The Commons Select Committee has called a session to investigate the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) department, scrutinising its initial strategies and objectives.

On 27 November, Tom Loosemore, a partner at Public Digital and former deputy director of GDS, and Dafydd Vaughan, director at Cedryrn, will give evidence.

The committee stated that it is looking to explore the challenges and successes that GDS has had, as well as assessing prior leadership and management.

The GDS is part of the Cabinet Office and is tasked with the digital transformation of government.

It collaborates with different departments to digitize them, building platforms, standards and services – most crucially the central Gov.uk website.

More recently, GDS has been behind the Gov.uk Verify, the government’s way to confirm users are who they say they are, which has been developed with industry and copied by other countries.

Izzy Watson, innovation policy advisor at GDS, recently stated that the department is developing an innovation strategy for government, which will be published next year.

“As we work on the strategy, we want to hear from experts in industry and academia - as well as the public sector - this is so we can get valuable input and talk about issues that affect all our sectors,” she said.

GDS is holding a series of ‘innovation mornings’ with minister for implementation Oliver Dowden and tech experts from across the industry.

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