/ insights
The State Cannot See Itself
British government doesn't have a technology problem. It has a comprehension problem — it cannot understand or reconcile its own data — and the cost of that, paid by the taxpayer department by department, runs to the low tens of billions a year.
Before you read
By Aaron Gammon · Founder, Inferrex · June 2026
This is a piece of thinking, not a product pitch. It draws on 18 years selling data protection, automation, and enterprise software into government and large organisations; on what I now build for a living — a comprehension layer for business data; and increasingly on my own experience as a company director, and a patient, trying to deal with the state.
The argument is uncomfortable and parts of it are my interpretation rather than settled fact. Where I'm reading intent rather than reporting it, I say so. Where a point is my own first-hand observation rather than a published figure, I say that too. Every statistic that carries weight is sourced inline. The headline cost figure later in this piece is explicitly illustrative and built from numbers measured on different bases — I show my working and refuse to pretend it's a single audited total.
If you think I've got something wrong, that's the most useful thing you could tell me. The whole thesis is that understanding improves when someone shows you what you couldn't see from where you stand.