Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps his Department is taking to ensure its services are available online; and if he will make a statement.

A number of BIS services are available online including transaction services (e.g. filing information and accounts at Companies House), as well as online guidance available on GOV.UK and information on BIS services. BIS also uses digital channels to engage stakeholders in developing policy making.

BIS is committed to the vision set out in the Government Digital Strategy, publishing its own digital strategy in 2012. BIS and Partner Organisations have embarked on a digital transformation programme that by 2020 will ensure that all services that can be redesigned as such will be 'digital by default' and available on GOV.UK. They will be redesigned around the needs of users i.e. businesses, students, employees and consumers.

As a critical first step, BIS is playing a key role as part of the Government's Digital Exemplar Programme covering organisations with services that have over 100k transactions annually. BIS provides 5 of the 25 exemplar services. These are:

• Patents Renewal (Intellectual Property Office (IPO))
• Redundancy Payments (Insolvency Service)
• Land Registry Digital Delivery Service
• Apprenticeships (Skills Funding Agency)
• Part-Time Student Finance (Student Loans Company)

Each of these services have or are being redesigned to be digital by default. Two are already live - Patents Renewal and Part-Time Student Finance - and the remaining three will be publicly available by end March 2015.

Beyond the exemplar services, The BIS Digital and Technology 2020 roadmap will identify all current non-digital services across BIS and Partner Organisations that need to be redesigned to be digital by default by 2020 along with the estimated timelines for development and online availability.