How can digital transformation drive the government’s levelling-up agenda?

In its mis­sion to spread oppor­tu­ni­ty and pros­per­i­ty to all parts of the UK, the government’s Lev­el­ling Up White Paper includes much talk of how tech­nol­o­gy and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion can dri­ve this.

For exam­ple, by 2030 it wants most of the coun­try to have access to nation­wide giga­bit-capa­ble broad­band and 5G mobile net­works, sug­gest­ing cities, towns and com­mu­ni­ties must be dig­i­tal­ly con­nect­ed to thrive. 

The report also speaks of the impor­tance of new dig­i­tal skills and infra­struc­ture to pow­er jobs and indus­try in the future, with prime min­is­ter Boris John­son describ­ing it as the most com­pre­hen­sive, ambi­tious plan of its kind. Sec­re­tary of State for Lev­el­ling Up, Hous­ing and Com­mu­ni­ties Michael Gove said suc­cess would mean “where you live will no longer deter­mine how far you can go”.

How­ev­er, experts sug­gest much joined-up gov­ern­men­tal dig­i­tal think­ing will be need­ed if lev­el­ling up is to suc­ceed, accom­pa­nied by huge finan­cial invest­ment from cen­tral funds, swathes of new leg­is­la­tion and pos­i­tive efforts to make the coun­try more attrac­tive to the bright­est dig­i­tal com­pa­nies to move here and part­ner with gov­ern­ment on its aims.

Dr Tanya Fil­er, CEO and founder of pub­lic-pur­pose tech-intel­li­gence com­pa­ny Sta­te­Up – and leader of the Dig­i­tal State Project at the Ben­nett Insti­tute for Pub­lic Pol­i­cy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge – believes reduc­ing the huge gap between pub­lic-sec­tor organ­i­sa­tions and tech­nol­o­gy start-ups is crit­i­cal.

“Glob­al­ly, thou­sands of pub­lic-pur­pose tech­nol­o­gy start-ups are devel­op­ing high-qual­i­ty, con­tex­tu­al­ly sen­si­tive prod­ucts and ser­vices to help address press­ing chal­lenges that towns and cities face. This sug­gests that often the prob­lem is not sup­ply,” she says. 

“We’re liv­ing in an age of net­works, but often inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies and local deci­sion-mak­ers are siloed from one anoth­er, and from the researchers and investors need­ed to shape the pub­lic-pur­pose tech ecosys­tem around lev­el­ling up.”

Fil­er argues that inno­v­a­tive pub­lic pro­cure­ment is also key to greater lev­els of dig­i­tal inno­va­tion with­in pub­lic sec­tor organ­i­sa­tions, say­ing research shows it can be “a pow­er­ful vehi­cle for sup­port­ing wide-rang­ing pol­i­cy objec­tives relat­ing to lev­el­ling up”.

One good exam­ple of a pub­lic/-pri­vate part­ner­ship designed to lev­el up is in Sun­der­land, where BAI Com­mu­ni­ca­tions works with the authority’s Our Smart City plan to ensure the region ben­e­fits from 5G and wire­less infra­struc­ture. The project is sup­port­ed by the Depart­ment for Lev­el­ling Up’s Get­ting Build­ing Fund and has encour­aged tri­als of self-dri­ving vehi­cles in the auto­mo­tive sup­ply chain, remote learn­ing across schools, and social care improve­ments using assis­tive tech­nolo­gies so that vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple can live inde­pen­dent­ly.

How­ev­er, the UK could be falling behind oth­er nations in the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion stakes. Research in Sep­tem­ber 2021 from the Euro­pean Cen­ter for Dig­i­tal Com­pet­i­tive­ness, by ESCP Europe Busi­ness School, ranked the UK 15^th in a list of dig­i­tal ris­ers, analysing how the dig­i­tal com­pet­i­tive­ness of 140 coun­tries had devel­oped over the past three years. 

And in March 2022, when it was announced how the UK’s tech sec­tor had sur­passed a total $1tn val­u­a­tion, dig­i­tal min­is­ter Chris Philp sug­gest­ed UK insti­tu­tion­al investors were miss­ing out to non-UK investors and called on them to back more home­grown tech firms.

Matthew Scul­lion, CEO of Man­ches­ter-based Matil­lion – a data trans­for­ma­tion tech uni­corn – believes the UK must pro­duce far more high-growth, con­se­quen­tial tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies out­side Lon­don and the South East. 

Scul­lion, who sits on the Busi­ness Coun­cil, says: “The steps the gov­ern­ment can take are quite sim­ple. We need to open eyes to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of build­ing these busi­ness­es any­where,” he explains. “Run­ning cours­es on high growth across the UK, espe­cial­ly at com­put­er sci­ence uni­ver­si­ties and busi­ness schools out­side Lon­don, will help spawn a new gen­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal entre­pre­neurs whose ven­tures can pow­er the UK’s tran­si­tion to a dig­i­tal econ­o­my, and make sure it deliv­ers for all.”

Scul­lion argues entre­pre­neurs out­side the South East bub­ble have not been giv­en enough encour­age­ment to “wake up one morn­ing and think, ‘I’m going to change the world and build a multi­bil­lion-pound busi­ness as a by-prod­uct’”. 

“We can fix that,” he adds. “We need to show them the play­book of how to do it and help them run it. Some­times it will work, and some­times it won’t. When it does, it’ll encour­age more equi­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of cap­i­tal across dif­fer­ent regions of the coun­try, which will pro­mote region­al tech­nol­o­gy tal­ent and skills too.” 

One way for­ward for the gov­ern­ment to achieve its lev­el­ling-up mis­sion, accord­ing to two experts, is by har­ness­ing open source and low-code. The for­mer is soft­ware that can be shared and edit­ed by any­one for any pur­pose, while the lat­ter offers an eas­i­er visu­al approach to soft­ware devel­op­ment.

Alex Case, pub­lic-sec­tor indus­try prin­ci­pal at Pegasys­tems, pre­vi­ous­ly worked at No 10 and has led large-scale pub­lic-sec­tor reform ini­tia­tives in the UK and Cana­da. He sug­gests the gov­ern­ment should increase the uptake of low-code plat­forms to spread IT jobs more equal­ly across the UK. 

“This enables many peo­ple cur­rent­ly in oper­a­tional, non-IT civ­il ser­vice jobs to upskill and become a key part of tech­nol­o­gy trans­for­ma­tion projects,” he explains, adding it could also trans­form the rela­tion­ship gov­ern­ment has with its cit­i­zens, giv­ing them the chance to take part in ser­vice devel­op­ment and improve­ment. 

This chimes with a sur­vey from real-time data ana­lyt­ics com­pa­ny KX, which found near­ly half of UK stu­dents believed cod­ing skills were either equal­ly or more valu­able than for­eign-lan­guage skills. 

But there is no short-term fix if research from EdTech Emer­i­tus is right. It found lev­el­ling-up dig­i­tal skills across Eng­land could take decades, with Lon­don at least 15 years ahead of the rest of the coun­try, and the North East 30 years behind the cap­i­tal. 

Aman­da Brock, CEO at non-prof­it OpenUK, is cur­rent­ly work­ing with the Depart­ment for Dig­i­tal, Cul­ture, Media and Sport. She says the gov­ern­ment must step up its under­stand­ing of open tech­nol­o­gy and col­lab­o­ra­tion to under­pin dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and “make the econ­o­my tick”. 

She high­lights the strength of open source for the pub­lic good, as a suc­cess­ful piece of devel­op­ment can be adapt­ed and re-used, sav­ing time and mon­ey.

“Get this right, and we not only pro­vide the build­ing blocks for our nation­al dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture but we will be world-lead­ing, and these assets can be used by oth­er gov­ern­ments for their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives,” she adds. 

“This would sup­port more com­pa­nies in devel­op­ing their prod­ucts and ser­vices around UK out­puts and allow our UK-based tal­ent to ser­vice the world.”