Technology
How the public sector can deliver ROI through technology David Morton highlights three approaches public sector organisations can use in the back-office to maximise the return on technology investment With local authorities and government departments continuing to face budget pressures, it is crucial that investment in technology delivers significant value by cutting costs and enhancing the quality of services. We’ve seen how digital self-service platforms are transforming citizen-facing services in the front-office, creating value by enabling employees to focus more of their time on helping people with more complex enquiries. But there still remains a real opportunity across the back-office where investment in technologies, such as robotic process automation (RPA), cloud computing and shared services, can deliver substantial savings and free-up resource. Here are three approaches councils and government departments can adopt to reap these benefits:
workforce able to mimic human processing 1. Creating agility through RPA of high-volume, time-consuming tasks. The burden of repetitive administrative Some local authorities are already reaping tasks is significant – our own research the benefits of this technology. Neath revealed that 57 per cent of government Port Talbot Council has transformed its organisations see more than a tenth of HR operations using an RPA solution that staff spending the majority of their time on combines public sector process expertise with these activities. Streamlining key functions automation technology. The platform now such as HR, payroll and procurement can automatically manages key functions such as help to address this challenge, empowering Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) requests teams to focus resource on elements of their and returns and employee information role that rely on a human touch. changes. Since its introduction in Intelligent technology, such August 2018, the technology as RPA, provides a new has handled more than route to achieving this. The 12,000 transactions, Following rules-based p rinciple saving a total of 1,000 business processes, it of shared hours of employee time. interacts with systems s e r vices is not a n Introducing RPA in the same way also provides an that people do. This techno ew one, but a logy ad s opportunity E creates an agile, virtual
va we are beginn nces, in to see a peak ing deman d
Issue 27.2 | GOVERNMENT BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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