The key responsibilities in Government for IT delivery, and AI have moved, swapped even; regulation remains at DDCMS.
Links
He is abolishing DIST, i.e. innovation scient & technology, AI gets a cabinet seat.
- https://www.gov.uk/government/news/machinery-of-government-changes-fact-sheet, this is quite short and therfore easy to understand
- A blog by https://bm.wel.by/2026/07/22/five-things-i-think-about-gds-data-and-ai-being-split-up-again/
A lot of this depends on whether you think GDS was a success or not. Benjamin Welby seems to think it was. I need to read his evidence more carefully.
HMG is much more dependent on the US Cloud providers than it was. ICL & ARM have been sold to Japan. I believe that the delivery systems are still based on COTS i.e. the GDS architectural strategy work is focused on web front ends.
When I heard the criticisms of the reorg by fans of GDS , I was of the view that there are three problems, delivery, regulation and innovation. Also that UK regulation is overly focused on child (and now women’s) safety and privacy and not on political disinformation. The re-org also over-emphasises the importance of AI as a source of innovation in the UK economy. (I’d look at whether the UK can recover its position in battery and windmill manufacture).
I reflected on this on Federalism and IT governance on this wiki.