Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will make an estimate of the (a) number of items and (b) cost to the public purse of Government IT equipment introduced in the (i) 1980's, (ii) 1990's and (iii) 2000's.

Through the work the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) is currently undertaking we are seeking to develop an overview of the magnitude of the legacy estate initially across ministerial departments.

CDDO has established a programme to support the Government remediating its legacy technology, resulting in a new risk-based framework designed to assess legacy IT assets within government departments. Through this legacy framework CDDO has collated a list of the highest risk systems across ministerial departments and followed up on this to ensure that they all have appropriate funding and remediation plans in place.

CDDO is building a community of practice across government for legacy remediation which will enable the capture of lessons learnt and best practice for dissemination and sharing cross-government to accelerate legacy remediation. This will enable CDDO to create an overview of the magnitude of the legacy estate initially across Ministerial Departments.

The cost to the public purse of external contractors used to maintain legacy IT estate cross-government is not centrally held.

The Government is unable to provide an estimate for the whole of government in relation to the years specified, as this is a devolved matter for individual departments and their Accounting Officers.