B1632 - Information Technology Commissioning England and British Information Technology Bill - Division

A

BILL

TO

Consolidate and reorganise public sector IT Infrastructure to improve reliability, cost efficiency and security.

BE IT ENACTED by the King’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same as follows:--

1 Definitions

In this Act—

(1) “Local Authority" refers to local government within England only.

(2) "ITCE" refers to Information Technology Commissioning England as established in Section 2(1).

(3) "Government Digital Service" refers to the organisation within the Cabinet Office tasked with Digital Government services.

(4) "BIT" refers to British Information Technology as established in Section 3

2 Information Technology Commissioning England

(1) There shall be a body corporate to be known as the Information Technology Commissioning England.

(2) The Government Digital Service is to merge into ITCE, as well as any other relevant existing digital infrastructure within public bodies, central government and local government.

(2) The membership of ITCE shall comprise of-

(a) A chairman appointed by the Secretary of State; (b) A member appointed by Local Authorities for each of the 9 ITL 1 statistical regions of England, voted upon by Local Authorities who use ITCE services weighted by their population size; (c) Other members as the Secretary of State may from time to time appoint.

(3) An appointment made by the Secretary of State under subsection (2)(a), (2)(b) or (2)(c) may be terminated by the Secretary of State.

(4) An appointment made by the process documented in (2)(b) may be removed via a vote of no confidence by Local Authorities within the region who use ITCE services with votes being weighted by their population size.

(5) Schedule 1 (which makes further provision as to Information Technology Commissioning England) has effect.

3 British Information Technology

(1) The Secretary of State must incorporate a private company limited by shares under the Companies Act 2006 within 6 months of this section coming into force.

(2) That company is referred to as British Information Technology or BIT in this Act.

(3) The Secretary of State must place adequate provisions in the Articles of Association of BIT to ensure that the purpose of BIT is to develop IT solutions for customers whom contract them, focusing available capacity on developing for the ITCE first.

(4) BIT must ensure that the provision of services follows accepted industry best practice and delivers good performance to meet the requirements of the customer as far as reasonably practicable.

4 Preferred Provider

(1) Information Technology Commissioning England is to be the preferred provider for Central Government, Local Government within England, Public Corporations and Arm's Length Bodies.

(2) Another provider may be used where ITCE does not commission required functionality and does not provide compelling evidence as to why functionality cannot or should not be implemented subject to approval by the Secretary of State.

5 Short title

This Act may be cited as the Information Technology England Act 2023.

6 Commencement

(1) Subject to the following subsection, this Act comes into force on the day on which this Act is passed.

(2) Section 4 comes into force on such day as the Secretary of State may by regulations appoint.

(a) Regulations may be made under this subsection no later than 36 months and no earlier than 18 months after this Acts comes into force.

(3) Section 2(2) enters into force on such day as the Secretary of State may by regulations appoint.

(a) Regulations may be made under this subsection no later than 6 months and no earlier than 3 months after this Acts comes into force.

6 Extent

This Act extends to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

SCHEDULE 1

1 Employees of Information Technology Commissioning England

(1) The employees of the Information Technology Commissioning England who are not members shall be appointed to and hold their employments on such terms and conditions, including terms and conditions as to remuneration, as Information Technology Commissioning England may determine.

(2) If Information Technology Commissioning England so determine in the case of any of the employees of Information Technology Commissioning England who are not executive members, Information Technology Commissioning England shall—

(a) pay to or in respect of those employees such pensions, allowances or gratuities, or (b) provide and maintain for them such pension schemes (whether contributory or not), as Information Technology Commissioning England may determine.

2 Finances of Information Technology Commissioning England

(1) It is the duty of Information Technology Commissioning England to keep proper accounts and proper records in relation to the accounts.

(2) The Secretary of State may, with the consent of the Treasury, make grants to the Information Technology Commissioning England, which shall be paid out of money provided by Parliament.

(3) Any excess of Information Technology Commissioning England’s revenues for any financial year over the sums required by them for that year for meeting their obligations and carrying out their functions shall be payable into the Consolidated Fund.

3 Secretary of State’s authority to make directions

The Secretary of State may make such directions, determinations, or objectives as relates to the operation of Information Technology Commissioning England that are necessary or expedient for its internal structure, operation, and provision of services.

4 Provision of services

(1) Information Technology Commissioning England will at minimum architect and procure the following solutions from external organisations to customers in Local Government, Central Government and Public Corporations via an open and fair bidding process -

(a) Quality Cyber Security Operations Centre capability. (b) Quality Technical Operations Centre capability. (c) Quality Information Technology solutions for public organisations to carry out their duties along good practice guidance and security principles. (d) Whatever else customers deems necessary and can be economically and reasonably procured by Information Technology Commissioning England, with consideration to ensure output will provide quality and secure solutions. (e) Whatever else the Secretary of State deems necessary.

(2) Priority should be made to use and contribute to open source solutions where possible.

(3) Where solutions are of importance to National Defence and/or Security, with approval from the Secretary of State, Information Technology Commissioning England may bypass the open and fair bidding process and contract directly to British Information Technology.

This Bill was written by the Baroness of Great Malvern u/dropmiddleleaves, on behalf of the 34th Government.

Deputy Speaker,

This is a necessary bill creating a public corporation - Information Technology Commissioning England or ITCE for short - with goal to procure and design IT solutions to struggling public corporations and bodies. This body is to self fund from its customers in the public sector, rather than rely on government grants. This is to ensure departments pay their way for IT infrastructure as they do currently and allow for flexible IT projects to begin, rather than require to bid for funding from the treasury to a specific department for IT develop. Similarly this body will cover local government, which funds itself via many means seperate to central government.

This is vital. Our public sector is riddled with bespoke IT systems, small seperated systems with little plan in the way of service lifecycle embedding within it large amounts of technical debt and risk in the way of financial penalty and vulnerability to our national security. Similarly there is lots that can be shared across the public sector, and by collating finances we can achieve more than an individual body or section of a body can do within itself - a similar model to single payer healthcare where by the NHS bidding as one rather than individual insurers we can get a better deal.

Let me give an example Deputy Speaker, it is vital that Bromsgrove District Council has a desperate need for a Cyber Security and Technical Operations Centre. Every part of our public sector has a need to ensure the security, performance and availability of IT services is continually monitored, ensuring high performance for service users and reducing risk within systems. It is unlikely that Bromsgrove District Council could procure such a system on its own, it is but a small fish with little capital and the private sector has little want to involve itself with such small fish. Therefore by consolidating IT infrastructure procurement into Information Technology Commissioning England we can centrally procure solutions which are far more economically viable than small fish doing such by itself. Many government departments similarly have small IT systems that would benefit hugely from such centralisation of procurement and managment of IT infrastructure.

Similarly Deputy Speaker, the needs of Blackpool Council in comparison to the City of York Council for, in one example, managing the council maintained housing, are very similar if not identical. So why are we not centralising procurement, developing a single solution which can be better maintained for both the councils, saving the people of this country a great deal of money and meanwhile developing a more secure solution via centralised monitoring of the systems.

IT is integral to the matters of government, we can no longer allow the practice of public bodies creating their own cottage systems which more often than not end up undermaintained while supporting vital services and handling sensitive and vital data to continue. We must embark on a plan of establishing a public body with responsibility for this, remediating the high levels of risk in government IT in a cost effective manner and ensuring national IT infrastructure is provisioned considering the full service lifecycle for the systems and in a secure and cost effective way. Other countries have done similar, members need only to look at Germany with the ITZBund for a similar system.

Within this bill also exists provisions for establishment of British Information Technology, this is to be another arms length public corporation with goal to bid for contracts primarily from ITCE, but also where resources allow from the private sector.

This is a vital part of the legislation, there are simply things which are better handled in-house for a more cost effective solution, and the private sector cannot always deliver the bespoke solution needed for Government IT infrastructure in a way which meets strict standards which will be established by the ITCE. Similarly, there will be cases where information for reasons of national security do not allow for a open and fair bidding process, and instead must be handled by state owned corporation. We must therefore Deputy Speaker establish this public corporation to meet these needs.

I would sympathise with members of this house which would point to the inefficient nature of having two corporations, but we must comply with the US FTA and seperate the two in order to allow for a open and fair bidding process. British Information Technology as laid out in this legislation allows for this.

Deputy Speaker, I urge members to vote for this legislation

This division will end on the 28th at 10PM GMT

Link to debate can be found here