The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has one of the largest spending allocations across government for updating its ‘legacy’ services that use old technology or no longer meet business needs.
Defra’s problems with legacy services have built up over the years, with most now either no longer supported by the supplier or on extended support arrangements. It has also built new systems on top of old ones – for example to replace EU systems following Brexit – which has added to the challenge.
This inquiry is based on the NAO investigation into progress tackling Defra’s ageing digital services. In January the Committee will question senior officials at Defra to further examine:
- whether Defra has a full understanding of its legacy challenges, including cyber security risks
- if its plans to address the problem are realistic, achievable and aligned to the future needs of the business, and
- whether Defra understands the risks to delivering improvements and has a plan for managing these.
If you have evidence on these questions, please submit it here by 6pm on Monday 9 January 2023. Please have a look at the requirements for written evidence submissions and note the Committee cannot accept material as evidence that has been published elsewhere.