42 minute read
CivTech: Europe’s first govtech programme
Scaling crossborder innovation
Alexander Holt, Head of Emerging Opportunities and Partnerships within the Scottish Government’s Digital Directorate, speaks to eolas about CivTech, Europe’s first govtech programme, and the lessons learnt in expanding the programme internationally.
Having operated his own digital agency in London, Holt returned to Scotland to manage technological procurement for the Scottish Government as a contractor. “It is this experience of both running a business and procurements that led me to explore different ways of running procurement for government,” he remarks.
Holt set about exploring a new way to collaborate through the CivTech Scotland programme, taking public sector problems or challenges and matching them with entrepreneurial talent. “Rather than going with closed, prescriptive tenders, we ran procurements with open, challengebased questions,” Holt explains. “We ran that for three years and we had a number of success and lessons learnt from there.”
From this starting point, the CivTech Alliance was founded. “What we found was that CivTech Scotland – because of its leadership in the govtech space as the first govtech programme in Europe and arguably one of the world’s first digital public service accelerators – was
able to team up with other governments around the world,” Holt says. The programme has received a succession of international accolades including winning Apolitical's Global Public Service Team of the Year Award in the Climate Heroes category. It was also selected as one of three programmes from nearly 200 global entries to appear on stage at the Creative Bureaucracy Festival in Berlin in June – the largest public sector innovation show globally – and appears as a case study in the OECD's latest report on cross-border collaboration.
“The CivTech Alliance was full of likeminded government teams who were setting up their govtech programmes from the United States, Brazil, across Europe, the Middle East, and Australia. What we found was that we were, particularly during the pandemic, at the forefront of technological responses. Throughout 2020, we built up these solid relationships through our weekly video calls, really getting to know people, and that is one of the lessons learnt, that we need these deep relationships. From relationships come trust and from trust comes opportunities.”
Considerations for cross-border collaboration included value propositions for each participant’s own government, for companies seeking involvement with governments, and for any other stakeholders, as well as the legal, contractual, and procurement parameters within which each participant had to work.
“When our group came together, a lot of time was taken to define collaboration, and determine what you can and cannot do within jurisdictions.,” Holt says, adding: “Then of course, there is the cultural aspect; how you build cultures across governments and the innovation ecosystems with which you’re about to engage.”
The CivTech Alliance Global Scale Up Programme consisted of countries across Europe, as well as states in the US, Brazil, and Australia. Participating programmes included the 10x Programme for the General Services Administration by the US Government, the US Census Bureau’s Opportunity Project, BrazilLAB, InvestSP and Ideiagov in Brazil, ie Public Tech Lab in Spain, the Technical University of Denmark, GovTech Poland, GovTech Lab Lithuania, Go2Gov in Australia, the Inno Lab in Germany, and Accelerate Estonia.
“We put the proposition together whereby we wanted to get some challenges, so we chose three: teaming up with the United Nations Development Programme on environment resilience; the World Resources Institute on food wastage; and Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc for decarbonising transport,” Holt says.
“From there, we went to the market, and we ran an open call for innovations and an evaluation process.” From 67 applications across 14 countries, 18 companies from nine countries were selected, including Eco Panplas in Brazil, whose plastic recycling business saves 17 billion litres of water for every 500 tonnes of plastic recycled, XDI Systems in Australia, which possesses 85 million assets assessed against eight types of weather conditions and what their future looks like in the context of climate change, and Blue Lobster, a Danish sustainable fisheries platform.
Participation in the programme “was based on expanding their global network, gaining access to the right people, piloting technologies within the alliance, and scaling up their solutions”, Holt says, and access was delivered by the Scots.
Holt estimates over 200 introductions were made over the course of seven weeks, all done virtually. From there, 16 of the 18 companies attended COP26 in Glasgow, where a session was held in the blue zone, as well as three days with ministers and permanent secretaries, organised by the Scottish Government. Success stories from the experience include Brasil Mata Vita securing a $2 million contract, rising to $5 million, with a Brazilian state, and Blue Lobster receiving further help with funding rounds and a company securing a contract with the Lithuanian government.
Concluding, Holt reflects on the lessons learned during this cross-border collaboration and innovation: “When you run a rapid programme like this and you know how hard it is working in your own country with the government and ecosystems, let alone across 10, what does it take to deliver these programmes? We found that there was this entrepreneurial mindset within the teams, this persistence to move forward, this resilience to take the flack, the urgency to get results. With that was a required amount of agility, but also autonomy, a programme such as this which was really just an idea on paper back in February 2021 was laying the track the day before the train was coming down the line.
“Traditionally governments have been operating at that strategic policy level but now with the rise of govtech, we have our own delivery teams inside the governments and what that means is it now raises the possibility for intergovernment collaboration at the delivery level. I am very interested in collaborating with governments around challenge series, how can we team up our environment agency and your environment agency to set combined challenges where we go out to the market working with each other on our programmes to attract innovative exportable companies? You will see this whole notion of innovation diplomacy rising to the fore.”
LocalGov Drupal: A winning opensource CMS for Irish councils
It was an idea born of cooperative principles: build a website, share the code, pool the costs, and enjoy the benefits. Irish councils have truly taken on board the Government’s Build to Share initiative. Mark Conroy, Annertech’s director of development and leader of the front-end working group of LocalGov Drupal, explains why LocalGov Drupal is a win-win situation for both councils and citizens.
LocalGov Drupal is a collective of developers who write freely available code for councils to develop websites that are fast, effective and have a great user experience.
When Fingal County Council were looking to create a new website, they knew exactly what they wanted: something like the work Annertech had already completed for Limerick City and County Council. With the Irish Government’s ICT strategy and the Build to Share initiative in mind, Limerick freely signed off on sharing its code with Fingal. It made sense; the code had been developed and paid for, and Fingal’s digital budget could be redirected towards new features. This would be added to the code and then shared with Cork County Council. similar approach, which led to the development of LocalGov Drupal, a publicly owned asset founded on cooperative principles. Annertech became involved in the early stages to rewrite the entire frontend of the codebase and partnered with Invotra Consulting to take the service to councils in the UK. Now Annertech is bringing the solution to the Irish market.
Benefits
LocalGov Drupal is created for councils by councils. Councils typically share similar feature requirements for their websites such as news and events portals, council services, directory listings and search features. They also need to comply with WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards. LocalGov Drupal creates a best-in-class, fully accessible version of each.
It is a community of shared expertise, collaborating on free-to-access code that follows best practice guidelines. The result is a solid, scalable solution that is open source, as are the new features that are added. Any council can use it, for free.
This is the way councils should operate: collaborating, building public assets, improving service delivery, and saving money.
Cost-effective
Because the code is available, for free, councils don’t have to start from scratch, and it stops repetitive spending on the same features. Instead, if a council develops a feature that could be used by others, they share it.
This shared feature set means the budget can be used on the look and feel of a website, such as fonts, colours, spacing, and logos.
Faster development time
Because the features a council typically needs for a website are built and ready to go, development turnaround time is faster. Creating a new council website can take up to a year. In contrast, LocalGov Drupal websites are launched in eight to 12 weeks.
Levelling the playing field
Local governments don’t have the same budgets, yet a small council has the same digital needs as a big one.
The LocalGov Drupal team is building a better product than they would have been able to build on a typical council website budget, and the team is far more extensive than any regular digital team: LocalGov Drupal has backend developers, frontend developers, product designers, interaction designers, content teams, content designers and user experience researchers involved with the project. LocalGov Drupal offers councils access to this technology and team, so it is easy and affordable for even small councils to level up.
The business case
LocalGov Drupal can reduce website costs by up to 80 per cent.
The costs are broken down on localgovdrupal.org but some areas in which councils will save are: • lower development costs – £1million has already been invested in its development; • fewer re-developments because LocalGov Drupal is constantly updated; • new features and upgrades are free; • no licence fees; • no change request fees; • building and maintaining subsites and microsites. This is the LocalGov
Drupal focus for this year: satellite websites, perhaps for an event such as a film festival, St Patrick’s Day or a Christmas calendar; • user research: councils can use the research that is continuously done and updated by the LocalGov Drupal working group; • accessibility audits: the base theme is WCAG AA, providing fully accessible websites; and • reduced service demand because citizens are easily able to use online services.
Conclusion
The Annertech team has vast experience when it comes to building council websites, including those for Dublin City Council, Limerick City and County Council, Fingal County Council and Cork County Council.
Given Annertech was tasked with writing the base frontend system for the LocalGov Drupal platform, who better to implement it on your council website.
About Annertech
Founded in 2008, Annertech has become the “go to” Drupal expert in Ireland and works with a range of clients in both the private and public sectors. Drupal solutions for clients, usually where there are complex requirements.
T: 01 524 0312 E: hello@annertech.com W: www.annertech.com
For more on LocalGov Drupal, see: https://localgovdrupal.org
The future of digital public services in the North
Director of Digital Shared Services in the Northern Ireland Executive’s Department of Finance, Iggy O’Doherty, discusses the immediate priorities within the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) for data, capability and infrastructure to support digital transformation in government.
Setting the context of a range of challenges and opportunities thrown up by the Covid-19 pandemic in the past two years in relation to the digital transformation of government in the North, O’Doherty points to an ongoing focus on building capability within the NICS.
“Improving the digital literacy of staff across government departments, including those of senior leaders, is central to the effective running of our business areas,” he explains, outlining work to professionalise the public sector’s approach to a host of disciplines such as procurement, contract management and security, in order to develop the digital skills required to lead and run modern government departments.
With the majority of NICS staff now working remotely, the public sector’s dependence on digital technology has never been greater and as a result, O’Doherty states: “There is a growing need to enhance the digital skills of public sector colleagues and improve our own digital capability so that we can deliver better and more efficient public services.”
Recently, O’Doherty oversaw research which considered how NICS staff were using technology and commissioned a survey to ascertain how competent staff felt they were in using technology.
“Our research focused on digital skills to establish if we had the required learning and development to support our staff and we supplemented this with a digital skills assessment,” he says.
Follow up surveys have been conducted and the Director of Digital Shared Services points out that interventions informed by the research have led to an approximate 43 per cent improvement in digital skills.
Additionally, the findings prompted a deep-dive analysis and the creation of an array of eLearning utilities to help develop staff further. At the end of 2021, O’Doherty and his team launched the eLearning package across all NICS departments.
Stressing that work will continue on building digital capability in the NICS, O’Doherty adds: “As head of profession for ICT in the NICS, I am going to tackle capability and talent pipeline issues head on. We have many new digital recruitment opportunities and are actively defining career paths to build future capacity.”
Digital transformation
Turning to digital transformation, O’Doherty points to the recent launch of the digital transformation hub for all NICS staff, as a means to help promote better awareness of the services provided, highlight the changes enabled and offer staff a feedback channel for the transformation team. It is seen as a platform for viewing the success of digital transformation work across the public sector.
The success underpins the goals of the NICS’s Digital Transformation Strategy and O’Doherty explains that the portal is used by all government departments to share learning experiences and lessons of excellence.
However, the Director of Digital Shared Services is aware of the need to continuously drive forward digital inclusion, recognising that while the pandemic caused a surge in digital interaction with public services, it also exacerbated the digital divide for those who remain offline. To this end, he says that his Digital Inclusion Unit were relentless with their efforts throughout Covid and continue to work closely with external stakeholders, such as Business in the Community, Supporting Communities and LibrariesNI to minimise the gap.
Technology and digital adoption
O’Doherty explains that increased demand for digital public services has compelled the Digital Shared Services’ design team to adopt new technologies.
Setting out the ongoing work, he says: “We are using public cloud services to build new solutions, often harnessing the services available from current ICT solutions. Our aim is to deploy multicloud services and a major shift in emphasis has been the strategic move to host a number of solutions in gov.uk Platform As A Service – a rapidly scalable infrastructure service designed for 24/7 public sector use.”
He adds: “We have recently deployed some innovative software tools to complement digital development. Rigorously testing whilst automating security validation within our software development life cycle at all stages has driven excellent results. This digital maturity is now a central feature of our discipline.”
O’Doherty stresses the importance of including the challenge function and external scrutiny as the team develop solutions in an agile way and at pace.
“This initiative will ensure that our team continue to produce high quality, secure solutions, but much faster than before,” he says.
Explaining the influence of the relatively new NICS Enterprise Architecture Principles, a blueprint to be used as a decisional framework when considering process, system and technology directions across all departments, O’Doherty says: “We aim to avoid duplicating effort and incurring unnecessary costs by collaborating across government, sharing and reusing technology, data and services. “We will adapt and reuse existing information and technology assets where possible before we procure. We are not in the business of developing solutions to rival proven products already available in the marketplace, our Enterprise Digital Design Team publish their code and use open-source software to improve transparency, flexibility and accountability.”
The Director of Digital Shared Services explains that the team also use open standards to ensure that solutions work with other technology stacks and can be easily upgraded and expanded. Setting out that all future applications should be cloud native in design and cloud vendor agnostic he says that they continue to work closely with the UK Government Digital Service to define and implement data standards, meet user needs, and improve interoperability and data sharing.
Digital response to Covid-19
O’Doherty is adamant that the transformation agenda continues in order to meet the growing expectations of the public. Outlining plans to build on the uptake of over half a million nidirect accounts, he discusses plans to deliver a more personalised and responsive user experience, with a planned ‘tell us once’ service.
Aiming to capitalise on the public’s positive experience shift in dealing with digital public services, O’Doherty explains that personalised ‘tell us once’ services will be underpinned by digital identity assurance, something his team are working on closely with partners to plan for the next generation of secure accredited assurance services.
“This will be a streamlined successor to some existing solutions and will over time replace other digital identity services used across government,” he states.
Enhancing digital security
The need for digital security assurance has never been more essential given the changes to the threat landscape. The National Cyber Security Centre recently warned that ransomware is the prevalent threat to government digital services.
O’Doherty says that the implementation of a Security and Information Event Management (SIEM) system and Security Operations Centre (SOC) managed service will improve resilience significantly and points to SIEM and SOC as “our single biggest strategic investment in enhancing digital security in government”.
Strategic direction
Turning to the strategic direction of the future, O’Doherty sees digital as being front and centre of future priorities to deliver better public services. He plans to move ahead in 2022 with a new Digital Strategy in the NICS. Acknowledging a number of planned strategies currently being developed by Cabinet Office, the Director of Digital Shared Services says that his team are actively engaged with UK Government partners to ensure that the needs of the Northern Ireland public are reflected in the shaping of future services.
Concluding, O’Doherty says: “Collaboration has been key to digital transformation in public services, we could not have done it on our own. We now need to build on our achievements by developing more partnership working across the public sector, retaining the alliances that we have established but also developing better networks with our private sector colleagues.
“I am really proud of what we have delivered across the public sector during this extraordinary time, and we will continue to do our bit to make the lives of those living here even better.”
eInvoicing in public procurement
Public procurement contracting authorities are legally obliged to accept electronic invoices from suppliers where those invoices comply with the European eInvoicing Standard. Declan McCormack, Principal Officer with responsibility for the eInvoicing Ireland programme in the Office of Government Procurement (OGP), outlines the importance of awareness among public bodies of their legal obligations, the national standards-based approach and above all, the role of suppliers, in helping to reap the benefits of eInvoicing for all stakeholders in public procurement.
Since April 2020, public bodies in all EU member states have been required to meet their legal obligations arising from the European eInvoicing Directive (2014/55/EU) which applies to invoices related to public procurement contracts. Over the last number of years, the eInvoicing Ireland programme has helped public bodies to understand how they can meet this legal requirement and to understand the broader benefits of digitalisation.
The Directive sets out that contracting authorities and contracting entities must receive and process electronic invoices that comply with the European Standard (EN-16931) for eInvoicing (‘the EN’). The EN at a basic level is a data model and defines the information, structure and format of compliant eInvoices. Compliant eInvoices can be formatted in one of two listed XML formats. Ireland has chosen the Peppol (Pan European Public Procurement Online) network as the eDelivery network through which EN compliant eInvoices should be delivered to public bodies. The Peppol network allows businesses to connect once and connect to all public administrations and business in Ireland and Europe on the network.
The advantages of European standardsbased electronic invoicing for public contracting authorities and suppliers include reduced administrative burden and efficiency gains in invoice receipt, access to better data for decision making, the automation of tax reporting obligations in some EU member states, and also an improvement in legal certainty and a reduction in barriers to cross-border trade in Europe and internationally.
Submitting electronic invoices is now a real and widespread option for suppliers to the public sector, via the Peppol network. Each public body is expected to avail of a shared services solution or establish their own eInvoicing capability. Collaboration to establish a standardised model for eInvoicing, across the whole of the public sector was vital in order to accommodate the decentralised nature of invoice processing. “While the initiative is led by the Office of Government Procurement, the eInvoicing Ireland programme is very much a collaboration with business and technology services leaders from across our public sector partners, in health, central government, local government, and education. This collaboration and moving forward together has been the programme’s real strength,” explains McCormack.
While there is an obligation on public bodies to be able to receive and process, it remains optional for suppliers to choose to submit their invoices electronically in accordance with the European eInvoicing Standard.
Informed suppliers are key to driving uptake
Several initiatives are underway across the public sector, as the main finance shared services functions and a number of individual public bodies, look to suppliers to increase the volume of invoices being submitted electronically and help them jointly reap the benefits of the digitalisation of invoice processing.
McCormack believes “the national eInvoicing approach aims to be suppliercentric, facilitating a common method for suppliers to submit eInvoices to all public bodies, providing a ‘connect once and connect to all’ option for suppliers to
reach their public sector clients”. McCormack also acknowledges that a limited awareness among suppliers of the standardised eInvoicing model in public procurement is a key challenge to driving uptake: “Support by all public bodies for the European eInvoicing Standard, and the use of the Peppol network for delivery of eInvoices, simplifies the choices for suppliers and helps to reduce or avoid costs when they are considering investing in doing business digitally with public sector clients at home and internationally. This is a message we need to continue to communicate with the help of our sector partners, to help businesses make an informed choice on eInvoicing.”
A supplier information sheet is available online at the OGP’s eInvoicing Ireland website (See Figure 1).
Office of Government Procurement eInvoicing supports for public bodies
To facilitate public bodies in reaching compliance with the eInvoicing Directive, the Office of Government Procurement established a National Framework Agreement for the provision of eInvoicing and Peppol networking services to the public sector in Ireland. The eInvoicing Ireland Steering Committee, comprising senior representatives from the four OGP sector partners across central and local government, health, and education, informed the establishment of the framework. The comprehensive framework, with three separate lots, offers services and solutions which are compliant with the European Standard on eInvoicing as prescribed by the eInvoicing Directive and caters for the diverse range of needs and requirements across all public sector bodies.
The eInvoicing service providers on the framework are connecting public bodies to the Peppol network and offering solutions and services to enable basic compliance with the Directive as well as a more fully integrated approach to eInvoicing, facilitating ‘straight-through processing’.
E: declan.mccormack@ogp.gov.ie eInvoicing ireland@ogp.gov.ie T: +353 85 803 5902 “While the initiative is led by the Office of Government Procurement, the eInvoicing Ireland programme is very much a collaboration with business and technology services leaders from across our public sector partners, in health, central government, local government, and education.”
Figure 1
For further information
Please visit https://www.gov.ie/en/organisation/office-of-governmentprocurement or contact: einvoicing@ogp.gov.ie Accessing the framework
For anyone looking to access the OGP eInvoicing Framework, please log onto the OGP Buyer Zone via https://buyerzone.gov.ie/ and select/ search as follows:
Category: Managed Services
Keyword: ‘PEPPOL’ or ‘eInvoicing systems’
OGP Clients must register to gain access to the Buyer zone available to all public service buyers accessing live contracts/frameworks.
The .IE Tipping Point report, Irish ecommerce and digital business in the post-Covid era, is the final report of a trilogy of research analysing consumer and SME behaviour and attitudes since the pandemic.
A tipping point has been passed. Consumers have fully embraced the convenience of online shopping. In response, SMEs have been forced to adapt, digitally and increasingly attitudinally, transforming their static brochure websites into e-commerce hubs. There is also evidence that SMEs are not prioritising protection of customers’ data despite this being a big concern for individual consumers.
Key findings
Cybersecurity is nonnegotiable
In an era of high-profile cyberattacks, 75 per cent of consumers are ‘very’ or ‘somewhat concerned’ about the security of their personal information when shopping online. However, six in 10 SMEs either do not take any precautions to protect sensitive customer data or do not know how to.
While it might be tempting for an SME to postpone investing in anything that doesn’t lead to a measurable return in the here and now, a cyberattack can be devastating and lead to permanent erosion of customer trust.
The HSE ransomware attack in 2021 showed how a small error can lead to the crippling of critical infrastructure. Similar incidents among businesses are increasingly common, yet most are entirely avoidable with the use of basic cybersecurity tools, such as antivirus software and a password manager. The Covid pandemic has forced SMEs to view websites as dynamic sales enablers or points of sale. Now SMEs will need help with cybersecurity for their expanded digital presence, writes David Curtin, CEO of .IE, the company that manages .ie domains, the preferred online identity for business in Ireland.
Consumer behaviours have been irrevocably changed
The pandemic, directly and indirectly, through digital technology and changed sociocultural priorities, has altered many consumer behaviours. Consumers will be driven by convenience, ease of use and experience. As many now value the flexibility of hybrid working, they also value hybrid shopping. They enjoy the experience and the convenience of instore shopping while simultaneously valuing the ease and speed of ecommerce. Consumers will gravitate towards retailers that give them the best of both worlds.
Covid has accelerated Ireland’s move towards cashlessness. 62 per cent of consumers said they were using cash ‘significantly’ or ‘somewhat less’ since the start of the pandemic. Surprisingly, increasing cashlessness is universal among all generations. Despite this, as many as 25 per cent of all Irish SMEs still only accept cash payments.
Sustainability and the environmental friendliness of a business’s product and supply chain remain a priority for consumers. Almost 80 per cent said it is ‘very’ or ‘somewhat important’ that the product they order online is produced and delivered in a sustainable way. Digital-first preferences
The majority of consumers will prioritise online shopping in 2022. 16 per cent will do most of their shopping online, while 39 per cent said they will shop for necessities in-store, such as groceries, but buy most other things online. 45 per cent of all consumers plan to do most of their shopping in-store.
However, strong generational differences are emerging in consumer attitudes to online and in-store shopping. SMEs must be cognisant of these and be prepared for a shift in purchasing power to younger age groups that have digital-first shopping preferences. Businesses that do not cater to these needs or offer a compelling online experience will simply lose out to their competitors at home and abroad.
The role of the website is changing
Many businesses were content to use their websites as simple, static information hubs. However, Covid has accelerated a mindset shift. SMEs increasingly view websites as dynamic sales enablers or points of sale. 72 per cent said their website was important in generating sales, up from 66 per cent in 2021. Half of SMEs have invested in their online presence since the start of the pandemic. In the majority of cases, this has resulted in improved sales.
While an increasing number of SMEs are now selling online with modern ecommerce software, which is very positive, digital investment must be a proactive and sustained part of business spending. Digital change is constant and rapid, and Irish businesses must be careful not to stagnate; international retailers will be happy to snap up Irish customers frustrated with a lack of innovation at home.
To download the report, visit: www.weare.ie/tipping-point
E: marketing@weare.ie W: www.weare.ie
Insights
1. Age is a predictor, not a guarantor
It’s no surprise that Millennials and Gen Z, the digital natives first to grow up in the internet age, are more likely to embrace online shopping.
However, there are exceptions to generational trends. Gen Z, despite being among the most vocal proponents of climate action, are the least likely to say that sustainability is important to them when buying online. While all consumers estimated that 55 per cent of their online purchases since Covid was with Irish retailers, among Gen Z that figure was just 41 per cent. SMEs must not apply a one-size-fits-all digital strategy to their target demographics.
2. Consumer preferences are not static
Consumer expectations change as technology evolves and new features provide more benefits.
Our research shows that consumers are increasingly interested in paying for goods and services with a digital wallet and willing to use augmented reality technology to ‘try on’ or sample certain products, such as clothes and furniture. SMEs should take note of what consumers value in a digital shopping experience and find affordable ways to meet that demand, even on an experimental basis.
3. Digital service provision is a strong growth area
Covid made physically visiting a service provider, such as a
GP, difficult. Many businesses were forced to find ways to provide their service digitally, such as over Zoom. This appears to have worked. 3 in 10 Irish consumers bought a service from an Irish business during Covid. Half of SMEs that provided digital services reported an increase in sales over the course of the pandemic.
While full digital service provision is relatively immature, it is likely to emerge as a growth area. SMEs who invest in this technology early are likely to gain traction among hybrid shopping-oriented consumers eager for more choice and flexibility.
4. Digital mastery through persistence
The SME that has continuously looked after their website, online store and other digital technologies is likely to be the one that weathered the toughest pandemic restrictions. Many businesses, which after years of steady investment are naturally attuned to changes in digital consumer demands, have actually flourished since Covid, some exceeding 50 per cent online sales growth.
Connecting Government 2030 strategy launched
The Government has launched its digital and ICT strategy for Ireland’s public services, which lays out the pathway to achieving its goal of having 90 per cent of applicable government services consumed online by 2030.
The strategy, Connecting Government 2030: A Digital and ICT Strategy for Ireland’s Public Service, was unveiled by Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Michael McGrath TD and Minister of State for eGovernment Ossian Smyth TD in early March 2022. It has been designed to complement two previous government strategies, addressing the public services dimension of Harnessing Digital: The Digital Ireland Framework, the national digital strategy, and also supporting targets set in the Civil Service Renewal 2030 plan.
Key to both Connecting Government 2030 and Harnessing Digital are the goals that have been set in terms of both provision of digital public services and uptake by citizens of said services. Under the overarching goals of the EU’s Digital Decade, the Government is seeking to develop a “trusted, userdriven, intuitive, inclusive and efficient world-leading digital government service”, with 90 per cent of applicable services to be consumed online by 2030. It also aims to have 80 per cent of eligible citizens using the online MyGovID service by 2030.
Under the strategy, the Government aims to provide individuals with: better access to high quality digital government services; services that are “delivered in an equitable, inclusive and sustainable manner”; secure and transparent reuse of personal data; and opportunities to co-create government services. Complementing this will be the Government’s aims for businesses, which include: better access to integrated digital government services; reduced administrative overhead; govtech opportunities; and greater engagement with government. Six priority action areas will define where the Government will seek to reform in its efforts to digitise the public service over the current decade. First is the development of a human-driven digital experience, whereby understanding of users and their needs will be developed in order to deliver a more effective service, a goal that will be helped by the second action area, harnessing data effectively. Examples of this approach will include the adoption of the once-only principle, meaning that users will have to supply information to public service organisations once.
Under the third action area of government as a platform, the Government pledges to take on a cloudfirst approach to the delivery of services, as well as the expansion of the Build to Share Programme in order to transform delivery and enhance cybersecurity. Verified MyGovID accounts will be used
where applicable to authenticate individuals attempting to access services under the same action area.
The fourth action area, evolving through innovation, concerns the development of fresh approaches to problem solving and the building of user-centric solutions within the public service. In order to do so, the Government plans to develop partnerships with industry and academia, as well as making it easier for start ups and SMEs to work with government in order to improve digital services.
The strengthening of digital skills will be key to any development of Ireland’s digital public services, and this is the fifth action area of the strategy, where the Government pledges to update the competence model to include a core digital and data competence at all levels of the public service, as well as the development of a new Civil Service ICT HR Professionalisation Strategy. The strategy will “need to reflect the support requirements needed to deliver digital government services that are available on demand, 24-7”.
Sixth and last among the action areas is a focus on governance and leadership, whereby the Government will “put in place governance structures to drive digital transformation across government”. A digital government development roadmap will ensure “consistent and coherent delivery of quality digital government services as framed in the vision” and a Digital Strategy Implementation Unit will work in conjunction with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform’s expenditure management units to ensure progress is being delivered.
Connecting Government 2030 sets out a framework within which all public service organisations can deliver their own digital commitments as appropriate. Those who have not done so already will also be required to name a board member responsible for digital transformation within the department and/or sector, who will be the liaison with the Digital Strategy Implementation Unit. The strategy states that “investment decisions and approvals for initiatives will be contingent on alignment with this strategy and the wider national digital agenda”.
Speaking upon the launch of the strategy, McGrath said: “We have seen a great improvement in the provision of online public services over recent years. But we must build on those strong foundations and accelerate how we progress into the future. Connecting Government 2030 provides us with a framework to do this and to create world-leading digital government services while at the same time improving the off-line experience for those who are unable to access services digitally. The ambitions set out in Connecting Government 2030 also reflect my overall strategy of reform and innovation which my department is pursuing. My aim with this strategy is to provide better public services for individuals and businesses.
Minister of State Smyth added: “In government, we must continuously examine how our public services are delivered and how digital technologies and data can assist in that delivery. This new strategy, Connecting Government 2030, guides us towards achieving this ambition.
“Successful digital transformation will ensure digital channels are the preferred way for people to access public services. We must continue to make services as seamless, user-friendly, and accessible as possible. Digital transformation is not a project; it must be central to government policymaking and culture.”
report digital government
As Ireland ramps up its public sector digitalisation goals, with 90 per cent of public services to be consumed online by 2030, eolas surveys the international status of the digital welfare state and its risks and opportunities.
Digital welfare state
The digital welfare state is defined by the organisation Open Global Rights as a system whereby “social protection and assistance systems are increasingly driven by digital data and technologies used to automate, predict, identify, monitor, detect, target and punish”. At its base, the idea of the digital welfare state is to move the paper-based publicfacing functions of government to a digital footing, with programmes such as unemployment benefits, tax filing, and public health moved online.
Open Global Rights does however point out that digitalisation of welfare systems has often “been accompanied by deep reduction in the overall welfare budget, a narrowing of the beneficiary pool, the elimination of some services, the introduction of demanding and intrusive forms of conditionality, the pursuit of behavioural modification goals, the imposition of stronger sanctions regimes, and a complete reversal of the traditional notion that the state should be accountable to the individual”. An example offered by the organisation is the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 16.9, the goal of establishing every person’s legal identity by 2030, in response to which organisations have launched programmes that include the need for identity documents in order to gain access. While this may not seem like much of an issue in the global north, there are 502 million people in subSaharan Africa and 357 million in South Asia who lack official identification.
Despite its apparent risks, digitalisation of public sectors is one of the defining trends of the 2020s, with governments worldwide looking to streamline operations and ease access to services for future generations of digital natives. The organisation GovNet defines the top five benefits of such digitalisation as: operation digitalisation; increased innovation and agility; easier collaboration across government departments; increased data transparency; and creating a better organisational culture.
Denmark
The Danish dedication to digitalisation of public services is notable for the Government’s commitment to go “digital by default”, with almost every service now available online, such as payment of taxes, reporting of bicycle theft, or the making of appointments with the public health service. Danish citizens now have personalised digital signatures in order to sign documents online.
With data security and privacy given high priority, financial transactions and other sensitive services require two-factor identification. Public healthcare is accessed via a yellow magnet-stripe card that is presented at the point of care; these cards also serve as library cards. Health record keeping and sharing are mostly done digitally, while reminders of upcoming health service appointments are sent to the citizen’s electronic mailbox, which is accessed via twofactor signature.
The mailbox is also where Danish citizens receive information about welfare payments they receive, such as the quarterly child welfare “child check”, or unemployment support. Citizens designate a bank account and public authorities transfer funds into said account digitally.
This digitalisation of public services has also dripped down to business and finance in Denmark; with the correct documentation, a business can be launched online and active within 24 hours, and those launching a business can access an open database of potential business partners maintained by the Danish government. Any business selling good or services to the public authorities of Denmark must submit their invoices through a purpose-built digital system.
Germany
Germany has also embraced the digital by default concept, with its Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development following a simple approach that digital solutions “must be the default position for projects to meet their objectives within German development cooperation”. As a result of this approach, projects which do not deploy digital components must identify and justify their reasons for not doing so.
An OECD report on the German digitalisation efforts published in December 2021 spoke of how the digital by default approach “ensures both the technical and methodological quality of the proposed solutions” and “aims to enable societies to make digitalisation sustainable”. The report found that the German digital learning platform atingi, which “provides free access to highquality digital learning, anytime and anywhere”, had reached more than one million people and has a goal of reaching 20 million by the end of 2023 and becoming the standard German digital learning tool.
Germany, along with Estonia, the Digital Impact Alliance and the International Telecommunications Union, supporting partners to enable delivery of public goods within GovStack, the international e-gov initiative. The next phase of this initiative will involve the creation of a model digital government services platform that demonstrates scaling opportunities across services and sectors. An internal survey within the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development found that most project owners now want to use digital tools and approaches in their work to increase effectiveness and reach. The survey did also identify an ongoing need to develop expertise on digital technologies within the ministry.
Lessons learnt during the ministry’s progress thus far, according the report, include: that there is no one solution, and that digital solutions “need to be tailored to the local context in which they will be embedded”, with open-source solutions playing a crucial role in this regard; that Germany recognises the need for both ongoing learning and investment in order to further build capacity; and that international partnerships are “crucial to mainstreaming the vision of a fair digital future”.
Salesforce: The world’s number one CRM
John Stobie, Regional Vice President of Public Sector Sales for Salesforce Ireland, and Paul Pick-Aluas, Regional Vice President of Strategy and Transformation for the Global Public Sector with Salesforce, speak to eolas about the company’s identity as the number one customer relationship management (CRM) company in the world.
“Salesforce is the number one CRM company in the world and we're looking to help bring the public sector and citizens together in a digital way for the digital age,” Stobie begins.
We are much more than just a CRM company though. Salesforce’s public sector platform, Customer 360, is an integrated platform built around enabling case management, relationship management, collaboration, integration, analytics, and modern application development. The company is eager to help the public sector with their stated goals of achieving an ecosystem of digital skills and to ensure that there is widespread access to the digital public services that citizens are looking for, while enabling the Government’s target of 90 per cent of services consumed online by 2030. Stobie says. “One of the key considerations within this space is security and we spend many millions on that to ensure our customers can trust us with their data because trust is one of our guiding principles. As an entity, we offer experience and service in the same proven tool, we believe that if you separate those you can suffer in relation to your capability. At a high level, what makes us unique is that we offer a single pane of glass in terms of people being able to see the data from disparate systems rather than having different systems they need to engage with. We are person-centric and offer speed to value, great agility, a future ready platform and we execute in terms of solutions at the back end, where we have a very modular approach.”
Stobie stresses that Salesforce is guided by its core values: trust; customer success; innovation; equality; and sustainability. He explains how these values work in practice: “These values are lived daily within the organisation. If people trust us with their information, we want to be 100 per cent sure that it is totally secured. We have a website –trust.salesforce.com – where people can check how our systems are performing around the world. Customer success is integral, we want to ensure the best practice to help customers accelerate their digital journeys. Innovation is key; we are evergreen. We have a platform that delivers three innovation releases every year so you don’t have to worry about that as a customer, you will always be on the latest version that we have innovated on.
“As an employee, one of the aspects that I like is our philanthropic model. We have a 1-1-1 model whereby 1 per cent of our equity, time and products is donated. This is something that Salesforce set up from the start of the company and if you look today, it’s about €523 million in giving, 6.7 million hours of employee volunteer time and 54,600 non-profits such as schools that have
benefited from using our technology for free or at a discount. We also have a huge focus on sustainability within Salesforce, we’re a net zero company already, we are also a part of the 1t.org initiative where we are trying to plant one trillion trees and we have 45 million done to date.”
Stobie also places great emphasis on the company’s speed to value, as seen with the rapid build of the HSE’s CoVax platform and how the company has just finished standing up crisis management systems for a European government in less than a week.
Pick-Aluas reasons that it is Salesforce’s roots as a CRM tool that is at the heart of their success: “Our person- and entitycentric core and lineage, having started as a CRM, is key because it’s pervasive across all our technologies and truly enables you a single view of the customer or stakeholder. Also, by linking data from other systems it’s not just what’s in our tools that allows customers to shape their enterprise architecture. We are an integrated platform, as opposed to some of the other solutions on the market where you see CRM as an extension of infrastructure as a service and it doesn’t give you the customer centricity you need.”
“Salesforce has the ability with investment and technical capability, to be better positioned to be more secure than an individual agency spending on onpremises security,” Stobie says. During a recent cyberattack on a customer, the Salesforce platform remained operational while on-prem solutions were impacted, demonstrating Salesforce’s commitment to safety. Pick-Aluas adds: “We’re a security company that makes business platforms. It’s the core of our architecture, engineering, and design. It’s one of the key reasons customers buy us, we bring security to them. It’s a risk for agencies to keep their stuff on premises or in data centres. We have invested billions and continue to every year in new ways to secure data.”
Salesforce has the ability to stand up solutions quickly due to its integrated platform, which also allows it to maintain an engaged partner ecosystem with the ability to put solutions in place. “You can start small with us and build upon it; you can expand within the platform from there,” says Stobie. “We have the platform, resources, our internal experts, and the partner capability to ensure speed to value. We believe this is essential so that stakeholders can start seeing success straight away. That gives us an edge.”
Building upon this, Pick-Aluas concludes: “A new customer has to see the improvement, and how it translates to their users in gradual fashion and see the process evolving. It exposes to us, these implementations in the public sector, that one of the key gaps to address with digital transformation is on the organisational side. People say that digital transformation is about the technology but the way you execute is defined by the organisational and economic aspects of transforming. That usually is where we see challenges in executing because many of these agencies aren’t ready for transformation, so we have to help them with that aspect as well.” “That’s why we’re more of a transformation partner rather than a technology vendor. We have to develop more agile ways of working on the business side and bridge the chasm between business and IT with a tool that is more accessible and modernised. Bringing together this unified view is often disruptive at the organisational management level so we have to consider all of these barriers to modernisation as well as legacy technology.”
John Stobie
For more information visit www.salesforce.com/eu/publicsector
