Two House of Commons Committees have focused their attention on the lack of transparency regarding the size of the Government’s legacy IT estate and what this means for the ability to adopt artificial-intelligence technologies
Whitehall’s ability to adopt AI technology is at risk due to the government’s reliance on a large amount of legacy IT. This was revealed by two different House of Commons committees in the past week.
During an oral evidence session on 14th October 2025, the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, whose purpose is to examine the policies and outputs of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, touched on the issue of legacy IT. The session was part of a committee inquiry into DSIT’s efforts to establish itself as a “digital center for government”. Submissions from Crown Hosting Data Centres and the Institute for Government were included in the session. Nick Davies, program director at the Institute for Government, explained the difficulties of trying to get a clear picture of the amount the government spends in digital transformation.
“Data about spending is at best mixed [including] in quality… but historically, it’s been quite difficult to link the contract data with spending data,” said Davies. “Market intelligence firms can give you a better estimate, but they are not as precise,” he said.
The Procurement Act, which was introduced in February 2025, was designed to increase transparency of government spending. It included requirements that all contract details of tech deals exceeding PS5m be published within 90-days.
This would allow spending watchdogs, tech companies competing with the government and the public to have unprecedented visibility of how and where the government spends its money. Davies says that progress has been “a bit mixed” in achieving this goal.
The use of all the different types [contract] of notices [required under the terms of the Procurement Act] has been increasing month by month. He said that some government departments are still publishing fewer notifications than they did before the act was passed.
This could be a sign that the government is not complying with the act, or it could mean, for example, procurement authorities have chosen to not publish notices voluntarily. The act, in theory, should improve [transparency].”
How much legacy IT does government have? The committee heard that while there are still questions about how much money is spent by the government on new technology, it is also difficult to determine the size of the legacy IT estate. Jason Liggins touched on this topic during the hearing of the committee. Crown Hosting Data Centres is a joint-venture operated by the Cabinet Office, and colocation firm Ark Data Centres.
According to Liggins the organisation is the largest datacentre provider in the UK. It was established in 2015 to consolidate public sector operators’ legacy datacentres by providing them with access to more efficient facilities to host their workloads. Crown Hosting’s mission is to reduce energy consumption, reduce carbon emissions, and accelerate digital transformation for the public sector. “We already help [the] the public sector save PS1.5bn each year… by moving the legacy IT from server rooms and cupboards throughout the public sector to large, highly efficient facility.”
Liggins cited Department for Work and Pensions as a customer of Crown Hosting. It worked with Crown Hosting to relocate data and apps to a private clouds setup within their facilities over the course nine months.
This project was part a broader move by DWP to the public clouds, which took seven years. 70% of the services of the department are now hosted on the public cloud.
Liggins said that the move to Crown Hosting by DWP allowed the department to save PS150m a yearly on its legacy IT costs, and achieve the desired return on investment within nine months.
In response, Labour MP Chi Onwurah, a committee member, asked how much legacy IT is in use across government and how it’s measured, since the state of digital government reviewhad “effectively” concluded that departments don’t have a record of their “legacy assets”.
Liggins responded that there are mechanisms in the government which provide a partial guide on how much legacy IT has been used. One of these is HM Treasury’s, where departments must document their IT systems’ annual electricity usage for carbon impact reporting. Liggins said that “Defra [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] analyzes those figures for all departments in order to calculate carbon savings.” “All the carbon impact [documented in those figures is considered] is legacy IT and that’s due to the cloud providers not returning their [carbon] numbers.”
Onwurah asked to clarify if this definition meant that the government considered all non-public IT assets as legacy. Liggins confirmed that it did.
He said, “I have an opinion about the terminology used by the government, which is that [in their view] non-public cloud IT resources are legacy, regardless of whether they’re new, old, or contemporary.”
Onwurah responded: “We agree that’s a very interesting definition… So [are you saying] tell the committee that by looking at the power consumption, the government knows what and where it’s legacy is?” Liggins confirmed this take.
In its annual report published on 15th October 2025, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which is headed by Geoffrey Clifton Brown, also addressed the issue of legacy IT.
According to the PAC report, the “outdated legacy IT infrastructure” is a “major obstacle” to the implementation and adoption of artificial intelligence technologies (AI) across government. It also increases departments’ vulnerability to cyber attacks. The report cites DSIT’s definition of legacy IT, which describes these systems as “end-of life products, out-of-date legacy IT infrastructure, not supported by the supplier, no longer cost effective, or otherwise considered to be above the acceptable threshold of risk”. According to this definition, the report states that 28% of central government IT systems will meet this definition by 2024. This is “extremely problematic for the government’s AI plans”.
DSIT doesn’t know the total number of legacy assets across government. The report said that this is unacceptable in an increasingly hostile digital environment.
While the government has revealed its plans to tackle this problem [DSIT’s January 2025] in A blueprint for modern digital government (policy documents), we remain extremely worried by the size of the challenge. [so] Funding for the remediation for the highest-risk heritage technology must be prioritized urgently.
UK Government to invest PS1m to build out regional tech clusters.
by Caroline Donnelly.
by Caroline Donnelly.
by Caroline Donnelly.
byCaroline Donnelly.
