Government Digital Service

The Government Digital Service is a unit of the Her Majesty's Government's Cabinet Office tasked with transforming the provision of government digital services. It was formed in April 2011 to implement the 'Digital by Default' strategy proposed by a report produced for the Cabinet Office in 2010 called 'Directgov 2010 and beyond: revolution not evolution'. It is overseen by the Public Expenditure Executive (Efficiency & Reform) which is co-chaired by Minister for the Cabinet Office, Ben Gummer and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Gauke. GDS is primarily based at Aviation House on Kingsway in Holborn, London. Its Director General is Kevin Cunnington.

On 20 July 2010, Directgov, the citizen services website, was moved to the Cabinet Office from the Department of Work and Pensions. From 1 April 2011 Directgov became part of the Government Digital Service, along with the BusinessLink website aimed at business users. On 13 September 2012, through a notice on the Directgov homepage, it was announced that the GOV.UK project, built by the Government Digital Service, would replace Directgov as the primary citizen website of the UK Government on 17 October 2012, after which both Directgov and BusinessLink would close.

The strategy was proposed in a report called 'Directgov 2010 and beyond: revolution not evolution' prepared by Martha Lane Fox, the founder of lastminute.com. In an interview, Francis Maude, minister with responsibility for GDS has spoken about "powerful oligopolies" and the reliance on a single supplier as a cause of high-profile failures in public sector IT, such as NHS Connecting for Health. GDS is intended to "drive service delivery to digital across government and provide support, advice and technical expertise for departments as they develop new digital delivery models". This strategy is focussed on the application of Agile software development and Lean software development methodologies, supplied primarily via small and medium enterprises rather than large suppliers.

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