A report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has determined that the IT systems used by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) are "outdated and difficult to use".

The report, Tackling Defra's ageing digital services, was ordered by the House of Commons.

PAC concluded that, while the department is making "good progress" in tackling its most urgent legacy systems, it does not have a long-term strategy for its "much-needed wider digital transformation".

The report highlighted how Defra's systems are used by a wide range of customers and are critical to the UK's trade, disease prevention, flood protection and air quality monitoring.

To these groups of customers, the report said, Defra's legacy IT systems feel outdated and difficult to use, often being reliant on paper forms or documents.

The department was found to handle around 14 million transactions every year that still involve paper forms making them "inefficient and expensive".

The PAC report said Defra should look long-term, past its current "business transformation", as it does not currently have a vision of how the transformed department and its organisations will operate.

Recommendations

The report made recommendations to the department on how to stabilise and improve its IT systems, and how to maintain their proficiency in the long term.

The first recommendation was that Defra should, within six months, identify the success factors behind the progress it has made in addressing issues within its legacy IT and share lessons with the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) and other departments.

Other recommendations include:

Develop its longer-term digital and data strategy, and ensure that this reflects the digital needs of organisations across the Defra Group;
Write to the committee by the end of March 2024 outlining the details of the actions planned in its strategy;
In its Treasury Minute response, the department is urged to set out how it will identify the problems and costs faced by its service users as a result of unmodernised services and how it is going to address each of them;
It should set out how it will ensure that investment and new digital systems put in place before it has made key decisions about the future shape, structure and digital needs of the Defra Group, will not need to be rebuilt;
Explain what new approaches it will adopt to recruit staff and reduce its reliance on contractors and temporary staff to provide digital skills;
Specify what target it is working towards for the appropriate level of contractors and temporary staff and when it expects to achieve it.

The report also encouraged the department to "strengthen its case for investment" by developing its analysis of the efficiency savings that could be achieved through modernising its systems and processes.

As well as this, PAC said Defra should write to it within a year with the results of this analysis and what action it plans to take as a result.

The final recommendation in the report was for the CDDO. The report said it should set out whether it is getting the traction needed from departments to achieve its missions and report annually thereafter on its progress and any difficulties in working with departments,