Thank you for having me, and thanks also for acknowledging the GOV.UK App, which I’m sure you’ve all downloaded.
If you haven’t already, then you should be doing so now. And I don’t if you’re looking down at your phones while I’m speaking, if what you’re doing is downloading the GOV.UK App – which is already outselling the Bible on the app store, I’m reliably told.
When I came into office a year ago, I was told to deliver an App, with a digital wallet, with a chatbot, and with a digital driving licence attached to it, I was told it couldn’t be done in one parliament, that it couldn’t be done in one 5 year period.
My response was I’m sure Google and others don’t take that long to design and deploy their technology. Let me see a timeline.
The timeline came back to me a week later, and it was now 3 years.
We did all of this, the start of the deployment of GOV.UK App, within one year of government.
Within 15 months, all of those services I’ve just outlined will be deployed and put to the benefit of citizens right around the country.
And that for me is a source of huge pride, because we’ve used technology to wrap services around individual citizens needs.
Right now, as all of you know, too often citizens are being wrapped around the needs of services themselves.
And this is a profound change as we go forward.
Now, sometimes I’m accused of being “too close to big tech”.
And I could have no better place to have this argument out on the table with you now.
In May, The Guardian criticised me for meeting with the sector 70% more than my predecessor. Now, to this crime, I plead guilty.
In truth that was just 28 times over the course of a 6-month period, that equates to around twice a week over that time.
As Technology Secretary I simply will not apologise for meeting with technology companies – that is the job.
Just as meeting with the families of victims of social media, regulators, founders, overseas governments and the creative sector, it’s all part and parcel of what I’m paid to do on behalf of the people’s government.
But I don’t do these meetings just because I’m paid to do it.
I do them because they matter:
keeping children safe or from social media – it matters;
making sure Britain is the best prepared for developments at the frontier of AI – that matters;
and securing better deals for the taxpayer for the billions of pounds spent every year on software, cloud services, devices and information technology – that matters.
So today, I’m here to acknowledge our agreement for an entirely new way of working with Google – and how that will impact our public services.
It’s an agreement that recognises our value as the UK government as a huge client to their organisation.
And how important their technology is to help us deliver the changes to public services to make them more in-touch and more in-tune with citizens. And better value for money for taxpayers.
The agreement signals and signifies our determination to exploit the full potential of a partnership between government and Google, with much more collaboration between their UK AI lab, DeepMind, and my own AI developers in my department, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology with a new digital centre of government.
We’ve already used Gemini to build “Extract”, a specialist AI tool to help councils convert decades-old, handwritten planning documents and maps into data in minutes.
It could be pivotal in our plans to stop bureaucracy from holding up the construction and ultimately help us build 1.5 million homes that we’ve pledged over this parliament.
We know that tools using the same technology are capable of transforming Whitehall itself, the NHS, and other essential services that millions of people across our country rely on.
So, with more hands-on support, I can’t wait to see what our 2 teams deliver together.
Google are also aiming to train up 100,000 public sector professionals with the skills that they need to use this technology by 2030.
That’s going to help us hit the target the Prime Minister set earlier this year, where we’ve committed to double the number of digital experts across government…
…essential to shaking up decades old processes and making public services work in the way people expect services to work in the 2020s – whether that’s in the NHS, policing, benefits or tax.
And, perhaps most importantly, we are looking to the sector to help shake off the legacy technology that costs the taxpayer an absolute fortune and leaves us vulnerable to outages and to cyberattacks.
More than one in 4 public sector systems run on this “ball and chain” tech – rising to 70% in some police forces and NHS trusts.
With contracts signed decades ago, and a high costs of exit, we’ve seen a few tech companies really taking liberties with the public sector.
In the worst cases, contracts have made it impossible for public sector organisations to move on. They’ve locked up their data up in vulnerable, archaic servers…
…only to have the price of maintaining the tech hiked up, year-on- year, with no sign of light at the end of the tunnel.
Now, as Technology Secretary, I am determined to break free from these costly chains once and for all.
Through agreements like this we can transition public sector organisations trapped by the ball and chain of legacy products and services, and to migrate to the cloud.
That move alone will liberate public service organisations and use the latest technology, and more freely explore the wider market moving forward. That is what I am determined to do.
All in all, this partnership could see Google invest hundreds of millions of pounds in Britain’s public sector technology.
Helping to deliver my ambition to bring the public services people use every day, drag it into the 21st century.
Without deals like this in place, we had hundreds of public sector organisations…
…police forces, NHS trusts, local councils, government departments and many, many more…
They were simply just going it alone in negotiations with big tech companies.
And they just don’t have the experience and market clout they need to drive the best deal for taxpayers.
They end up paying the full shop-front rate or even being entirely mis-sold tech that doesn’t work for them in the first place.
But they’re all buying on behalf of the same client: you, the British taxpayer.
And that taxpayer is footing the bill for an annual £21 billion for buying the same technology time and time again.
That’s why I’m determined to secure a new deal for buying tech for the British taxpayer.
For too long, too many governments haven’t done enough to build the positive business relationships that Britain needs to prevent the taxpayer being short changed when it comes to procuring tech – from healthcare services, policing systems right through to benefits processes, and bin collections, right down to street sweeping.
Just as with Google on this strategy, when I negotiate with Tech companies, I am negotiating on behalf of the British taxpayer.
Britain will be using technology in more areas and more than ever before.
So, my message to big technology companies is clear: bring us your best ideas, bring us your best tech, and bring it at the best price.
In return, you’ll get access to the biggest client in the country, one that will be increasingly intelligent and increasingly digital.
And as we start to operate as a more intelligent buyer of technology, new opportunities are going to emerge.
The first one that I’m pushing for, is to make sure that, whenever possible, UK technology companies- large and small – get a fair shot at winning a contract.
Our upcoming marketplace – the national digital exchange – will make sure more and more UK tech companies can get their slice of the £21 billion pie.
That means more money for companies operating here in the UK, workers and founders.
It will help us to achieve the economic growth upon which Britain’s future prosperity lies. And it will improve the public services on which British citizens depend.
Now I want to acknowledge the foresight of Google in signing this key agreement, and I want more to follow. I want it to stimulate many similar co-operation agreements with the full range of international and domestic technology companies.
That is in the interests of higher economic growth, more jobs, better public services and greater value for taxpayers.
Thank you very much for having me along today.