The UK government published a Transformation Strategy, which launches the next stage of government digital transformation, building upon the progress of the 2012 Digital Strategy. It aims to respond to citizens’ expectations for more convenient and responsive services, and increase value for money from government investments, by leveraging on the tidal wave of digital innovation that is transforming the economy.
The UK Government Transformation Strategy 2017-2020 vision is to: “transform the relationship between citizens and the state – putting more power in the hands of citizens and being more responsive to their needs.”
There are three main factors that drove the government to design this transformation strategy:
- The disconnect between citizen expectations and the government ability to offer a customer experience on par with private sector and to quickly align policy decisions and service delivery. The 2016 Brexit vote was a strong alarm bell signalling citizen’s dissatisfaction.
- The widespread and lower cost of digital technologies and approaches to deliver them that make possible to “better understand what citizens need“; “assemble services more quickly and at lower cost“; and “continuously improve services based on data and evidence.“
- The pressure to increase value for money of government expenditure. The 2015 Spending Review settlement established the parameters for continued delivery of transformation across government during the term of the current parliament. There is a wide range of transformation programs that include a significant digital, component.
The Strategy’s building blocks include five work streams:
- Continue to deliver world-class digital services and transform the way government operates, from front-end to back-office, in a modern and efficient way;
- Develop the right skills and culture among our people and leaders, and bring together policy and delivery to enable services to be delivered in a learning and iterative environment, focused on outcomes for citizens;
- Build better workplace tools and processes to make it easier for public servants to work effectively, including sourcing, governance, workplace IT, businesses cases, human resources processes, common technology across the public sector and better digital tools for civil servants;
- Make better use of data – not just for transparency, but to enable transformation across government and the private sector; and
- Create, operate, iterate and embed good use of shared platforms and reusable business capabilities to speed up transformation – including shared patterns, components and establishing open standards.
Key takeaways
- The Government Transformation Strategy aims to move beyond the digitization of front-end services and change the internal workings of departments by enabling more joined-up service delivery.
- The Government Transformation Strategy sanctions the value of data as the strategic asset of inter-government collaboration and transformation of the digital economy.
- The Government Transformation Strategy requires departments to invest in skills, cultural change and new architectural constructs that favor sharing of common components and business capabilities orchestrated through platforms.
Recommended actions for technology suppliers
- Technology suppliers should package solutions and build an ecosystem that supports innovation at the core of the legacy architectures of government departments and agencies.
- Technology suppliers should build a value proposition that stresses their ability to realize the value of information, through big data and analytics, cognitive, process automation, while implementing next generation security capabilities, such as blockchain, that help governments earn the trust of citizens.
- Technology suppliers should be open to innovate their operating, contracting and pricing models, and their partnership models to help governments take a less risk-averse approach to innovation that includes interagency and private sector collaboration to realize the benefits of digital transformation.
If you want to learn more about this topic, or related European Government Insights, please contact Massimiliano Claps.