centre) contracts that the Cabinet Office has direct contracts for or with; and excludes Software-as-a-service (SaaS) or Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products and solutions, that the infrastructure is owned by the supplier.
(b) As of 21 November 2023, £2 million has been spent on what is considered as Legacy IT in the last 3 years.
(c) The Cabinet office does not have any IT infrastructure first purchased in 2013 or earlier on record.
The Cabinet Office is actively managing their legacy estates, and is seeking to exit legacy systems via existing or new change plans.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, what is the annual cost to the public purse of her Department's expenditure on (a) IT infrastructure, (b) IT infrastructure purchased prior to 2013 and (c) legacy IT infrastructure for each year since 2010.
Answered by Michael Tomlinson - Minister of State (Minister for Illegal Migration)
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is responsible for the provision and management of up-to-date IT infrastructure, applications and processes for the Attorney General’s Office (AGO).
It is not possible to derive costs specific to the AGO as the IT infrastructure provided is not accounted for separately. The CPS do not hold a centralised record of AGO IT infrastructure costs. This information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Scotland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, with reference to the guidance by the Central Digital and Data Office entitled Guidance on the Legacy IT Risk Assessment Framework, published on 29 September 2023, how many red-rated IT systems are used by their Department.
Answered by Alister Jack - Secretary of State for Scotland
The Scotland Office uses the information technology system provided and operated by the Cabinet Office, which has responsibility for all hardware and software procurement, administration, support maintenance, security, and integrity of the system.
Queries regarding the information technology system should be directed to the Cabinet Office.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Scotland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, how much their Department spent on (a) current and (b) legacy IT infrastructure (i) in total and (ii) purchased in 2013 or earlier in each of the last three years.
Answered by Alister Jack - Secretary of State for Scotland
The Scotland Office uses the information technology system provided and operated by the Cabinet Office, which has responsibility for all hardware and software procurement, administration, support maintenance, security, and integrity of the system.
Queries regarding the information technology system should be directed to the Cabinet Office.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what is the annual cost to the public purse of her Department's expenditure on (a) IT infrastructure, (b) IT infrastructure purchased prior to 2013 and (c) legacy IT infrastructure for each year since 2010.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The accounting systems track IT spend, but do not capture the level of detail readily to identify spend on Infrastructure or legacy systems. Determination of legacy IT will require more work; the Legacy Risk Assessment will be prepared and submitted to Cabinet by the end of the current Financial year. Currently, within our centrally managed digital function, there is no legacy IT of any material size or value.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, with reference to the Central Digital & Data Office's guidance entitled, Guidance on the Legacy IT Risk Assessment Framework, published 29 September 2023, how many red-rated IT systems are used by his Department as of 21 November 2023.
Answered by Simon Hoare - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
There are no IT systems used by the department that would fall into the category of Legacy IT under the Legacy IT Risk Assessment Framework.
The department does not operate infrastructure from prior to 2013.
The department does not hold information relating to legacy IT infrastructure for each year since 2010 centrally.
Further details of government expenditure are published regularly.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what is the annual cost to the public purse of his Department's expenditure on (a) IT infrastructure, (b) IT infrastructure purchased prior to 2013 and (c) legacy IT infrastructure for each year since 2010.
Answered by Simon Hoare - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
There are no IT systems used by the department that would fall into the category of Legacy IT under the Legacy IT Risk Assessment Framework.
The department does not operate infrastructure from prior to 2013.
The department does not hold information relating to legacy IT infrastructure for each year since 2010 centrally.
Further details of government expenditure are published regularly.