The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is a digital backwater struggling to upgrade aging IT systems that are essential to protecting public health and the environment in the UK , MPs warned.
The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee on Wednesday called for a ‘complete overhaul’ of Defra after it published a damning report into the department’s IT systems, responsible for monitoring food safety, air quality and climate. ‘water.
The committee learned that Defra and its branches still use paper forms to process about 14 million transactions a year. He pointed out that until recently, systems for uploading TB test results in cattle were so outdated that vets had to buy old laptops to run government software.
The committee also found that Defra was struggling to recruit enough IT technicians and secure sufficient funds for a £726m modernization program due to be completed by 2025.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, deputy chairman of the committee, said Defra’s equipment was “outdated and disconnected” and its upgrade program was “gone”.
“We are dealing with the rapid spread of animal diseases, possibly the next pandemic, with systems that may rely on moving paper forms. This cannot continue,” he said. “It’s time for a complete overhaul of Defra.”
The report also found that the department was struggling to take a strategic approach to upgrading its applications, in part because it had focused its efforts on more pressing areas, “such as implementing the IT systems needed to leaving the EU”.
Defra has long been one of the weakest departments in Whitehall, according to senior government officials, and has a significant extra workload due to Brexitwhich removed the UK from the EU regulatory framework for food and chemical standards.
Officials and pressure groups said recently the Financial Times that the department was becoming “increasingly dysfunctional”.
A report released last month by the National Audit Office, Parliament’s spending watchdog, found “serious weaknessesin the Defra administration, notably due to a backlog of 63 reviews of existing environmental regulations.
The committee said that while Defra argued that completely transforming its digital systems could save up to £25m a year, the department had only received 58% of the funding it proposed for when 2021 spending review.
Ruth Chambers, from the Greener UK coalition, which represents 10 of the UK’s biggest conservation groups, including the RSPB and the National Trust, said the government would struggle to deliver key projects, such as the reform of agriculture, without proper IT in place.
“Defra has operated underpowered for too long. No 10 must give Defra the funding and support it needs to deliver on the big green promises it has made,” she added.
Defra said it has made significant progress investing in its digital services, making improvements to flood warnings, agricultural and rural programs and food import and export processing.
“Defra is a large organization, and we are committed to improving the quality and availability of our digital services and ensuring our systems are secure and resilient,” he added.
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