Policy background Digital Government
In November 2012 the previous government published the Government Digital Strategy setting out the objective of delivering government services as "digital by default". The government’s view was that the public increasingly expects to access services quickly and conveniently, at times and in ways that suit them, often online. The strategy identified that, up to that point, the government had been hindered in delivering better services because of a reliance on digitised versions of pre-digital business processes, layered on top of legacy IT systems, some of which were over 30 years old. It was stated that outdated back-end systems prevented effective data sharing.
	In 2013 the government started on a two-year programme of open policymaking to find a way of overcoming the legal barriers to the better delivery of public services, better research and better statistics (www.datasharing.org.uk). In February 2016 this process culminated in the government’s publication of Better Use of Data in Government, consulting on proposed reforms, ahead of the Government Transformation Strategy, published in February 2017, which set out in more detail how the government intended to develop government services in response to the "internet age" and make government a digital organisation. The Strategy’s objectives include making better use of data within government while taking security into full account.