Corporate report

Home Office 2030 Digital Strategy (accessible)

Published 9 July 2025

Foreword from the Permanent Secretary

Digital, data and technology are crucial to the Home Office’s responsibility for securing the border, safer streets and national security.

The Home Office is at the forefront of digital innovation. Our digital services have already transformed the public’s experiences through smoother UK border crossings, faster, more convenient passport applications, and technology-assisted policing.

The Home Office 2030 Digital Strategy sets out how, over the next five years, we will continue to transform our digital services and deliver improved outcomes for our service users.

From embracing the advantages of AI and automation, to investing in digital systems we can maintain and improve over time, and improving civil servants’ digital skills, our digital strategy aims to make us fit for purpose in delivering the Governments agenda and embracing the Prime Minister’s focus on using digital, data and technology to create a more agile and effective state.

Dame Antonia Romeo DCB
Home Office Permanent Secretary

Foreword from the Chief DDaT Officer

In 2021, we published the Home Office 2024 DDaT Strategy, which paved our way to becoming a department of government that is digital by design in everything we do. 

That’s not just something we said at the time; it’s something we’re actually delivering. Our airport eGates now support 76 million crossings of the UK border every year, with the average digitally-assisted ETA (Electronic Travel Authorisation) decision made in just 45 seconds. 

Renewing a passport is now a self-service anyone can access instantly, printed and dispatched within 48 hours. Around 7 million people can now quickly and simply access their UK immigration status with a digital eVisa.

We’ve made these achievements by understanding what our users in the general public, and internally in government, need to make their lives simpler and more efficient, and how to translate these needs into digital services at scale. 

However, like any organisation that is using technology effectively, we need to keep looking ahead and moving forward. 

The Home Office 2030 Digital Strategy is the next part of our journey towards making the very most of digital, data and technology in our department, and across government. 

We’ve made this strategy visible to the public and across government to make sure anyone can engage with and follow our plans, joining the conversation as we deliver them. 

I am excited about the role this strategy will play in using technology to help us keep citizens safe and the country secure. 

Rob Thompson
Home Office Chief Digital, Data & Technology Officer 

Strategy Summary

This strategy shows how we will use digital, data and technology in the Home Office over the next 5 years to help us:

• improve the services we deliver
• produce strong results through our policies
• strengthen how our day-to-day operations perform

We are putting our continuing digital transformation at the heart of our mission to build a safe, fair and prosperous UK.

What we’ve achieved since 2021

The Home Office 2024 DDaT Strategy sat at the centre of delivering profound digital transformation across our organisation, and our strategic missions for the country.

Since 2021, we’ve successfully delivered quicker and more cost-effective public-facing passport services, including Apply online for a UK passport and Renew or replace your adult passport. We’ve also made it simpler to apply for a skilled worker visa, a student visa or a settled status for an EU national in the UK.

We’ve improved our process to request a basic DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check by matching a requester’s data across several identity documents.

We’ve made border crossing automated and frictionless, with more people using eGates for regular migration than any other country in the world.

We’ve improved digital platforms and accessible digital technology for our frontline police officers, connecting their data with serious and organised crime units. This is helping us tackle criminality swiftly and efficiently across the UK.

We’ve revolutionised the way the Home Office uses technology, with most of our IT services now running in the cloud, and we’re using powerful and flexible collaboration tools every day to help us get more done at a lower cost to taxpayers.

Our customer contact centres offer more features than ever to serve the public in innovative new ways.

We have expanded our cyber security and software engineering capabilities to support the ways we use technology to serve the public.

Our 8 strategic shifts for 2030

The Home Office 2030 Digital Strategy builds on our achievements up to now. It will help us to continue our journey towards becoming an organisation with digital at our core.

We will carry on meeting the challenges of improving the Home Office’s service delivery and operations to keep the country safe, secure and economically prosperous. Our 2030 vision is:

To be the leading UK government department in the use of digital, data and technology, enabling better everyday lives for citizens and our staff.

To do this, we will empower our people to use technology through 8 strategic shifts:

1. Transform our digital services with AI and more automation
2. Invest in systems and platforms we can maintain and continually improve
3. Build for greater organisational agility and resilience
4. Secure our technology to tackle growing cyber security threats
5. Improve how we capture and share data across the Home Office and wider government
6. Evolve our digital operating model to deliver Home Office outcomes
7. Reduce the cost of delivering and operating our digital services
8. Boost our digital skills to help us use technology in new and creative ways

1. Transform our digital services with AI and more automation

Home Office teams are at different levels of digital transformation with AI and automation, but our ambition by 2030 is to bring automation to as many of our business areas as possible. Our approach will carefully balance the benefits and risks of AI and automation to add value to our work and better support the people we serve.

Increasing our use of AI and automation will allow us to:

• reduce the time it takes to achieve everyday tasks, so we can focus on more complex cases and support for our most vulnerable users
• support decision-making across our services with reliable processes and accurate data
• develop the technology platforms we already have, to offer new services that are easy to use
• focus on developing new, improved systems when legacy technology is no longer the best option

How we’ll transform our digital services with AI and more automation

The growth of AI has become a focus across the world, and the UK is leading the conversation.

The Home Office is a major stakeholder in developing UK government guidance in using AI, and this reflects how AI and automation already sits at the centre of key Home Office missions. We are committed to adopting and using AI in responsible, effective and ethical ways.

By 2030, we will aim to:

• have frictionless UK border crossings with minimal human checking, speeding up and improving experiences for travellers
• increase our freight-checking abilities with AI, cutting down illegal imports and human trafficking
• update our existing machine-assisted and self-service passport checks with increased levels of automation and new AI technologies

• use AI technology such as Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to help police officers know when to investigate people, vehicles and property, making our streets safer
• automatically combine crime data from local intelligence sources with information from international sources to face challenges such as trafficking and organised crime
• reduce the complexity of everyday tasks across the Home Office, cutting down manual processes that can slow things down
• deploy technology development platforms that can be used by civil servants with little coding experience
• find new ways to let our people collaborate with each other through technology platforms
• better automate our ability to share data across government, making it fast and simple, but fully secure

2. Invest in systems and platforms we can maintain and continually improve

We recognise that the Home Office needs to provide secure, reliable and efficient services. To do this, we will focus on sustainable technology that we will continually improve.

This will allow us to:

• keep our technology investments current and relevant to our mission
• identify and fix problems in our services as they emerge, rather than replace them with costly new systems
• reduce costs and improve service delivery across our organisation

How we’ll invest in systems and platforms we can maintain and continually improve

We’ll continue to get the most value we can from the technology we already use. When we cannot deliver with what we already have, we will carefully select and develop new digital technologies and services to make the Home Office more efficient.

We’ll manage technology using open, accessible tools that we will test regularly to make sure they meet government and external standards.

To make our technology investments sustainable, we will:

• make best use of our internal support and collaboration tools, expanding what we can do with them
• carry on our journey to use cloud technology wherever it’s suitable, to help make our data and services more available across the Home Office and wider government
• use AI to help our people be more efficient, so we can save time and costs
• create digital systems and services that support shared service models across the organisation and wider government, to keep the Home Office at the centre of digital public services and cross-government collaboration
• grow our services responsibly and sustainably, following established environmental, social and governance principles

3. Build for greater organisational agility and resilience

Many of the Home Office’s systems and services are of critical and national importance to the UK. It’s essential that we design our technology, and the processes that depend on it, to be as adaptable and resilient as possible.

Building for resilience will help us:

• evolve to meet new challenges and adapt quickly in the face of extreme or unplanned events
• maintain critical services and operations for the people and organisations that rely on them
• respond efficiently to crises in ways that do not divert funds or resources from our longer-term plans
• improve service levels and operational abilities of crucial national infrastructure

How we’ll build for greater organisational agility and resilience

We’ll do more with the Home Office’s systems by enabling our teams to respond quickly to changing needs and unplanned events.

We will:

• support our people to collaborate and share resources to help them work in more agile and efficient ways
• make our secure technology and storage capabilities more robust, so our services remain available during unplanned events
• use industry standard frameworks and methodologies to deliver flexible services and solutions that can manage change
• make sure our governance processes support delivery teams to respond quickly and effectively to challenges

4. Secure our technology to tackle growing cyber security threats

Global cyber security threats continue to increase, so it’s the Home Office’s duty to meet every new challenge. We already deliver best-in-class protection for our systems and services. The next 5 years will see us continue to stay ahead of these threats, so we can keep citizens safe and the country secure.

Securing our technology and infrastructure will help us:

• protect our services and data against malicious cyber attacks
• make sure critical services are not interrupted and remain available to the people who need them
• reduce the UK’s overall risk of disruption from cyber attacks

How we’ll secure our technology to tackle growing cyber security threats

Our developed recovery and response approach helps us to tackle cybercrime in all its forms. We secure our systems and services with technology, but also through policy and regulatory initiatives that everybody in the Home Office understands.

Over the next 5 years, we will:

• make cyber security everybody’s responsibility, meaning all our people feel confident about identifying and responding to potential threats
• follow the government Secure by Design Framework, meaning cyber security practices are built into all digital services and infrastructure
• increase the extent of our internal technology security and work with third parties to support these capabilities
• continue to invest in tools and new capabilities to keep ahead of new threats

5. Improve the ways we capture and share data across the Home Office and wider government

Data and information are an important strategic asset. Capturing the right data and making sure our people can access and use it effectively helps us be more efficient and make better decisions.

Continuing to make better use of our data will help us:

• save time and money by reducing duplication across teams that use the same information
• develop a shared understanding of how people use our services, so we can decide how best to improve them
• provide a more detailed view of how our services work with each other, so we can find new opportunities to reduce the cost of running them
• be consistent in our strategic and investment decisions

How we’ll improve the ways we capture and share data across the Home Office and wider government

Good data helps us make good decisions. We will manage and use our data to keep improving how we deliver policies and public services.

We will:

• organise our data to make it as available, but secure, as possible for both Home Office staff and people who use it as part of our services
• give our people access to the data they need from single, reusable data sources that can be shared across government, for example ANPR
• capture and manage our data in ways that help people who use or deliver our services, so they do not have to keep providing the same information
• make all new services we design meet our management information standards
• arrange our data to create new technology opportunities, for example using machine learning and AI

6. Evolve our digital operating model to deliver Home Office outcomes

To get the best out of the digital, data and technology at the centre of the Home Office’s mission, we need to make sure our organisation is running as well as it can.

We are streamlining how we work to start thinking of what we create as separate digital products, each with a defined purpose. This will help us adapt quickly and deliver value faster.

The Home Office moving to organise itself around products and services means we can:

• move spending decisions closer to our digital teams so they can respond quickly when user needs, technologies or policies change
• evolve how we work with our technology suppliers, to save public money and resources
• use resources such as AI, automation and cloud technology to empower more civil servants to save time, develop new skills and be more adaptable
• increase the transparency of our work to help us create sustainable digital products
• design products that reflect the needs of the people who use or deliver our services

How we’ll evolve our digital operating model to deliver Home Office outcomes

We have already begun designing our new operating model, and we will roll it out across the Home Office until the end of 2028.

To deliver the new operating model, we will:

• change our governance and finance processes to create new funding models that support innovation and make it easier for teams to focus on outcomes, not pre-defined solutions
• design and build new products and services faster and more reliably
• make our build, test and release processes more consistent, so we can work more efficiently and deliver value faster
• more clearly define the strategy we follow to work with suppliers outside government
• continue to invest in products so they can be adapted in response to feedback and changing priorities, preventing them from becoming redundant or needing to be replaced

7. Reduce the cost of delivering and operating our digital services

To offer the best value to the taxpayer, we need to make sure we spend money wisely on our digital resources.

Over the next 5 years, we will combine many of the approaches that we’ve outlined in this digital strategy to drive value for money in DDaT.

This will help us to:

• increase the cost efficiency of our DDaT operations
• better manage our technical debt; adapting how we use technology to save money in the future
• make it easier for people to use Home Office services

How we’ll reduce the cost of delivering and operating our digital services

We will consider technology and ways of working in terms of what will deliver value and the outcomes we need, rather than making our choices based on features or supplier packages.

We will:

• let technology add efficiency to how we work, for example by using automation and standardisation
• manage and review our supply chains and how our suppliers deliver work for us
• better understand what resources we need to operate our services, and how we can keep them working more efficiently, for longer
• follow the government’s aim of a net zero target on the ways we use carbon energy
• prioritise accessible products and services, testing them with users to spend less time and resources on re-working or replacing them

8. Boost our digital skills to help us use technology in new and creative ways

To make a digital, data and technology strategy work, people need to have the skills to match the technology.

Over the next 5 years, we’ll focus on making sure all our people have a solid foundation in digital skills.

This will help us to:

• prioritise digital strategy, modernisation and sustainability of technology as core leadership values
• collaborate across the organisation to make clear decisions and deliver joined-up services that meet people’s needs and expectations
• find new opportunities to innovate and automate, to let our people focus on complex tasks that need human input
• adapt quickly to new challenges and the needs of people who use or deliver our services

How we’ll boost our digital skills to help us use technology in new and creative ways

We will build our skills over the next 5 years, aiming for 100% of senior leadership to be confident in using their digital skills strategically by 2030.

To achieve this, we will:

• offer training and development opportunities to help people learn how to make the most of digital and data in their role
• build understanding of digital governance and the role of leadership in helping teams collaborate, test ideas and work in new ways
• embed digital and data learning into the Home Office’s performance and development standards
• provide apprenticeships, early career talent programmes and retraining to increase the number of people in digital and data roles
• support our senior civil servants to build their understanding of digital, data and technology through our Digital Leadership Programme