2022–25

Parliament’s
Digital Strategy

Introduction
Context

Priorities 2022–25

Making the strategy areality

Measurement & review

Introduction
Parliament’s previous digital strategy
ran from 2016-2021 and focused on aset of aspirations and principles that
underpinned an ambition to provide
excellent digital services to a modern
Parliament.
During a challenging time, Parliament’s
Digital Service responded robustly to cyberattacks and matured through the move
to cloud computing, using agile multidisciplinary teams for delivery and, after
experiencing challenges, eventually renewed
its website in 2020.

This strategy is owned by the Digital Strategy
Board – a pan-Parliament body with oversightfor Digital in Parliament on behalf of the two
Management Boards.

David Smith OBE
Chief Information Officer & Managing Directorof the Parliamentary Digital Service

As we catch our breaths and move on froma frenetic and successful response to thepandemic, this new digital strategy sets ourambitions from 2022 through to 2025.
This new strategy was developed bycolleagues from across Parliament and inalignment with the House of Commons andHouse of Lords strategies.
2Introduction
ContextPriorities 2022–25Making the strategy areality

Measurement & review

Context
Parliament is an ecosystem including
multiple organisations and businessmodels.

This strategy is a sub-strategy of both theHouse of Commons Service Strategy andHouse of Lords Administration Strategy.

The Parliamentary Digital Service (PDS) is a
joint department of the House of Commonsand House of Lords. PDS exists to provide
reliable digital services that allow Parliament
to function and enable Members and staff towork at their best.

To support the need for improvement
within Parliament’s overall digital system,
the Transforming Digital Programme wasestablished and is scheduled to run from2021-2025.

Parliament needs to change its operating
model in order to successfully meet digitaldemand, and affordably and sustainably
deliver digital services. The new model mustallow Parliament to embrace change and towork differently.
This strategy is intended to support
Parliament’s key functions of legislating,scrutinising the government, controlling
expenditure and representing the citizen.
This strategy is designed to support however
the parliamentary estate develops in thefuture and the recent and rapid extension in
hybrid ways of working.

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Priorities for 2022–25

Introduction
Context

Priorities 2022–25

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Ensure that our digital services are flexible,
secure and resilient, in the face of evolving
threats3

It is vital that the digital services on which
Parliament relies continue to be secureand robust, offering the required level ofavailability. It is essential that services
are designed to be aligned to this need,delivering value in an affordable waycommensurate to the value to Parliament.

Making the strategy areality

Measurement & review

2

Keep pace with advances in digitaltechnology to support parliamentaryfunctions and modern working practices,and to engage and empower Members andstaff to make the best use of digital
Experience of digital technology as
consumers outside of Parliament informs
the expectations of Members and staff. We
will strive to optimise the balance between
the constraints of security and affordability
and the imperative to enable the provisionof parliamentary services to benefit fromadvances in digital technology and allow
people to work flexibly, in multiple locationsin the manner and pace of today.

Make digital more sustainable and scalable
by updating our operating models andidentifying opportunities to improve ways ofworking
Our current operating model needs to evolve
to meet the demand of Parliament’s users on
digital services to make digital delivery both
affordable and sustainable. We will identify
ways to work differently and embracechange, in particular through approaching
our financial model in a new way.

4Enable Parliament to make best use of its
data and information securely
Digital services must be designed to protect,
improve the quality of, and enable value
to be gained from, Parliament’s data andinformation assets. The two key disciplines
of information management and security
must be balanced and encapsulated inthose digital services with the least intrusion
and restriction on the user. This will beenabled by having robust, reliable, secureand timely infrastructure capabilities andstandards in place for processing andstoring Parliament’s data.

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Introduction
Context

Priorities 2022–25

Making the strategy areality

Measurement & review

Making the strategy a reality
To support this we will:
1. Define, agree and manage enterprisestandards for IT and digital
We anticipate a future where Parliament’s
digital needs continue to grow, and where theability for PDS to meet all of these needs isimpossible (as is already the case).
Whether it be the design of technologies
for a smarter parliamentary estate, cyberstandards to allow for the safe broadcast ofParliamentary proceedings, or the outsourcingof bespoke development to support the workof MPs and Peers, we need a clear set of IT anddigital standards. We will adopt a frameworkof functional standards to underpin this work,
leveraging from the existing suite of standards
published by the Government Digital Service.

2. Deliver digitally enabled business
transformation to Parliament’s coreservices
Through the vehicle of our Transforming Digital
Programme, we will continue to work withspecific areas of Parliament to transformand improve the delivery of services. We’ve
already started to improve how we resolve IT
issues for our customers, and how we support
the end-to-end journey for new joiners toParliament.
Next up we will be working with the procedural
teams in Parliament to improve ourapproach to delivering and maintaining core
parliamentary digital services, ensuring keysystems are reliable and sustainable, better
meeting the needs of Members (whereverthey are working) and ensuring there is moretransparent and accessible data on the workof Parliament and its Members.
5continued overleaf

Introduction
Context

Priorities 2022–25

Making the strategy areality

Measurement & review

Making the strategy a reality
To support this we will:
3. Ensure improvement in data
availability, quality, and accessibility
We will continue to support the Houses indriving maturity in our approaches to dataand information governance and cooperation
across Parliament to improve the data qualitythat underpins our services.
We will build a new modern cloud-native
open data integration platform withassociated procedural data services (fed byour published APIs), replacing legacy datatechnology as we go.

4. Continue to reduce legacy
technology
We’ve made great progress in the past year
to understand our legacy technology estate,
and we now routinely assess and prioritise
investment to tackle the areas that present
the greatest risk or are major customer pain
points.
Our next steps are to continue to tackle thisprioritised list whilst also addressing some ofthe systemic causes of significant build up.
continued overleaf

6Introduction
Context

Making the strategy a reality
To support this we will:Priorities 2022–25

5. Continue to build digital skills

Making the strategy areality

For Parliament to be able to meet its digitalpotential, we need to be able to recruit andretain digital talent, in particular specialist
skills such as cyber security experts andsoftware engineers. We need to become morecompetitive in the market and expose theexciting work we do here at Parliament.

Measurement & review

We will create a new pipeline of digital talentand mechanisms for retaining existing talent
in PDS and the Houses. We will introduce anew skills and capability framework which
demonstrates how employees can develop
their careers in digital within Parliament andbe recognised appropriately for the skills theybring. We will continue to build digital skills
for everyone and will further integrate digitalleadership skills into existing development
programmes.

6. Improve digital culture andcommunity
Given the culture of Parliament, andthe multiple organisation and supplierenvironment that we operate in, active,respectful, and open collaboration across ourcommunities is essential.
That means greater integration of businessand digital roles, and a recognition thathaving the right behaviours, skills, andrelationships when developing digitalsolutions is absolutely fundamental toachieving good outcomes.

7Introduction
Context

Priorities 2022–25

Making the strategy areality

Measurement & review

Measurement & review
Further to the approval and publication of thisstrategy, a measurement framework will be
developed and monitored by the Digital StrategyBoard.
This strategy will be reviewed annually – and whereappropriate – updated to reflect evolving priorities
and progress.

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