Stephen Mosley
Main Page: Stephen Mosley (Conservative - City of Chester)Department Debates - View all Stephen Mosley's debates with the Cabinet Office
(9 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Maude
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s kind remarks. This will be the second time I have left the House of Commons—the first time was not entirely consensual—and I shall be sorry to leave, although I think I have one more outing this time before the House dissolves.
Many businesses in the private sector operate as mutuals—John Lewis prominent among them—and they have been generous in their support for this programme because they think that employee ownership and control also benefit service users, which should be our overriding concern.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
4. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Government Digital Service.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The Washington Post hailed the UK as
“setting the gold standard of digital government”,
and the Obama Administration have created a digital service modelled on our own. The Australian Government announced the same in January this year. The New Zealand Government have taken the source code from gov.uk and used it for their own online presence. Last October, we celebrated the 1 billionth visit to gov.uk.
Stephen Mosley
The Government Digital Service has been one of the unsung success stories of the Government, and it has been introduced smoothly and successfully. There have been none of the mess-ups that occurred on previous IT projects, which has meant that it has not had the public attention it deserves. What further services does the Minister foresee digitising to save taxpayers’ money and improve services for the public?
Mr Maude
We have already saved a great deal of money and improved services for citizens, and we are beginning to roll out much better technology in government, so that civil servants are helped by the technology they have rather than hindered by it. There is much more to do. We inherited some extremely expensive, cumbersome and unwieldy IT contracts, and for one of them the Department had to pay £30,000 to change one word on a website. That is not acceptable; it is no way to treat taxpayers’ money; and it is going to change.