The real challenge is not technology – it is governance
Britain has had no shortage of prime ministers, chancellors, strategies and slogans over the past decade — enough to stock a political jumble sale. Yet for many people the urgent question remains simple: is life becoming more affordable, secure or predictable?
People want affordable homes, manageable bills, strong public services, thriving local businesses and communities where young people have reasons to stay. Political change is easy to measure; real improvement is harder to spot than a straight answer on Question Time.
A future prime minister must remember that public funding should fix public services, not vanish into legal battles over assets that should never have drifted so far from public control. The warning signs are already clear:
- Water: people can postpone buying a phone or ignore another slogan, but they cannot opt out of clean water. Yet large companies have profited from an essential public asset while households face higher bills, sewage scandals and poor service. This is not a market working well; it is a national failure dressed up as a utility bill.
- The NHS: as services become more digital, the public needs clear answers now about where sensitive information is stored, who can access it and how privacy, cyber security and accountability will be protected.
- The Post Office Horizon scandal: a stark warning of what happens when technology advances faster than oversight, leaving ordinary people to pay the price for institutional failure.
A recent internet search of my own name brought that concern home. Personal address information was easy to find online and difficult to remove. The first rule of sensible data policy should be non-negotiable: do not collect, copy and store what is not truly needed.
Unnecessary data creates immediate privacy risk, long-term cost and ever-growing storage demand — then leaves ordinary people fighting to remove information that should never have been published in the first place.
That experience points to a wider and increasingly urgent issue. As government accelerates artificial intelligence, digital services and major infrastructure projects, privacy, accountability and public trust cannot be treated as afterthoughts. Britain’s challenge is no longer simply technology. It is governance — and delay is already costing the public.
Universal Credit, online tax accounts, planning portals, medical records, school systems and council websites all show the same truth: when digital systems work, they are wonderfully convenient; when they do not, the public ends up doing unpaid troubleshooting for the state.
The same applies to local infrastructure. Communities are often told they are being consulted, but being consulted and being listened to are not the same thing. That distinction matters when decisions affect homes, bills, landscapes and livelihoods.
In Shetland, concerns raised during the Viking Energy development process evolved as questions around grid infrastructure, constraint payments, additional groundworks and wider impacts became clearer. As further major projects are considered, residents are entitled to ask what lessons were learned.
Local knowledge matters. Communities such as Shetland hold generations of practical experience that cannot always be captured in reports, models or consultancy documents, however impressively bound or colour-coded they may be.
At a time when island communities face some of the highest living costs in the UK, policy should not only attract new industries but help existing businesses grow. The question is not just what communities are expected to host, but what they get to keep.
Renewable energy has already shown the cost of building infrastructure before supporting systems are ready, with consumers paying for grid constraints, delayed upgrades and inefficiencies.
Urging households toward electric heating and vehicles before local networks are ready risks shifting costs onto the public before the system can support the promise.
Digital resilience raises similar concerns. Many of the chips and components powering these systems are still manufactured overseas. In seeking digital independence, we must be honest about the new dependencies being created.
Cyber security provides another example. Councils, schools and health bodies are expected to run modern digital services, yet one ransomware attack or system outage can still force staff back to paper forms and emergency workarounds, leaving people unnecessarily vulnerable when stronger safeguards should already be in place.
No amount of polished messaging will restore trust if communities feel ignored, dismissed or sacrificed in pursuit of wider objectives. The time for reassurance without evidence is running out; people notice whether the thing actually works.
Most people do not spend their days thinking about data governance, consultation processes or infrastructure policy. They simply expect systems to work, personal information to be protected and lessons to be learned when mistakes occur.
Other public assets tell the same story:
- Rail: franchises have collapsed while passengers still need reliable services.
- Energy: policy has left households exposed to volatile prices.
- Council housing: too often under-maintained until problems become far more expensive.
- PFI contracts: hospitals, schools and public buildings can be tied into deals that make changing a light bulb feel like a Treasury negotiation.
- Broadband, ferries and outsourcing: the same pattern appears again — public assets are useful when needed, neglected when inconvenient, and suddenly very expensive when problems can no longer be ignored.
The solutions are not revolutionary, but they are urgent: stronger data rights, clearer accountability, meaningful consultation, better use of local knowledge and a firmer understanding that essential public assets must serve the public first.
Technology changes quickly. Trust does not. Before another generation of projects is approved, policy makers must prove what they have learned — before communities are left facing years of publicly funded litigation over failures that stronger governance should have prevented.
No major project should be approved until government can say plainly who owns it, who controls it, who profits, who carries the risk, who was listened to, and who pays if it fails.
The real challenge is not technology. It is governance.
Unless that changes now, we risk building tomorrow’s infrastructure with yesterday’s policies — and leaving the public to pay for the consequences.
Regina Irvine
Whalsay
