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Thanks to Lord Bridges who yesterday spoke about digital transformation and Government's aim to use the tech sector as a growth engine.

Thanks to Lord Bridges who addressed our guests at the techUK Annual Dinner, 06 July 2016 yesterday - speaking about digital transformation and Government's aim to use the tech sector as a growth engine.

 

Thank you for inviting me here today.

Thank you too for all that techUK does in speaking up for the interests of the tech sector — and a big thanks to Jacqueline and Julian in particular. Representing businesses of all sizes, techUK’s role in articulating their very different needs is more vital than ever.

When I accepted this invitation, I thought that I would take as my theme the dizzying pace of change in the tech sector.

The trouble is that in the last couple of weeks the pace of change in the political world has beaten tech change and Moore’s Law into a cocked hat.

A week used to be a long time in politics. Now an hour is.

As the Chinese curse has it, these certainly are interesting times.

And so let me tackle head on what I am sure will be the subject of most conversations tonight. Brexit.

Clearly many of you here, like many millions of people across the country, may be wondering what Brexit means not just for the UK as a whole, but for your businesses.

I’ve run a small business, and worked for and in multinational companies: I know full well the difficulties of management in times of uncertainty.

So I know you’ll have many questions: things like the flow of skills, investment and data in a post-Brexit world.

Obviously I cannot unveil tonight a detailed plan that addresses every question you might have.

What I do want to stress is that there is an open door to me and Matt Hancock, Ed Vaizey at DCMS and Liam Maxwell and Daniel Korksi. We want to hear your concerns and we want your ideas.

And let me say three things to try to give you some comfort as we look ahead.

First, the Government remains 101% committed to making the UK the best place to start up and run a digital business and the best place for a corporate to launch a new digital initiative.

World class skills; modern infrastructure; a good regulatory environment; a competitive tax system — including one of the lowest corporation tax rates in the world — these remain our goals.

We’re making progress.

One of the fastest rollouts of 4G in Europe. 30,000 digital apprenticeships. The first major economy to teach coding in schools. Tax reliefs to support innovation. I could go on.

But we know there is more to do – much more.

For instance, the National Infrastructure Commission is looking at how we can be a world leader in the deployment of 5G.

We’re reviewing business broadband, to see what speeds are required and the barriers to progress.

And just yesterday we published our Digital Economy Bill, packed full of measures to help us achieve our goals.

And let’s remember why we are we doing this.

If we are to prosper as a nation, we have no choice but to harness the productivity and competitive edge that digital technology brings. Nations, just like countries, must embrace this change, otherwise they will overwhelmed by it.

More than that, your sector helps to power our economy. It contributes £118 billion, and employs 1.5 million people.

But behind those dry statistics there’s another reason why government should do all it can to support the digital revolution.

A generation or so ago, the man and woman in the street had to fight hard to get complaints dealt with or their voices heard by government or companies.

Today, armed with an iphone, consumers and voters have more information, choice and power than ever before.

Online petitions, Twitter – all these things add to the inbox of a CEO or a Minister, but they are a force for good, as they are making companies and governments more accountable to those they serve.

That’s a good thing for us all – and as a Government that believes in trusting the people, we want to turbo charge the change.

And that brings me to the second reason why you should feel confident as you look ahead. The digital sector is one of the sectors best equipped to handle change.

You are innovators and entrepreneurs.

In so many ways, you embody change.

You know that the response to change is not to hide under the duvet, but to embrace change and look for the opportunities it brings.

Yours is an industry that thrives on disruption.

Microsoft and Apple - founded in the stagflation of the 70s; Uber and AirBnB - launched in the depths of the global financial crisis.

You are not strangers to adversity.

And you know that the digital revolution you are leading does not respect boundaries or nation states.

The revolution is global, it’s relentless and it is accelerating.

I have seen what that means first hand. Almost twenty years ago, I was part of the team that helped set up digital terrestrial television. I remember how some people mocked the concept of video on demand.

Today, I have to explain to my seven year old — a Netflix addict — what a video cassette was.

More recently, working for a global retail bank, I saw how challenging it is to take an analogue organisation and make it digital, while continuing to give customers an excellent service any time, any place, any where.

Of course such change is daunting. But the digital revolution creates a multitude of opportunities to provide better, more competitive services and products.

Those opportunities are growing bigger, day by day. And British companies are seizing them. FundingCircle, Transferwise, Zoopla – the list is long of British success stories, companies born of the digital age that are world leaders.

This brings me to the third reason to be confident of what the future brings – the opportunities that government itself presents.

Your industry moves much faster than government can, and in the past government has been left trailing in your wake.

The National Audit Office has filled a small library with reports on failed IT projects that ran over time and over budget, and some that were scrapped entirely.

But for the last six years we’ve been reshaping the way government does technology, overhauling our systems and our skills so we can plug into the latest industry innovations.

It’s a tribute to the Government Digital Service that we are now recognised around the world as a global leader in how to digitise public services and harness the power of data.

Now I know some of you may be wondering how I can say that, given the government voter registration website crashed just before the deadline to register for the referendum.

But that problem, which clearly inconvenienced many people, should not hide a truth. Just two years ago, no one could register to vote online. Between 1 January and the registration deadline in June, 5 million people did so.

That shows how far government has come, in a relatively short space of time, to digitise services.

So far we’ve transformed 20 exemplar services and many more of our highest volume transactions: everything from checking your driving license online to searching for an apprenticeship to applying for carer’s allowance.

We’re building cross-government platforms for common activities like making payments or tracking the status of an application, so departments can focus on what’s unique about their mission.

Verify, our new ID assurance platform, has just gone live. It promises to be one of the most transformative things the government has done; by registering once it assures an individual’s identity across government, without creating a central database.

We’ve published unprecedented quantities of government data — 29,000 datasets and counting — helping to stimulate our nascent data economy and fostering tech stars like CityMapper or Improbable.

And on top of that, there’s the digital marketplace, where each year a billion pounds of government contracts are procured, with half of the spend going to SMEs.

This has happened by us taking an entirely new approach.

All of you will know that you cannot think of digital as sitting in a silo or one department. That approach is doomed to fail. But that was the approach government used to take.

Those days are behind us.

We are getting rid of the massive, inflexible contracts, contracts drawn up by government itself, that locked government into ageing IT — that in many cases were as bad and constraining for you as they were for us, and worse still, often provided terrible value for money for taxpayers.

We’ve brought our technical architecture, project management and some of our delivery in-house, so we understand and control more of our own technology.

All this requires change on a gargantuan scale.

But that does not always require one big new system. Far from it. We need to build fast, but incrementally, learning from experience along the way, starting small then scaling up, and never thinking of a new service as ‘finished’.

And we need to be open in all we do – open standards, open source, open data and open markets.

On top of that, we need to improve our digital skills across government. The Government Digital Service is the vanguard of change – but we cannot and should not look to one group of people to change all government.

The real change will happen in departments and agencies right across central government.

techUK has often said government needs better digital skills and expertise – and you’re right. If we are to procure and manage complex projects, like any business we need to attract the best talent.

So our Digital and Technology Fast Stream Programme is training up the tech leaders of tomorrow, with over 100 graduates currently working across government.

But the digital revolution means not just changing what we do, but how we think and behave. It requires cultural change, challenging how things are done.

And this is where techUK, and everyone in this room, comes in.

To deliver change on this scale, we need you — your innovation, your entrepreneurship, your inquisitive minds.

The answers to many of the challenges we face in making government digital do not lie in Whitehall, but in businesses large and small across the country.

We need to do more to harness your creativity and innovation, and that’s what Liam Maxwell, the new National Technology Advisor and his team, are there to do.

More than that, we need you to continue to thrive, to build on past success, so the UK continues to be a trailblazer in the digital revolution – not just in government, but across the UK and right around the world.

So my message to you tonight is keep hiring, investing, problem-solving and innovating.

We need you to be critical friends — keep challenging us to do more. And whether you’re a start-up or an established business, tell us what you want to see from our negotiations with the EU. We need your input.

Having come this far, this Government is not going to let the UK lose our advantage.

The digital sector is Britain at its best — enterprising, innovative, buccaneering, ambitious.

So let’s look back with pride - and forward with confidence.

Thank you.