Government cross-government chief technology officer Sonia Patel has outlined a vision for a cohesive infrastructure based on “not centralisation, but interoperability”.
Patel took on the role of government CTO last month, having previously held the same position at NHS England. She replaced David Knott, who left at the end of 2025. Patel has been appointed to the post – which is based in the Government Digital Service, within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology – on an interim basis, with a one-year contract.
In one of her first major public appearances since taking on Whitehall’s top IT job, Patel told last week’s techUK Building the Smarter State conference that “GDS and DSIT have a critical role to play in convening and shaping cross-government thinking to help shape common standards, shared platforms, [and] architectural patterns”.
But the new government tech chief stressed that federated, rather than consolidated systems are the way forward – and that the UK could learn from various overseas counterparts.
“We need to learn also from other nations in this journey towards an enterprise view of the state… [and] countries like Estonia have shown how clear architectural backbone – not centralisation, but interoperability – can allow many systems to act as one government,” Patel said. “In the US [as well], enterprise architecture is not an afterthought: it is a core discipline for reducing duplication, modernisation, driving and aligning investment, and delivering more coherent services. Singapore has also taken a whole-government approach, using enterprise architecture as a common blueprint to align systems, data and, more importantly, services. In Australia, architecture is used as a practical tool to guide investment, improve reuse and accelerate delivery.”
The tech chief characterised the approach she wants to take as supporting part of a wider move from “digital government to intelligent government”.
“As we were just getting to grips with cloud, DevOps and product mindset, we’ve now got the opportunities that AI brings to us – because AI will not succeed in government if it’s simply layered onto the fragmented systems, inconsistent data and ageing infrastructure in front of us,” she added.
There are currently many examples throughout the public sector “where innovation has been stalled or stopped because the foundation is too weak and fragmented”.
Bolstering these foundations, and ensuring that government is ready for the opportunities of artificial intelligence, will require “converging towards a modern enterprise architecture – and not just architecture that is a technical exercise, but an architecture as a strategic capability, one that helps us as government and public sector connect policy, services, operations, platforms and data into a coherent whole”, Patel told the techUK event.
“We now have an opportunity to develop a shared view of modernisation: a view that aligns technology investment with priority outcomes for citizens and businesses, that enables interoperability rather than duplication, and creates the foundation for trusted, scalable AI adoption,” she added. “This is not about centralising everything – it’s about better equipping the system to deliver improved outcomes for citizens and businesses, delivering a modern intelligent government. Departments have different missions, different operating contexts and different needs; but there are areas of government where we can, and should, move together, and more deliberately, as one.”
The new CTO cited the rollout of the new national digital identity – a programme that will occupy much of her time – as a potential exemplar of such an approach.
She said: “The work happening across government on reusable digital identity and trust frameworks represents a significant opportunity – not just to improve citizen experience, but to reduce the friction across services, strengthen security and create common infrastructure and departments can build on.”