In government’s annual lowdown on the progress of major projects, Whitehall’s central department reveals that its IT overhaul will task the ICS unit in DESNZ with delivering a new platform
The Cabinet Office has switched up its plans for implementing a new departmental IT system – which it will no longer build itself.
A key element of the creation of the new tech platform will remain an delivery of an organisation-wide switch from existing Google Workspace tools to Microsoft 365. But, rather than all development and deployment work being undertaken internally by the Cabinet Office, government’s Integrated Corporate Services (ICS) unit will build and manage the system – with additional “migration resource from Microsoft and partners at no investment cost” to the central department.
The Falcon programme began work in 2022, with the remit of delivering a new core IT system for the Cabinet Office, as well as facilitating a wholesale switch from Google programs to their Microsoft equivalents – which are used more-or-less ubiquitously across the rest of government.
In the recently published annual report on the progress of schemes in the Government Major Projects Portfolio, the department reveals that the 2024/25 year saw the agreement of a new and entirely revamped plan for delivering Falcon.
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“The initial approach was for the Cabinet Office to build its own new IT system for this change,” the report says. “However, after review, we found this was not the most cost-effective option. We have now approved a new plan. This involves moving our digital services to a shared government service called Integrated Corporate Services, which is managed by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). While this new approach means the project will take a bit longer to complete, it will save money in the long run by using an existing government service.”
ICS oversees the joint provision of services including procurement, digital, property, finance, HR and security – principally across DESNZ and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. It also provides some of these services to the Department for Business and Trade, as well delivering support in discrete areas to several other government entities.
Delivery delayed but costs cut
The initial plan for delivering Falcon set a conclusion date of March 2025, and an overall cost of £52m. The timeline was first pushed back to March 2026 and, as of the latest GMPP round-up, completion of wok is now expected to take until December 2026.
For the second year in a row, the Cabinet Office IT scheme has been awarded a red delivery-confidence rating on the traffic-light scale used government’s National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Agency (NISTA). This classification indicates that “successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable [and] there are major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable”.
The GMPP report says the Falcon has been placed in this category: “Primarily due to concerns that the programme does not have the resources to transition the Cabinet Office business units (BUs) to the new services within the planned time frame,” the report says. “The delay in the pilot, now projected for completion by September 2025, has contributed to this assessment. A [NISTA] gateway took place where the review team expressed concerns about the pace of BU migrations and the rising costs associated with the programme. The issues are being addressed as part of an action plan with NISTA support.”
Although an additional nine months has been added to the delivery timeframe since last year, the major project report reveals that that the expected cost of delivering Falcon has been cut almost in half – from £52m to £23m.
“This is due to a revised business case submission which changed from building our own platform, to outsourcing to another government department and securing migration resource from Microsoft and partners at no investment cost,” the report reveals.
In the annual assessment, the Cabinet Office reiterated its rationale for moving from Google to Microsoft, and the benefits it expects to derive from doing so.
“The Cabinet Office is the central headquarters for the government. Currently, we use Google Workspace, which is different from the Microsoft systems used by most of our partners both inside and outside of government,” the report says. “This difference can make working together and sharing information difficult. Moving to Microsoft 365 will help us work more effectively and efficiently. It’s becoming more and more important for us to collaborate easily with people from other organisations, who might be in different places, using different devices, and working at different times. This change will also allow us to use new artificial intelligence tools that are being developed across government.”
The operational difficulties created by the Cabinet Office’s ongoing use of Google were referenced in a recent Public Accounts Committee appearance by the department’s most senior figure: permanent secretary Cat Little.
“As someone from a department not on a Microsoft platform, I can tell you that it is incredibly frustrating to have to constantly say: ‘I’m very sorry: I can’t send you that document to work on because my system doesn’t talk to your system’,” she said. “So, we need to think about how we create the best environment for our staff to operate in and drive value for money.”
