Government Digital Service move 'grinds gears' in UK's e-government

The UK government’s decision to move the Government Digital Service (GDS) — responsible for creating digital services across the public sector — to its third departmental home in three years risks hemorrhaging talent and moving it further away from the center of power, MPs heard this week.

The GDS “fell into a bit of a fray” during the reorganization ordered by incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s team, according to Laura Gilbert, former director of data science at 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister's office.

She told the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee: “It's difficult to know whether somebody won that fight and therefore won GDS, or it was more incidental and it was played off against something else.

I was genuinely quite surprised by it.” The GDS was formed in 2011 under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition to help bring public services online.

It sat within the Cabinet Office until Sir Keir Starmer became Prime Minister for Labour in 2024, when it moved to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).

In January 2025, the government merged the GDS with the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO), which led the digital, data and technology function of government and was responsible for strategy and standards.

In the most recent government re-organization since Andy Burnham took over as Prime Minister, the GDS has moved to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

It falls within the remit of Stephanie Peacock, Parliamentary under-secretary for sport, tourism, place and digital Government.

Gilbert, who left Downing Street in 2005 to take roles in Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and Larry Ellison’s Institute of Technology, told MPs the GDS was initially “significantly disempowered” when it moved to DSIT.

“I was surprised to see it being moved further away [from the center of government], given how important digital delivery is to the government's agenda.” The GDS has become responsible for centralized spend controls on all large-scale government digital and IT projects.

Although departments are responsible for making projects happen, they had to seek GDS sign off on major software or hardware procurement.

Gilbert said that in the last move from the Cabinet Office to DSIT, there was a struggle to understand where the decisions take place and a failure to take into account “expert leadership” in technology who might understand the knock-on effects.

“As far as I'm aware, there wasn't a conversation with the senior leadership of those teams that were actually moved,” she said.

Meanwhile, any shift can be demoralizing for technology teams, adding to the risk individuals will leave.