Renaming the ministry the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport acknowledges how its responsibilities have changed, says minister

The newly named Department of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport celebrates its 25th birthday this year Credit: PA

A rebrand of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has been announced by cabinet minister Karen Bradley to add digital to the department’s name.

The culture secretary today announced the change to reflect that half of DCMS’s work now relates to digital and online sectors.

The new name will be the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, although it will keep the abbreviation DCMS for all communications.

Bradley highlighted that DCMS celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, and it was fitting now to include digital in the name.

“The department has taken on significant new responsibilities in recent years, so that half of its policy and delivery work now covers the digital sectors – telecommunications, data protection, internet safety, cyber skills and parts of media and the creative industries,” she said.

This is the latest rebrand of a Whitehall department, and comes after the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy was created last year when the Department of Energy and Climate Change was folded into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills last year.

Among the most memorable rebrands was the launch of a logo for the Office for Government Commerce in 2008, which when rotated on its side formed a rude silhouette of a male.