The Digital Leader - July 2016

Issue 2 / JULY 2016

DIGITAL DNA Matt Hancock MP Building the nation’s DNA

Maggie Philbin Digital Leader of the year

Sadiq Khan Let’s make London the tech capital of the world

02

Contributors 03

From the Editor 04

Embracing the next stage of transformation– digital at scale 06

Maggie Philbin celebrates winning digital leader of the year 2016 08

Building the nation’s DNA 12

Let’s make London the tech capital of the world 14

Digital councils And social inclusion 16

ND16 and DL100

01

CONTRIBUTORS

04

08

06

John Baskerville

Maggie Philbin

Matt Hancock MP

Embracing the next stage of transformation – digital at scale

Digital Leader of the year

Building the nation’s DNA

12

14

Sadiq Khan

Rachel Neaman

Let’s make London the tech capital of the world

Digital councils and social inclusion

02

FROM THE EDITOR Welcome to the second edition of The Digital Leader.

Each month we highlight a specific Digital Leader and their views, as well as sharing some thought leadership you may have missed in the last month, if like many leaders, you don’t always have time to participate in our events or visit our site every day.

Last month was a busy one at Digital Leaders, we held the 2016 Digital Leaders 100 Awards (digileaders100.com/results) and the 11th National Digital Conference (nd16.co.uk). If you happened to have missed them please check them out @DigiLeaders on Twitter or head over to digileaders.com.

This month our featured Digital Leader is the top politician in the UK driving Digital Transformation in Government, Minister of State for Digital & Culture, Hon. Matt Hancock MP. Matt Hancock shares his insights and three key things to consider when ‘Putting Digital Into Government’s DNA’ We always welcome digital leadership and transformation contributions from our wider network so please get in touch if you have something to share with the Digital Leaders Community.

Editor - Louise Stokes louise.stokes@digileaders.com

03

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

EMBRACING THE NEXT STAGE OF TRANSFORMATION – DIGITAL AT SCALE The pervasiveness of technology in our everyday lives is increasing our appetite for public services delivered on our terms - available 24/7 via a single point of contact, primed with re-used data and meeting our needs at first touch point. But services are designed around the silo processes of government. Too often, the public are forced to ‘join the dots’ to get what they need from central and local government organisations.

04

THE DIGITAL LEADER The last four years saw a valiant effort from the Government Digital Service to reimage the front-end of high volume transactional systems.

Many digital services are now faster, simpler and more convenient.

We have first-hand experience of delivering these benefits. As Student Loans Company’s digital delivery partner, we helped treble user satisfaction through the agile development of a new customer loan portal.

SCALING DIGITAL: MOVING BEYOND THE BENEFITS OF THE FRONT END We are told that the next stage of efficiency and reform is moving from putting services online to ‘Government as a Platform’ and ‘Common Technology Services’ models, exemplified by the GOV.UK Verify programme, which provides identity assurance for online services. Whilst this will help further the creation and uptake of digital services, it still seems primarily focused on a harmonised interface to the public.

‘big data’ present for customer segmentation, to customise services, enable experimentation and discover needs.

WHY DO WE NEED TO SCALE DIGITAL?

Rolling out more coherently structured and actively managed services is why we need to scale digital across government. New exemplars are needed that link processes in and across organisations. With the appropriate consent, information must be shared early and updated in real time for operational and strategic purposes.

Government, like the private sector, must pay close attention to customer interactions and exploit the huge potential for savings and quality improvements that modern digital processes enable. Well-informed customers are often the first to identify new needs or approaches to improve their satisfaction.

BRIDGING THE DIGITAL SKILLS GAP

The next objective of public service reform is to scale digital, extending it beyond customer-facing services.

As one civil servant explained in our 2016 Government Digital Trends Survey, “true digital transformation is complete business transformation to enable government to do business in a digital world – not just services to citizens.”

The paradox of this transformation is that it requires exceptional support and commitment from civil servants, while their numbers are being reduced. Half of the civil servants that responded to our recent Government Digital Trends Survey identified a lack of resources as a barrier to digital transformation (6% more than last year). 53% identified a lack of training as a blockage – up 10% from last year.

Digital technologies will remain the tools of this transformation, increasingly enhancing operations through automation and customer experience from data-generated insights. I am particularly excited about the opportunities that

Keeping up to date with rapidly evolving skills and training needs and matching these to future demand is a challenge faced by all organisations, including Sopra Steria. Our digital consultants recently took a user-centric design

05

approach to develop a new skills assessment and anticipation tool MySkills. Within a month of the Beta, we had captured a better view of over 1,900 skills from 600 people. We quickly rolled it out, and are now reaping the benefits of being able to meet our demand for appropriately skilled people in a more efficient way.

The success of MySkills and the concerns raised in the survey around a growing skills barrier have convinced me that to take digital to the next level, government needs to be sure it has a stronger understanding of the digital skills across its own workforce - enabling it to work collaboratively with industry and create a sustainable way to address the growing gaps.

Anything less puts further risk on the digital transformation agenda.

Read the summary findings from the Sopra Steria 2016 Government Digital Trends Survey - bit.ly/29iwy6N John Baskerville is Managing Director for Government at Sopra Steria Read online at digileaders.com

DIGITAL LEADERSHIP MAGGIE PHILBIN CELEBRATES WINNING DIGITAL LEADER OF THE YEAR 2016 I was so very thrilled to receive the Award for Digital Leader of the Year. It’s such an honour and brilliant to celebrate with a talented team who have put so much heart, soul, imagination and honesty into the past eight years. I’d like to thank all the judges, all the people who kindly voted but most of all the wonderful sponsors, companies and volunteers, many of whom have been with us from the very first event in an empty office block in Reading and whose young graduates and apprentices donate so much time and energy. This is your triumph.

TeenTech grew out of a visit to a school in Berkshire in 2007 where I asked young people to share their experiences of science and technology and why they were and more crucially weren’t interested. Years of being asked to ‘launch’ initiatives had made me very aware of the frailty of working in a silo so I invited everyone in the region interested in helping to make a difference to join the steering group. We ran the first innovation day six months later with 450 students, made big changes based on feedback, ran the event again for which we won several awards. We decided to see whether we could work across the UK, bringing people in a region together to build and run an initiative which really resonated with the local community.

TeenTech reaches out to young people and communities who often have no idea why they should be developing digital skills and how fundamental they will be to every job they will do in the future, whether or not they’re working for what their parents or teachers may consider to be a ‘tech company’.

We now have a series of age appropriate programmes which inspire young people form 8-10, ranging from TeenTech City of Tomorrow for younger students to the TeenTech Award programme for young people up to the age of 18. We work face to face with 5000 students, teachers and parents a year and indirectly with ten times more.

We signpost other initiatives and give them a platform at our event days. Working together is the only way to really make a difference.

As anyone who works with hard to reach communities knows, it’s painstaking work. We focus our efforts in areas of greater social need and motivate both schools and individual students to become TeenTech Evangelists once they have been through our programmes. One girl headed out to Colombia on a school exchange, and quite spontaneously decided to lead a TeenTech Innovation session.

That school (still working on chalk and board) is now participating in the TeenTech City of Tomorrow programme.

Two teams of girls went into their local primary school to demonstrate their TeenTech Award projects and amongst the waving hands from younger

06

pupils asking how they could join in, was one boy who asked ‘Can boys do this too?’

The answer is a big yes as TeenTech focus on diversity rather than gender. Our events are 50% male /female and the number of students who then produce TeenTech award projects is 60% female/40% male. We provide on-going support and business connections to the schools who most need them.

I’ve felt so proud to hear a teacher in Mid- Wales credit TeenTech with being the catalyst which completely changed the whole attitude of the school towards STEM. One boy who had never been outside Wales before travelling to London to showcase his TeenTech Award project at The Royal Society – not only had success with us, going on to accepting his award from HRH Duke of York at Buckingham Palace but has now been selected as one of three young engineers to represent the UK in USA. The teacher says the students in what is a very deprived area of Wales, now completely see that they can compete on a world stage.

The eight years of TeenTech have been eight years of non-stop learning. The digital space has changed so much in this time but what doesn’t seem to be changing at the same pace is the overall demographic of those who benefit most and are able to seize opportunities whether it’s booking a cheaper holiday or accessing online

THE DIGITAL LEADER learning. In theory tech is for everyone but in reality far too many miss out. So it’s important not only to give students a glimpse of the growing number of ‘invisible’ careers threading their way across all sectors but also the opportunity to develop the creativity, collaboration and communication skills that will take them so much further as they embark on a lifetime of different careers, where being robust and being bold is going to be very helpful.

And as I say – we can only do this together, so if you’d like to work with us we’d love to hear from you.

Maggie Philbin is CEO of TeenTech Read online at digileaders.com

DIGITAL LEADER 2016: MAGGIE PHILBIN 07

FEATURE

BUILDING THE NATION’S DIGITAL DNA Matt Hancock MP

08

THE DIGITAL LEADER

09

FEATURE BUILDING THE NATION’S DIGITAL DNA

2. DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION

Tech is inherently disruptive and good for our economy. Through it, consumers are benefiting from quicker, smarter and more responsive services. I want to use government to push things further and expand our role as a world-leading digital economy.

Before GDS, government technology was mostly contract management. Digital services were designed, built and delivered externally on inflexible contracts that locked us into ageing IT. Now we’ve brought our tech architecture, project management and delivery in-house. We control and understand our own technology. And where we procure through the Digital Marketplace, we’re an intelligent customer and can take advantage of the best industry has to offer.

I’ve learnt three key lessons from our work transforming services in government:

1. START SMALL ...because the best way to convince the naysayers is to show them something that works.

The Government Digital Service was designed to be an insurgent start-up bolted onto the Civil Service, not some grand Ministry of Technology.

Rather than looking to shake up the entire public sector at once, GDS aimed to transform a specific set of high-volume transactions. The idea was to prove not just the technology, but the underlying methodology.

GDS has now delivered twenty digital public services, and converted the doubters.

Now digital transformation is going from start-up to mainstream. GDS has been backed with £450 million in the Spending Review to drive forward the next phase of transformation over this Parliament.

We are building platforms for common activities, like GOV.UK/Pay for payments or GOV.UK/Notify for status tracking, which can be reused across government. It means we can deliver more complex services that make sense to the user, covering the areas of different departments.

Talent drives all these changes and the Digital and Technology Fast Stream programme is developing our tech-savvy leaders of the future. A cohort of almost 100 graduates are already working right across government.

3. DATA AS A PUBLIC SERVICE We want to make data available as a public service. That’s one of the reasons we’ve just introduced the Digital Economy Bill to Parliament. While

10

protecting privacy we can strengthen trust in the state, reduce fraud, and increase innovation.

It will be possible, for example, to provide automatic discounts off the energy bills of people living in fuel poverty, or to deliver more timely interventions for troubled families dealing with multiple government agencies.

Modern data science will allow us to target resources more effectively, and design better, more responsive public services, using data to drive constant incremental improvement, basing policy on fact rather than theory.

And the focus on the user helps us to reform government departments around 21st century tools and techniques, making the most of the best technologies industry has to offer us.

This is a huge agenda and a huge opportunity to deliver for the citizens that we serve.

Minister of State for Digital & Culture, Hon. Matt Hancock MP. Read online at digileaders.com

THE DIGITAL LEADER

11

CYBER RESILIENCE London is an established global leader in business services and international finance, but it is clear we are also a massive growing force in newer industries, including tech and digital.

In recent years, we have seen some brilliant companies in London that have grown quickly and become significant players on the international stage.

According to the most recent EY Attractiveness Survey, we are now the second most likely city in the world to create the next big tech giant, behind only San Francisco.

This is a huge success for our city, but we cannot rest on our laurels.

If we are to stay competitive, increase productivity and make the most of opportunities for growth in the tech sector, then we can, and we should, do more.

Read more: The six ways tech will change our lives in the next 20 years One of the things I always hear when talking to businesses across London is that a key barrier to growth is the lack of specific skills in the London workforce.

In the tech sector, the problem is usually a shortage of young Londoners with the advanced technical skills, such as coding or web design, that are required.

That’s why I’ve pledged to be the Mayor who will lead a new skills agenda for London, making sure businesses and Londoners get the skills they need to succeed.

A major part of this will be working on a new digital talent pipeline initiative, delivered by City Hall, which will invest £5m to open up new opportunities for young Londoners aged between 15 and 25 years old in digital and tech.

This will involve mapping the digital skills London needs and working in partnership with businesses to plug the talent gap.

New courses and apprenticeships will be created with industry to provide young people from diverse backgrounds with cutting-edge digital skills that lead them directly into well paid jobs.

In particular, I want to ensure more girls are supported and inspired to develop tech skills, so that we can turn around the under-representation of women in tech jobs. At the moment, women make up only 17 per cent of the tech workforce in London, which is just not good enough.

So I am also joining forces with organisations like Tech London Advocates - Women in Tech and Digital Leaders so we can work together to make the tech industry much more diverse.

And my international business programme is supporting female business founders in London, which includes helping female chief executives of scale-up companies to visit Silicon Valley so that they can access new networks, meet investors and be inspired to build global businesses back home.

12

But this is just the start. To truly take tech to the next level in London, we will up the pace and introduce a whole host of measures.

Over the next four years I will be constantly talking to businesses to ensure they get the support they need, but my initial priorities will include improving our connectivity - making it a priority to tackle London’s “notspots” – and making sure that data and innovative tech solutions can help deliver public services more easily and efficiently.

I also plan to appoint London’s first chief digital officer to oversee this effort and to encourage growth in the sector.

Finally, with just three days to go until the EU referendum, we can’t ignore that the biggest potential barrier to the continued growth of the tech sector in London is the prospect of Britain leaving Europe.

I helped to run a business before entering politics so I know how important it is that we are part of the biggest single market in the world – with access to 500m customers. Staying in the EU will not only mean our tech companies in London, and across the country, will benefit from the EU single market, but also the completion of the digital single market, which will bring new jobs and investment to London.

That’s why a recent survey by Tech City UK found that the vast majority of tech founders and investors want the UK to remain

LONDON TECH CAPITAL OF THE WORLD 13

in the EU. And that’s why not a single one of Britain’s unicorns – the tech firms valued above $1bn - is publicly in favour of a vote to leave.

I am passionate about this sector because I know that in London we have an opportunity to become the world’s number one city for tech and digital. I am determined to be the most pro-business mayor London has ever had and a big part of this will be working with startups, scale-ups, investors and creators to make sure we seize the opportunity to become the true global hub for tech. Let’s make it happen.

Sadiq Khan is the Mayor of London Read online at digileaders.com

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

DIGITAL COUNCILS AND SOCIAL INCLUSION THE UK IS FACING A MAJOR DIGITAL SKILLS CRISIS. For those of us who own a smartphone, use apps and social media, shop and bank online – and see others all around us doing the same – this may come as a surprise.

14

THE DIGITAL LEADER But the reality is that we have a technology skills shortage at all levels, from the very basic right up to the most advanced skills.

Across the UK, 12.6 million adults – almost one in four – and 1.2 million small and medium-sized businesses lack the basic skills needed to send an email, apply for a job, or shop online. At the same time, businesses are telling us that 85 per cent of technical positions are difficult to fill because of a lack of specialist skills.

Having digital skills improves a whole range of outcomes, including employability, financial inclusion, social mobility, and better health and wellbeing. We know that online households are on average £744 a year better off. Proportionately, lower-income households save even more. Those with an annual income of less than £15,000 save on average £516 per year, equivalent to six weekly family shops.

For organisations, digital skills improve profitability, efficiency, productivity, employee engagement and customer satisfaction. Once in work, people with good digital skills earn between 3 and 10 per cent more than those without.

But without digital skills it is almost impossible to find or apply for a job.

To ensure the UK adult population is fit for the digital age would cost £1.65 billion up to 2025 but the present value would be a staggering £14.3 billion – a return of almost £10 for every £1 spent.

So what does all this mean for local government? Councils need to find cheaper and more effective ways of delivering services to their residents. At the same time, users

of digital technology now expect to interact with local government in the same way they do in other areas of their life – wherever and whenever they choose, in a personalised way.

In London, Hammersmith and Fulham’s online self-service portal has saved £1.15 million annually, with 70 per cent of households registered. Barking and Dagenham has achieved a 100 per cent digital shift for benefit claims, reducing processing time by 30 days and saving £617,000 annually.

Back-office changes can also save councils money while increasing the digital know-how of staff.

Hillingdon saved £750,000 a year through moving to Google Apps and Shropshire Council’s Project WIP open source website service saved £204,000 over an initial five-year period.

But councils cannot afford to ignore those who are unable to transact with them this way. Ironically, the highest users of public services are those least likely to be digitally capable. To help local councils and other organisations, Doteveryone produced the first ever UK digital exclusion heatmap (see www.doteveryone.org.uk/resources/ heatmap), which shows a clear correlation between digital exclusion and other social factors, with those in lower socio-economic groups, retired, unemployed, in poor health and less educationally qualified at greatest risk. By addressing digital exclusion we can also help address social exclusion.

Doteveryone also created an online resource centre and interactive

15

platform called Go ON Local (see www.local.go-on.co.uk), that supports organisations and individuals looking to help people with their digital skills. We’re using this platform in community projects in Croydon and Lewisham to test, learn and share new ways of reaching those most in need of support. Our Go ON North East and Go ON North West regional projects also highlighted how concerted cross-sector effort across a whole region can dramatically increase levels of digital skills.

It’s now time to scale up that good practice and ensure digital councils become the norm. As they embrace digitisation, councils have not only a real opportunity but a clear responsibility to support those most at risk of digital exclusion.

By understanding the risk factors affecting their residents, local government can play its part in addressing the digital skills crisis.

‘This article first appeared in the Local Government Association’s first magazine – see www.local.gov.uk/first’, Rachel Neaman is Campus Director of Doteveryone Read online at digileaders.com

ND16 - BUILDING THE NATION’S DIGITAL DNA 15 JUNE 2016

16

DL100 AWARDS DINNER 2016 15 JUNE 2016

© The Digital Leader 2016 Created by me&him