The Government Digital Service’s technology group is planning to change the way it works to make better use of existing data, expertise and discovery projects.

GDS technology group wants to reuse data and recycle good ideas – Photo credit: Flickr, Steven Snodgrass

The group, which aims to help government take advantage of new technologies, is already revising the Technology Code of Practice –a consultation was opened on 15 June – and wants to make a number of other changes to remove barriers to progress.

In a blogpost, chief technology officer Andy Beale set out the changes the team would make, which focus on collaboration and sharing of best practice.

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They include making better use of the available data to provide better insight into the technology government has and how it can be best used, reusing other people’s work – for instance effective discovery phase or pilot projects – and improving communications with people outside the group.

This, Beale said, means working with those in commercial, security, programmes and people, as well as the global technology industry, which benefits from billions of dollars of investment and significant innovations that he said government should be exploring and testing.

At the same time as the change in ethos, James Stewart, director of architecture at GDS, is to take over the Technology Leaders Network – a group of technology leaders from each department and devolved nation that aims to share best practice across government.

Beale said that this would improve support for the government technology community, and increase the number of events – future ones include the use of public cloud for government workloads and accelerating data sharing through APIs.

The blogpost also highlighted the ongoing discovery project for the ninth iteration of G-Cloud, which is being led by Warren Smith.