24 minute read
Expert Panel: Transformational Change
Transformational Change How do you create a balance between innovation and productivity when driving transformation within the public sector?
Rebecca George: I’ve never been convinced that the public sector should be innovators – I think rather they should be fast followers. They can’t cherry pick their customers to try out new ideas, so it’s better to take solutions which are tried, tested, safe and scalable and roll them out. Where they could focus more energy is in replicating successful approaches across sectors (e.g. if there are apps that work for particular health challenges then get everyone to use them rather than individuals or individual organisations investing in creating their own). Appropriate infrastructures to curate apps/solutions, store them, make them available, keep them updated/refreshed would be most welcome.
Productivity remains a challenge – many public sector people work extraordinarily hard but there are complex sign off processes, many people involved in decision making, and unnecessary checks and balances. And properly tackling the issue of poor performers – analysing the root cause, putting support in place, finding appropriate alternatives – still needs work.
Georgina Maratheftis: Set against a backdrop of rising citizen expectations and financial constraints, public sector is no stranger in doing more for less. The real reward, however, is how the public sector can do things differently and better for its citizens. This is where innovation comes in. Innovation and transformation are often used synonymously, but innovation drives change, and transformation is ongoing. True innovation is business-led and driven by collaboration.
Innovation offers the opportunity to rethink processes and in the case of the public sector, how it solves problems to ultimately create places where citizens want to live, work, thrive and feel safe. The opportunity innovation presents goes beyond transactional and efficiency. Meaningful innovation is driven by collaboration between teams, citizens and technology suppliers. We saw this at the height of the pandemic when place-based working became the norm, and departments, agencies and industry worked together to provide digital responses to specific challenges. With a drive for integrated services, it’s now about pivoting to place-led innovation and public services building on the momentum of the last two years and not being afraid to take risks and innovate.
Innovation doesn’t have to be flashy or era-defining. It can be found in small advances that free us from the established ways of doing things. techUK recently published ‘Local Public Services Innovation: Creating a Catalyst for Change,’ a paper setting out how local public services can grasp the innovation opportunity and maximise the benefits they derive from digital technologies and their suppliers. It includes case studies and recommendations on how we break down the barriers to collaboration and create the conditions for procurement to be an enabler of innovation. Innovation isn’t one person, but a collective effort and culture. Innovation happens every day and techUK invites local government representatives to get in touch and be part of the newly launched Innovators Network. The Innovators Network for councils will enable and empower councils to connect with innovators to access the latest technologies in a neutral forum to help solve some of the most pressing challenges they face.
Joe McGarry: Innovation and productivity have a symbiotic relationship – creating space and processes for teams to get creative and problem solve often leads to the development of innovative solutions to deliver operational efficiencies, whilst also empowering and engaging teams who in turn may feel more productive in their work. In our experience at Moorhouse, the most successful transformation programmes have retained a relentless focus on delivery and productivity, whilst always carving out a percentage of capacity for continuous innovation. Often there’s a misconception that it is only the private sector, big tech companies or disruptors who are the innovators, but due to the scale of public sector services, small changes can have huge impacts. In my opinion, government and the civil service is, at its heart, a hugely creative organisation, forever creating new approaches to solve societal challenges and ways to deliver more, for less.
Many of our clients are involved in complex multi-year transformation journeys. There is often rigour, governance and restricted annually allocated budgets around these portfolios to keep the focus on delivering intended business case outcomes and any change to intended plans is rightly scrutinised. Such programmes are often incredibly challenging, and require large, multi-organisational teams and long hours to deliver, and the balance can skew towards a focus on productivity and ignoring the need to remain creative. The key to a successful balance is having leadership who create and support a culture of innovation from the top and cultivate entrepreneurial attitudes, developing a framework and process to guide innovation. Greater affiliations between the public and private sectors can support the sharing of ideas, approaches and technology to enable public sector teams to be innovators without always being the inventors.
What opportunities can increased data sharing between government organisations bring and how do we overcome the barriers get there?
Georgina Maratheftis: Sharing good quality public sector data can improve public services. This can be done in a number of ways, for example by helping to deliver better targeted outcomes, joining things up across the service so a citizen doesn’t have to repeat the same information, delivering more resilient healthcare services and implementing smarter cities and solutions that can help make our environment greener.
In September 2020, the Government published its National Data Strategy setting out plans to “unlock the power of data” in the UK, including the role and opportunities for public sector data. More can be done to unlock the value of data for public services. The public sector faces challenges when sharing data, from culturally to the skills gap to security concerns. To overcome these challenges and to enable the public sector to realise the potential of data, techUK recently published a new report, Data sharing: getting the UK back on the right track, which sets out policy recommendations that will help to facilitate a more focused and coherent approach to data sharing that can ensure the value and benefits of increased data use are enjoyed across the entire economy and society. Specifically for public sector data sharing, it encourages Government to consult with industry and organisations to better understand which data sets could unlock the most value if opened up and outline a clear plan on how this will be put into action.
Transport for London (TfL) is a strong example of an organisation releasing data to spur innovation and improve user journeys. TfL’s data, which included real-time feeds and transparency-oriented datasets, stimulated an app economy that is making a real contribution to London. According to research, the release of open data by TfL is generating annual economic benefits and savings of up to £130m for commuters, London and TfL itself. It has also allowed companies to use and re-use TfL data commercially, with estimates projecting a gross value add of up to £15 million per annum and the creation of 500 high productivity jobs that would have not existed otherwise. techUK also calls for investment in sufficient resources to map regional data ecosystems and to set realistic benchmarks for the gathering of local government data. For the UK to truly become digitally driven, it is important to understand and assess the impact that technology is having on a particular locality – data is a key part in helping to deliver this comprehensive picture. This is vital as a one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate for all nations and regions, and digital policy must reflect local experiences and priorities. For example, the needs and solutions to help drive digital adoption between London and North Yorkshire differ significantly
Joe McGarry: There are huge opportunities for operational efficiencies and innovation through greater use of data and insight across the sector. We are all aware of the benefits that increased information sharing can bring: Closer collaboration, evidence-based policy making and leaner, more user-centric service delivery to name a few. But for many teams and departments, let alone crossorganisations, there are huge obstacles to overcome, from conflicting priorities, reduced budgets, commercial constraints, siloed working and barriers related to data privacy – both real and perceived.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen some big shifts in this area, particularly as departments nationally and governments internationally were forced to create pathways to share data and collaborate more efficiently to solve global challenges. Now we see accelerated trends across many of our clients’ organisations to harness the power of data and insight to drive effective decision making and seek opportunities to break down silo walls. Key areas of opportunity include: i) The adoption of cloud-based technology and tooling for which UK Government spending has risen increasingly over the last few years (Spend grew at an average of 17.7 per cent over 2021) developing products and systems that facilitate information sharing across teams and automate processes to increase the use of real time information ii) emerging changes to the workforce to develop new skills, capabilities and roles across the public sector to focus on data, insight and information management (In 2021 the share of Chief Data Officers with more than 25 staff members grew from 25 per cent to 40 per cent) and iii) continuing focus on data ethics and governance, to ensure responsible data management and facilitate intra-organisational data sharing and iv) establishing agencies or communities between departments focussed on shared policy outcomes and operational efficiencies.
Publicly, there is an increasing demand for more joined up service delivery across departments and the focus of recent legislative changes across the UK on the levelling up agenda will require greater use of data across regions, moving away from a centralised model, but there is still a long way to go to get the leadership, roles, governance and technology in place to support the shifts the market wants to see.
Rebecca George: In my own area of further education, skills and life-long learning, this is a current and real issue. The data is decentralised, on different platforms, not gathered real time, and there are few incentives for people inputting the data who don’t necessarily get the benefit or reward for their work. Skills, jobs and earnings data reside in different departments. It’s fundamentally important for the Skills Reform programme that the data can be brought together and made available across Government and externally. The Unit for Future Skills has been announced with this remit. Having highly qualified and informed people at the centre with the mandate to do the job is a very important step. However – there are not enough people, all the skills are in high demand across public and private sector, and there are some really difficult technical and legal issues to manage. Collaboration going forward is going to be key. The public sector will need to share people and skills, manage priorities, decide the vital data to collect, curate and report on and provide single cuts of the data (rather than cutting it a myriad of different ways for different stakeholders with marginal gain); and collaborate with organisations in the private and third sectors. Public sector data should be seen as a national asset (NHS data is unique globally, for example) and should be managed as such. E
Public sector data should be seen as a national asset and should be managed as such
Transformational Change The online experience for public sector service users has been disrupted and in some cases transformed over the last few years, what lessons can be taken forward in the further reshaping of public sector service delivery?
Joe McGarry: The online experience for all citizens has been disrupted since the pandemic, be it innovations in the way users interact with the NHS app, to greater expectations to interact with government services online, our habitual online shopping and of course transitioning to hybrid working arrangements, all organisations have seen huge shifts to online service delivery. Whilst many of us have shifted to new digital behaviours, this has not come without its own challenges and constraints across both personal and professional realms. Across the public sector, for many teams this meant an acceleration of existing change portfolios and service delivery plans and required agility to flex to shifting priorities.
Emerging from the pandemic there are some key lessons to take forward, the first of which is resilience to respond to political and policy commitments as well as to evolving citizen expectations. We see many organisations adapting their operating models, ways of working and organisational structures to accept change as the inevitable rather than the unexpected. An increased focus on agility and tighter processes to manage risk are commonplace. Secondly, an increased focus on the needs of the citizen through user-centric design and delivery, building in continuous cycles of feedback, analytics and research to understand how to deliver services to citizens that meet the needs of users, operations and policy teams effectively, and at pace. Thirdly, shifts are needed in the public sector talent pool to attract and retain skilled technical talent to continue to deliver great online services at pace and finally, it is unlikely that there will ever be a scenario in which all services are online. Public sector teams need to continue to keep open non-digital channels for users with accessibility needs or preferences, but continue to seek ways in which all customers can have access to cost effective, high quality and accessible services irrespective of the channel.
Rebecca George: The public sector is not different from the private sector in this respect. There are some people, jobs, activities and tasks which are perfectly happily performed at home.There are some which are better done with other people, in the same place. I suspect that there will be trailblazer organisations who will work out how to manage hybrid meetings better, so that team members joining meetings virtually are equally in the meeting; and others will follow. I’ve been interested in organisations in the public and private sector who have been used to working with remote teams (sometimes nationally, sometimes globally) for a long time and for whom in person meetings have been a rarity for a long time.We all have lessons to learn in leadership, support, coaching, understanding individual challenges and creating happy and productive teams in a virtual and hybrid world.
Georgina Maratheftis: What is certain is that citizens’ and users’ needs must be at the heart of any transformation and public service delivery. There are some great examples of how digital has been used for citizens to both inform priorities and improve outcomes. For Liverpool’s 5G testbed, the use of digital technology enabled Liverpool’s local authority to deliver high-quality health and social care services in the community, through new devices and applications connected to its community 5G network. Integrating tech into care has boosted customer experience and satisfaction, offering Liverpool’s citizens the opportunity to live independently for longer. Digital also enables and empowers citizens to be at the heart of decision making. Waltham Forest’s digitally driven COVID-19 Citizens’ Panel is a good example of utilising digital platforms to regularly consult residents. In this case, it was to directly inform the Council’s approach to the pandemic, and it included a panel of 75 residents, representative of the borough’s population in terms of ethnicity, gender, age, disability, and socio-economic status, ensuring that the response was inclusive.
We all have lessons to learn in creating happy and productive teams in a virtual and hybrid world
What have been some of the greatest shifts in ways of working across the public sector since the pandemic and what does the workforce of the future look like?
Rebecca George: There have been some amazing examples of disparate public sector organisations coming together and doing extraordinary things in very short timescales (think vaccination programme) which have been inspirational for teams in the public sector. There’s more of a ‘can do’ attitude and in my area a real focus on delivering measurable outcomes. This is a bit lumpy – it’s not the same everywhere – and delivery focussed leadership is very important.
Joe McGarry: The pandemic was a major disruptor in the workforce. Jobs were lost, jobs were reimagined, and the way in which we manage our work and interact with our colleagues and clients has shifted dramatically. Gone are the days of an occasional working from home day, and hopefully we have made shifts away from ‘presenteeism’ towards more widely accepted productivity through remote working or whatever working pattern works for the individuals. Throughout the last two years, we have been much more acutely aware of each other’s domestic environments, from parenting demands to pets and interesting décor, which we hope has built closer, trusted relationships between teams and individuals, encouraging more collaboration and awareness of colleagues as individuals.
To move away from cynicism around productivity, there has also been a surge in the use of digital collaboration tools, and a focus on the delivery of tangible outcomes that can be seen even if workers can’t be. We are all much more reliant on digital channels of communication and video conferencing tooling than we ever were and there are many examples of the public sector pulling together to deliver shared outcomes quicker than ever before, an example of course being the success of the COVID-19 vaccination programme.
Going forwards we predict a continuation of hybrid working, with many choosing to remain working predominately at home. This in turn is shifting estates and cost reduction agendas, with smaller offices and shifts out of city centres for organisations and workers alike. For many workplaces, we will see a continued acceleration of the use of digital tools, particularly collaboration and conferencing software and the use of data analytics and automation to support decision making and share progress towards outcomes. The types of roles and responsibilities in the workforce are also changing, increasingly roles require more digital and data literacy, agility to respond to change and ability to deal with delivering at great scale and pace.
Georgina Maratheftis: The start of the pandemic saw us develop a renewed sense of community with organisations across the place mobilised to support the most vulnerable and those shielding. The crisis has also been a dramatic accelerator of change for our public services, from how swiftly they are responding to working with partners across the place and the use of digital. The current crisis has illustrated the importance of collaboration at the local level and marked a firm shift to place-based working where departments and agencies are all looking at digital responses to specific local challenges.
Place-based approaches are not new. With local public services continuing to face financial constraints and rising demand, there is recognition that challenges are increasingly interlinked and cannot be faced by individual service providers. An excellent example of this is Wigan’s award-winning “The Deal”, an informal agreement between the council and everyone who lives or works in Wigan to work together to create a better borough. It aims to use technology to facilitate the delivery of integrated services with communities at the heart of service delivery. At the heart of a place-based approach is the citizen. It is about organisations working together across the place to improve outcomes for people, collaborating to solve common challenges. Transformation and innovation done well target specific problems in specific localities and improve the lives of people and their communities.
Just as our public services work across boundaries, so will the workforce of the future thanks to technology. Tomorrow’s public services will be organisations that enable employees to work collaboratively and flexibly. London Borough of Barking and Dagenham adopted a cloud-first approach to support smarter working and workforce mobility. As a result, the council has reduced its operating costs by 25 per cent, while also driving a 35 per cent reduction in IT support costs. Not only can cloud help councils meet their efficiency savings but it can also support collaboration and smarter ways of working. During the pandemic the proportion of UK local authority staff working from home increased to 82 per cent during, compared to just five perc ent before, according to new research from public sector IT association Socitm. Over 80 percent are now using office collaboration and video-conferencing tools such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Skype, compared to 30 percent before. What tech enables is choice. Whether we work remotely from home or abroad or the office. The benefit of that choice is helping to improve work life balance and attract new talent and skills into public sector by becoming a more attractive employer. E
Transformational Change What role can and should public sector organisations play in delivering net-zero targets, where are the quick wins and how can those responsible for delivering reductions lead the way?
As large employers, public sector teams can encourage more sustainable behaviours in the workplace
Rebecca George: Every single public sector organisation needs to look at this in every facet of what they do. Department buildings, green IT, new builds across the sector (education, health, criminal justice) – it’s a challenge that needs to be on every agenda. There are a lot of very important competing delivery agendas right now though, so finding ways to focus on the vital few and keep up the focus into the long term is very important.
Joe McGarry: As citizens, it is the responsibility of everyone to contribute individually and collectively to securing a future for our environment and communities, and we all have a part to play in contributing towards our net zero targets. For government departments and public sector organisations, this is one of many complex policy outcome areas to deliver, at a time when we are all emerging from a long period of unprecedented change in the UK, leaving many teams with constrained resources and reduced budgets. From a legislative perspective, foreign policy departments such as FCDO and DIT have a role to play in leading the international agenda to reduce the impact of climate change through green financing, interventions to reduce carbon emissions and by de;ivering responsible business on a global scale. But to lead by example, the UK must rolemodel that behaviour nationally. Organisations such as BEIS andlocal and regional authorities have a role to play in guiding and supporting citizens to make smart choices as consumers to ensure homes and appliances are energy efficient and there are huge opportunities across transport, defence and health departments to drive down carbon emissions.
Some obvious areas for quick wins for the public sector with large building estates will be to review their energy efficiency and decarbonisation plans, potentially consolidating elements of the estate, to reflect hybrid working patterns. Energy efficiency measures may include improving the insulation, HVAC optimisation and lighting upgrades, and using digitisation as an opportunity to decarbonise. In some cases, solar or other on-site renewables/energy storage may be appropriate, alongside sourcing electricity from renewable sources.
Many public sector organisations have fleets of vehicles, and so having a programme to electrify the fleet will be an important mechanism to decarbonise.
Staff engagement is an underestimated low-cost opportunity to decarbonise. Although it will need education and reinforcement, small actions around use of electricity, recycling and water efficiency can all add-up.
Finally, the public sector procures a large amount from its supply chain, so can have an influential role in ensuring that the products and services it buys are as sustainable as possible.
Georgina Maratheftis: Public sector can be at the forefront in delivering net-zero targets. This will be a key focus of techUK’s Building the Smarter State conference this year. We will be exploring how public services can better utilise data and emerging technologies to meet societal challenges of net-zero and upskill the workforce to sustain and deliver digital services that meet the needs of citizens.
Local government are leading the way, about 300 councils have declared a climate emergency. Councils are taking action to reduce their own carbon emissions and working with partners to tackle the impact of climate change on their local area. On 26 April techUK convened local authorities and tech suppliers to better understand how councils are planning to meet net zero, how they are measuring and capturing environmental data, and how they are using both procurement and digital to tackle the climate crisis. Surrey County Council outlined how they are using procurement to tackle the local climate crisis. They have taken several steps to further reduce their environmental footprint by making provision for the ongoing collection of supplier product and/ or service-specific carbon footprint data and engaging further with suppliers at all stages of the procurement process, from premarket engagement to contract management. The council is looking to collaborate with the tech industry to tackle the climate crisis, in areas of particular importance including new, innovative technology – particularly in the energy space for energy efficiency and renewables. While Cambridgeshire County Council have designated procurement tools they are using to measure and reduce carbon emissions.
Learning and sharing best practice in meeting net-zero targets is essentially in providing the knowledge and confidence to sectors to act now. That is why techUK has launched the Climate Action Hub to curate useful resources from government and industry to help organisations reach this important goal. L
FURTHER INFORMATION
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Navigating cybersecurity in the new world
For many organisations, an imminent cyber attack is inevitable. Former senior intelligence & security officer Philip Ingram MBE stresses the importance of public and private sector collaboration in order to realise the Government’s recently published Cyber Security Strategy and looks towards opportunities for knowledge sharing at International Cyber Expo, taking place on 27-28 September at Olympia, London
The increased use of smart devices and the pandemic has forced a shift towards remote working, driving many organisations around the world to kick-start digital transformation programmes. This rapid adoption of new technologies has uncovered multiple opportunities and high-end operational capabilities to enable teams to work smarter and more efficiently. However, as organisations rush to keep their workforces online, it seems security is being left behind. In fact, a survey revealed that over half or more CISOs and CIOs said they haven’t fully mitigated the risks associated with remote work (50 per cent), digitisation (53 per cent) or cloud adoption (54 per cent).
Complex cyber attacks within government and public sector organisations are among the greatest threats to creating better operational efficiencies and processes through digital transformation. Every year, more and more organisations get caught out by cyber criminals, with damages running into billions worldwide. Indeed, the global cost of cybercrime is said to have exceeded $6 trillion in 2021. The attractiveness of public sector data to cyber criminals means they continue to run campaigns to exploit a wealth of personally identifiable information (PII) for identity theft, financial fraud, account takeovers, or create spear phishing emails and social engineering attacks that lead to ransomware. This is in addition to the challenge that most government and public sector organisations are working with a mix of outdated and legacy systems. According to the UK Cyber Security Strategy 2022-2030 report, 40 per cent of all cyber attacks in 2020-2021 affected the public sector.
Threat landscape
Although digital transformation brings with it many benefits, it also dramatically
changes the cybersecurity threat landscape for organisations and the challenges they face. As the use of digital technologies grows so does the threat surface, opening up many more areas for potential cyber attacks and data breaches. The digital and cyber skills gap has long been a concern for the industry, resulting in overworked teams teetering on burnout For many organisations, an imminent cyber attack is inevitable. In April 2022, research from Trend Micro revealed that more than three-quarters of global organisations expect to be successfully hacked in the next 12 months. Also, the recent revelation that a suspected cyber attack leaked personal information of UK government employees which appeared on Russian websites, makes it even more crucial that organisations focus on securing their developing networks and systems. Taking all of the above into consideration, navigating the complexities of modern day cybersecurity has never been harder. The increasing threat environment, expanding attack surface and continuous demands from various stakeholders for transparency are only adding to the challenges. It seems even the most talented cybersecurity professional can feel overwhelmed, made worse by the ongoing cyber skills gap.
