Transforming Government
The GDS Standard is 11 years old. A lot has happened since 2013 both in terms of technological advancements and in terms of our expectations of digital services. Technology has empowered us to get what we want, when we want it, and how we want it. ’People want public services they can access and complain to when things go wrong — they are less interested in how services are organised.’ Deloitte State of the State 2024
Report after report (admittedly most published by consultancies keen to sell their service to the Public Sector) state that most public sector projects fail to meet their potential. McKinsey for example, describes how in one of their surveys of public-sector leaders found that ‘nearly 80 percent of major change efforts fall short of meeting their objectives’. At the same time, the National Audit Office (NAO) concedes that ‘although there have been some technological improvements, [Government’s] previous attempts at large-scale digital change have had little success and is now trying to address the underlying problems.’
Commentators like Alan Brown have also come to the conclusion that ‘Despite best efforts, over the past 10 years digital technology adoption and upgrade in the public sector has too often been slower than expected, cost more than planned, and delivered substantially less capability than promised to its users.’
Not a great read.
So what next?
There seems to be an agreement that there has been too much focus on ‘front stage’ simple digital services and the next wave of transformation will need to impact the public sector end-to-end: from policy development and back office processes, to data transformation and service delivery. Digital product plasters will no longer suffice.
According to the NAO, the government’s own analysis in 2022 found ‘simple online citizen transactions have been prioritised for transformation and more complicated services have been left behind’. There is now widespread recognition that ‘Government cannot achieve real transformation without reshaping the business of government and understanding the challenges presented by legacy systems and data’. This extends to a developing focus in ‘making the back office more efficient’ State of the State 2024.
But simply shifting focus to different, albeit, more complex challenges will not enable government to meet citizens’ high expectations, ‘the technology focused efforts being promoted in government miss the point that digital transformation will only be successful if technology adoption is matched with the organisational changes that drive policy delivery for a digital age’ Alan Brown.
Increasingly we see a need for a shift to the left, to a more user centred, digital approach to policy design. Mckinsey in a 2022 report describes how a coded version of the law can help identify whether legislation is digital ready and how. They share Denmark’s example where ‘the Agency for Digital Government reviews proposed legislation against seven principles and submits its findings to the Danish parliament before a bill is considered.’ That way the bill embeds principles like ‘Simple and clear rules’, our ‘Consistency across authorities’.
So, the departments that will recognise the need for wider organisational transformation and look at their services in all their messy glory, from policy design all the way to delivery, will be the ones that will achieve wider transformation beyond headline grabbing digital services.
