Government's Use Of Digital And Technology Saves Millions

The Government Efficiency and Reform Group has published a new report which claims the government has achieved £18.6bn in savings for taxpayers in 2014/15.  

Of these reported savings, millions are said to be the result of work done by the Government Digital Service (GDS) and other initiatives designed to improve use of digital and technology in Whitehall.  

According to the technical note, "GDS Controls" account for £391m of savings, achieved via GDS intervention in Departmental digital and technology projects.  

"Savings of over £390m have been identified through controls, cancelled projects and ICT strategy savings," the document claims.  

Meanwhile, "GDS Transformation" has been credited for £105m savings, realised by building GOV.UK to replace a number of separate government websites, the revision of Department for Work and Pensions' (DWP) budget, and working with the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to prevent it spending its entire budget on a new website.     

The development of the PSN framework, a procurement network for government communications related services, has also saved £103m.  

"We saved over £100m from spend on telecommunications and hosting under the PSN framework in a number of departments in 2014/15 compared to 2009/10 or the most relevant baseline," the report claims.  

Procurement Savings 

Whitehall also claims that the changes it has made to the way procurement within government is handled has achieved large savings. 

By developing a number of frameworks which act as the "go to" place to buy certain products and services, for example G-Cloud, it claims over £1760m has been saved.  

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