Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what is the annual cost to the public purse of his Department's expenditure on (a) IT infrastructure, (b) IT infrastructure purchased prior to 2013 and (c) legacy IT infrastructure for each year since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The total main technology services costs are below for each year from 2018/2019 for Defra, the Environment Agency, Natural England, the Rural Payments Agency, the Animal and Plant Health Agency and the Marine Management Organisation. We cannot provide this information pre 2018/2019 as IT services, and therefore costs, were disaggregated across all parts of Defra group before 2018.
Departments are actively managing their legacy estates and are either seeking to fund or are seeking to exit legacy systems via their existing change plans. The right approach varies: work under way includes upgrades, complete system replacements and migration to public cloud.
2018/2019 | 2019/2020 | 2020/2021 | 2021/2022 | 2022/2023 |
164,966,582 | 158,456,692 | 180,763,658 | 181,673,444 | 196,388,040 |
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Central Digital & Data Office's guidance entitled, Guidance on the Legacy IT Risk Assessment Framework, published 29 September 2023, how many red-rated IT systems are used by his Department as of 21 November 2023.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As of 21 November 2023 Defra, as a Ministerial Department, has to date identified one red-rated legacy IT system as defined in the Central Digital and Data Office Legacy IT Risk Assessment Framework, but work to continually refine and broaden our use of the risk framework continues. Departments are actively managing their legacy estates and are either seeking to fund or are seeking to exit legacy systems via their existing change plans. The right approach varies: work under way includes upgrades, complete system replacements and migration to public cloud.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what the timetable is for carrying out flood prevention work at the River Thames in Reading.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
More than 700 properties, roads and other infrastructure are at risk of flooding from the Thames in north Reading and Lower Caversham. The Environment Agency (EA) has engaged widely with the community to raise awareness of flood risk and to get feedback on plans for a flood risk management scheme which would include flood walls, embankments and a channel to bypass Reading Bridge. The EA is reviewing feedback from the community and if there is support for the scheme it will progress work to secure the necessary permissions and funding.