New UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has broken up the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), scrapping the dedicated technology minister post and scattering responsibility for government digital transformation across three separate departments. This risks creating a fragmented approach to how Whitehall manages and modernises its ageing legacy IT systems, at a time when the government has already promised huge efficiency savings from technology, and comes as the Government Digital Service moves to its third home in just over two years.

DSIT's functions have been split between the Cabinet Office, the new Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST), and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which now houses the Government Digital Service and the Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence. A new AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, gets a Cabinet seat working jointly across the Cabinet Office and BIST, but the sole "digital" minister, Ian Murray, sits in DCMS without Cabinet rank, juggling government tech alongside issues like digital inclusion and online harms. This follows the government's claim of finding £45 billion in efficiency savings through automation and AI, a figure experts and MPs have questioned, raising doubts about whether the reshuffled structure can deliver on pledges to overhaul legacy systems and support UK tech suppliers.