Align your Digital Technology Strategy with Government Priorities
UK Government Strategies in Digital Technology - Status and A Forward Look
In this Research Note we set ourselves the challenge of defining the current and evolving landscape of UK government strategies in the digital technology area. Our findings below may help businesses or other organisations align their own strategies to UK government priorities.
Our screening identified 24 UK government strategies in the digital technology area (see Table 1). Whilst not necessarily all relevant strategies, we anticipated they caught many of the national priorities related to digital technology.
Core strategies …. At its core, we found that digital technology featured in government strategy documents on AI, chips, cyber, data, digital, quantum computing and wireless. Those documents comprised a range of strategies, plans and frameworks; all of which were accessible to businesses through the impressive GOV UK search tool.
Broader strategies…. set by government within business sectors or for specialist subjects also concerned the future of digital technology. We found important digital technology considerations within government strategy documents on clean power, electricity connections, energy security, environment, heat use in buildings, industrial development, infrastructure, planning, medtech, and resilience.
Organisations considering a strategy for data or digital technology could do well in our opinion to examine both core and broader UK government strategies prior to setting their own strategies or taking major strategic decisions. Bringing that to life, a UK data centre investment strategy might consider the UK government positions on electricity and water supply, land availability, skills availability, supply chain and environment. That may help organisations avoid creating their strategy that proves to be impractical, infeasible or missing opportunities.
Clarity over the actions proposed by a strategy is critical for that strategy to be relevant and deliver its vision. Within our sample we found a wide range of expression of actions. Some strategy documents had actions woven in their text, making it hard to crystallise. Other strategy documents had actions set out within the text and then helpfully gathered in a table. Either way the important content is likely to be clarity over what was to be done, by whom and when. In our view that is the only way to enable action tracking. But more than that, its a great way to check across multiple strategies in the organisation for duplication or confusion. We found a number of instances of action duplication within our sample of government strategies and consider that something that could ideally be simplified out by the government.
Strategies often need to change. Once created, a strategy may need review and refresh over time to remain relevant. Several factors outside an organisation's control might trigger review and refresh. For example, technology step changes such as in AI might otherwise leave a business strategy stranded. Change of government, and new environmental legislation might be other triggers. We suggest organisations define such review triggers and monitor for them so their strategy is not a dry shelf item but remains vibrant and robust.
Even government strategies risk losing relevance over time due to external changes not triggering reviews and refresh. A stark example is the UK government’s industrial strategy which took from 2017 to 2025 for refresh (see Figure 2). Other examples are the five years taken for refresh of the Infrastructure Strategy and the currently five-year-old Data Strategy.
Figure 2: Eight Years to Refresh the Industrial Strategy
Clarity over what strategies are in force and which are withdrawn seems an obvious step and yet may not happen. Without a periodic review of what's in and what's out, a sense may grow that strategies are more a duty or required process than fundamental to an organisation's success. Even government digital strategies can suffer. For example the UK has both a live AI Strategy (2021) and an AI Opportunities Action Plan (2025) with actions to implement a vision.
Local strategies can play a key role as regional and city councils translate national strategies, plans and frameworks down into local contexts. A key example is local government planning. Planning sits at the heart of the current government’s economic growth agenda backed with a commitment to simplification and speed. That leaves the National Planning Policy Framework and the National Policy Statements as key references for local decision-making. Such decisions must also be taken with reference to local economic growth strategies and plans. Then understanding of local strategies and plans becomes important to organisations setting strategies.
A roadmap or landscape document can be important to avoid overlaps, when an organisation relies on multiple strategies. Even in government, overlaps may easily occur without review. And, perhaps as a minimum the landscape can become highly complex; the antithesis of strategies. Within the electricity supply area alone, we identified several UK government strategies: clean power (2024), electricity connections (2023) and energy security (2022) all seemingly highly relevant to an organisation. Those were issued under different governments (see Figure 3), and there's more to come under the new government. So ideally, a roadmap or landscape document could be made available, identifying all national and ideally local strategies along with the forward plan for reviews and extensions and new strategies planned to be developed. This suggestion extends just as much to the UK government as it can to organisations.
Figure 3: Some Electricity Strategy Documents
Skills gaps across the UK are now emerging as a critical issue and may have to be core in any organisation strategy. Basic trade skills such as electrical, building and HVAC technicians are stretched across the UK’s planned 1.5 million new houses programme, big infrastructure construction projects such as data centres or HS2, facility operations and maintenance. The complexity that skills gaps may introduce emerged in our sample of UK government strategies (see Table 2). That complexity may impede succinct and effective investment or organisational actions that are critical to solving the gap.
Table 2: Cross Cutting Issues - Where Digital Technology Strategies Address Skills
Strategy actions need careful monitoring, reporting and interventions in our opinion. Without continuous monitoring by management, actions can skip, be delivered different to intent, go overdue and not deliver the intended vision. But more than this, periodic independent verification is also needed, using evidence to confirm or challenge management's view. Robust monitoring and focused reporting can enable management interventions to avoid the vision being missed, the opportunities and benefits lost and either the strategy being ditched or a complete reset.
Developing your own strategy involves bringing many of the factors above and others together to keep it relevant, impactful and deliver its vision. So, if your organisation is formulating or refreshing a strategy or considering a major investment, it could well be worth developing a deeper understanding of relevant national and local government strategies. That may unlock opportunities such as access to government funding, and your organisation being seen as supporting national or local imperatives.
Getting involved in national or local government strategy development can be hugely important to helping them stay relevant to their intended visions. Consultations can of course be a major overhead to organisations focused on delivering their own commitments. Hopefully our assessment above helps consider where involvement may be beneficial. Such consultations are periodically announced through GOV UK. The government’s refresh of the Industrial Strategy (Table 1) is one such example.
Overall, we concluded our first survey of digital technology in UK government strategies with a sense that the landscape is not set out in a comprehensive map, it is complicated, with actions often vague or hard to measure. Actions get duplicated across different strategies. Monitoring and reporting of actions and outcomes are not as visible as we might expect.
The complicated nature of such government strategies provokes a key question. If your organisation is considering formulating or refreshing a strategy, or considering a major investment, is it immediately clear where you might interface with and potentially support a national agenda?
We can help …. by assessing national and local government strategy documents, setting out actions, monitoring, reports and trajectories. With insights into national and local government strategies we can help your organisation align to them. Hopefully that produces sharper more impactful stratgies in your organisation. In addition, it may unlock new opportunities from those strategies, and illustrate how your organisation can support national or local government achieve their objectives.
Hopefully our strategy listing and the analysis we summarised above supports your organisation build its strategies.
Do let us know your thoughts on this evolving and exciting area.
It is important to remember that our list does not attempt a comprehensive coverage of all pertinent strategies, frameworks or plans. Readers should always conduct their own research and draw their own conclusions from the original documents.