Speeches by Kane.

“You know what it looks like, but do you know how to get there?”

“Could I just clarify a point that Lloyd raised? You talked about how you need to become a modern and sophisticated buyer of cloud. Do you know what that looks like? Do you have a sense of what it is and how you are going to get there?”

“Do you have a timescale for this? Can you talk a little bit about the timescale for delivering the strategy and sorting out the data deficiencies that currently exist?”

“How do you help Departments to provide the information? Giving them the playbook is one thing, but I think you pointed out that all of us are on a different journey when it comes to interacting with digital. Sometimes, if you are at a particular point in your career, interacting with digital can be a slower process tha…”

“I have a couple of final points. Once you have implemented this strategy, you have to measure its success. I would be keen to know how you are going to measure success, but also whether you are alive to the need to use the leverage of the size of the contracts to evolve the contracts in a way that possibly suits our bu…”

“We are seeing that fundamental shift—that step change in technology—coalesce around a few suppliers. It has completely changed. I probably still have one of the cardboard sleeves with a Microsoft Office subscription code in it. In terms of how the market is changing, you are going to have to change as well. Where are w…”

“You would accept that until we get better at collecting the data in order to analyse it, we are going to have inefficiencies within procurement, which will cost money.”

“I would agree with that. We have made the point that we are in a step change in technology at the moment. An observation I may have is that the technology is changing in a step change approach, but the Government approach is changing in an incremental approach. I wonder whether you think that that is possibly where you…”

“It is not that you probably could do more; you definitely could do more. The reason I know you could do more is that the data you have is not enough at the moment, and you are procuring. If you are procuring with insufficient data, you are procuring insufficiently. I recognise, and we all recognise, that you could do m…”

“It does, but any of us who have been involved in big change with technology know that it is once you have the thing up and running, and your people have to start interacting with it, that the deficiencies start to become apparent. You may have a reporting mechanism, but how are you going to ensure that everything is be…”

“The Report says: “Government does not know the overall picture for how much is spent on digital change programmes”. The data might exist, but you do not have it in a form or place where you can use it appropriately. What is happening there? If the data exists, you do not have access to it.”

“It fair to say that if we do not work with data, we do not really think about it too much, but, when we do, we realise how much of it surrounds us in multiple forms. Every day in this place I walk past shelves groaning under the weight of volumes of Hansard: an institutional memory of all that has happened here. New te…”

“Of course, but I am just asking whether I am hearing what you are saying.”

“You had to set this whole process up during covid, which was a very chaotic time. You had to make decisions. It must be commended what all of us had to do right back at the start of this. As we go through this process, we will talk about establishing things; we will take you through. But the decision-making process sta…”

“So you would not change much?”

“I am surprised to hear that, because the Report says all the way through that there is a lot that could have been done differently and that still could be done differently. Is it your assessment that you are quite comfortable that, other than tweaking around the edges, most of the decisions were solid and you would go …”

“I am going to cover specific points, but first, you came in after it had started; hindsight is a wonderful thing, but so is a fresh pair of eyes. You are looking in two years into the process, so are you comfortable that everything was fine and there was nothing you would change? The way you presented the answer is not…”

“Why did you offer such favourable terms—the 2% simple interest rate over the whole loan period—for the loans? It sounds to me as though, on a period of reflection, that could have been done differently. That may be a learning lesson.”

“Permanent secretary, what assessment have you made of the risks of managing this loan book in isolation?”

“Would it not be more efficient to consolidate the DCMS loan book with others across Government?”