Digital transformation made easy

Crown Com­mer­cial Ser­vice (CCS) intro­duces its dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion guide, designed to ease local gov­ern­ment process­es and save mon­ey through shar­ing best prac­tice and col­lab­o­ra­tion, improv­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ence

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion has a crit­i­cal role to play in the future of local gov­ern­ment. It offers com­mu­ni­ties more flex­i­ble access to ser­vices around the clock and also sup­ports the Government’s lev­el­ling up agen­da by mak­ing jobs more acces­si­ble, regard­less of loca­tion.

But, against a back­drop of eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty, many local author­i­ties are strug­gling to achieve their mount­ing dig­i­tal change goals. They face many chal­lenges, includ­ing exist­ing incum­bent tech­nol­o­gy, employ­ee skill gaps and squeezed bud­gets. Local author­i­ties need to make many key deci­sions as part of their strate­gic approach to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion to over­come these chal­lenges.

Why digital transformation is critical

Trans­form­ing pub­lic ser­vice deliv­ery through dig­i­tal solu­tions will cre­ate a more cost-effec­tive and effi­cient cit­i­zen expe­ri­ence, and help cater to users’ spe­cif­ic needs when it comes to how they want to engage with ser­vices. 

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion helps gen­er­ate cost and val­ue effi­cien­cies in local author­i­ties, and encour­ages effec­tive cit­i­zen engage­ment that can help to shape rel­e­vant and appro­pri­ate com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices.

For exam­ple, dig­i­tal solu­tions can link process­es with­in and between organ­i­sa­tions. This pro­vides cus­tomers with a smooth and con­sis­tent end-to-end ser­vice expe­ri­ence. It cap­tures ongo­ing and up-to-date insight about how ser­vices are used, help­ing you mon­i­tor per­for­mance and con­tin­u­ous­ly improve ser­vice design. With appro­pri­ate cus­tomer con­sent, it enables coun­cils to share infor­ma­tion ear­ly, online and in real-time to sup­port oper­a­tional and strate­gic goals.

Dig­i­tal solu­tions will also help sup­port a com­mu­ni­ty-focused, place-mak­ing strat­e­gy, which is cru­cial to the way local author­i­ties deliv­er ser­vices.

The challenges of transformation

Squeezed bud­gets at many local author­i­ties mean they must pri­ori­tise spend­ing towards deliv­ery of statu­to­ry ser­vices. This can impact invest­ment in large projects such as dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.

Dig­i­tal change can also be chal­leng­ing to deliv­er due to com­plex and out­dat­ed lega­cy soft­ware and sys­tems inte­gra­tion, chang­ing cit­i­zens’ needs, and fail­ure to agree and man­age the required enter­prise-wide approach. Also, teams often lack the infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy (IT) skills to deliv­er trans­for­ma­tion and may lack aware­ness of inter­op­er­abil­i­ty require­ments, data secu­ri­ty and cyber risks.

Why procure your technology solutions through CCS

CCS helps the UK pub­lic sec­tor save mon­ey when buy­ing com­mon goods and ser­vices. It is the largest pub­lic pro­cure­ment organ­i­sa­tion in the UK, using its com­mer­cial exper­tise to help buy­ers in cen­tral gov­ern­ment, and across the pub­lic and third sec­tors, pur­chase items such as dig­i­tal spe­cial­ists and pro­grammes, soft­ware design and imple­men­ta­tion ser­vices. The organ­i­sa­tion can also help when buy­ing items out­side the dig­i­tal are­na, such as locum doc­tors, nurs­ing staff, police cars and elec­tric­i­ty.

CCS’ pro­cure­ment knowl­edge, and the col­lec­tive pur­chas­ing pow­er of its cus­tomers, enables it to get the best com­mer­cial deals in the inter­ests of tax­pay­ers. The organ­i­sa­tion helps thou­sands of pub­lic and third-sec­tor buy­ers spend bil­lions of pounds effi­cient­ly each year.

The CCS tech­nol­o­gy team has nego­ti­at­ed a wide range of com­mer­cial agree­ments to sup­port pub­lic sec­tor col­leagues through a jour­ney to mod­ern dig­i­tal archi­tec­ture – and help to buy what is need­ed, when need­ed, sav­ing time and mon­ey.

In 2021/22, CCS helped its cus­tomers achieve over £2.8 bil­lion of com­mer­cial ben­e­fits via its com­pre­hen­sive range of agree­ments.

For exam­ple, CCS recent­ly helped Glas­gow City Coun­cil to avoid spend­ing £4.4 mil­lion on an improved city net­work infra­struc­ture. The body also helped the coun­cil gen­er­ate social val­ue ben­e­fits for res­i­dents when upgrad­ing its dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture through CCS’s Net­work Ser­vices 2 agree­ment.

Supporting artificial Intelligence, automation and cloud journeys

CCS experts can accel­er­ate and help coun­cils to devel­op their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy from cur­rent infra­struc­ture to a mod­ern, cost-effec­tive archi­tec­ture that sup­ports organ­i­sa­tion­al goals, secu­ri­ty require­ments, appli­ca­tions, and cit­i­zen ser­vices. Their com­mer­cial and cat­e­go­ry exper­tise helps author­i­ties nav­i­gate the chal­leng­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion land­scape with a com­pre­hen­sive suite of solu­tions, includ­ing inno­va­tions in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), automa­tion, cloud solu­tions, and geospa­tial ser­vices.

The com­mer­cial cloud, host­ing agree­ments and CCS cat­e­go­ry experts can help local gov­ern­ment organ­i­sa­tions to tran­si­tion from on-premise lega­cy sys­tems to a ful­ly man­aged cloud, or can review your exist­ing cloud and host­ing ser­vices. Small steps can lead to huge ben­e­fits and oppor­tu­ni­ties to sim­pli­fy IT archi­tec­ture, enabling supe­ri­or secure and resilient solu­tions. These steps can ease tran­si­tion to the cloud and reduce oper­a­tional risk by increas­ing dig­i­tal skills, secu­ri­ty, busi­ness resilience, scal­a­bil­i­ty, and flex­i­bil­i­ty. 

The local government digital transformation guide

The CCS dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion guide for local gov­ern­ment is built around the Cen­tral Dig­i­tal and Data Office’s tech­nol­o­gy code of prac­tice, which helps the pub­lic sec­tor design, build and buy tech­nol­o­gy. 

The guide helps you nav­i­gate the com­pre­hen­sive range of tech­nol­o­gy-cen­tred com­mer­cial solu­tions to out­line and deliv­er your trans­for­ma­tion plans. It helps your coun­cil build a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy that meets cus­tomers’ needs. This strat­e­gy will help us lev­el up across the UK and reach our crit­i­cal net zero tar­gets. The guide is endorsed by the Local Dig­i­tal Col­lab­o­ra­tion Unit, which is part of the Depart­ment for Lev­el­ling Up, Hous­ing and Com­mu­ni­ties.

Here are five steps from the new guide to help you build a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy that meets your com­mu­ni­ties’ needs:    

Define cus­tomer needs: the first step for local author­i­ties is to clear­ly under­stand their cit­i­zens’ behav­iour. Res­i­dents and ser­vice users have dif­fer­ing require­ments – some may con­tact their coun­cil in a cri­sis; oth­ers may just want help with reg­u­lar ser­vices. New tech­nol­o­gy must meet all these needs and reflect how peo­ple want to access ser­vices.

Smart col­lab­o­ra­tion: work­ing with oth­er local author­i­ties can be extreme­ly cost-effec­tive. It can pre­vent dupli­ca­tion of effort, allow­ing the re-use of tech­nol­o­gy, data and ser­vices; best prac­tice shar­ing; and solv­ing com­mon chal­lenges. 

Mon­ey can also be saved by aggre­gat­ing dig­i­tal pro­cure­ment. For exam­ple, Lin­coln Coun­cil and the Lon­don Bor­ough of South­wark worked togeth­er to trans­form man­age­ment of hous­ing repairs, using our dig­i­tal mar­ket­place for their pro­cure­ment. This allowed them to save resources and avoid dupli­ca­tion of effort. Open Source soft­ware enables such col­lab­o­ra­tions and pro­vides trans­paren­cy, flex­i­bil­i­ty and account­abil­i­ty. 

Fit for the present and the future: any cit­i­zen-fac­ing tech­nol­o­gy must work well now and in the future. It’s crit­i­cal to choose soft­ware that com­ple­ments exist­ing back-office process­es and sys­tems, but has the scope to adapt. No sys­tem user – inter­nal or exter­nal – should ever be adverse­ly affect­ed by dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. 

It is pos­si­ble to future-proof tech­nol­o­gy using open stan­dards, which enables com­mu­ni­ca­tion with oth­er tech­nol­o­gy and sys­tems – shar­ing data, where appro­pri­ate – and can be upgrad­ed or expand­ed as need­ed.  

Pro­tect­ing cus­tomer data: local author­i­ties are respon­si­ble for the secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy of any per­son­al infor­ma­tion they hold. Some data will belong to vul­ner­a­ble indi­vid­u­als, such as looked-after chil­dren. The Gen­er­al Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tions (GDPR) require all data to be pro­tect­ed. Any breach could result in a sig­nif­i­cant fine and or put res­i­dents and ser­vice users at risk. Soft­ware is avail­able to meet this chal­lenge. 

A clear pur­chas­ing strat­e­gy: to max­imise ben­e­fits and min­imise risks, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion must include a clear pur­chas­ing strat­e­gy. This will make clear what com­po­nents, resources and deliv­ery mech­a­nisms are need­ed. CCS’ free, easy-to-use guide to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion for local author­i­ties details how to use such a strat­e­gy.

Down­load the CCS guide to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion for local author­i­ties to find out more.

Crown Commercial Service (CCS) introduces its digital transformation guide, designed to ease local government processes and save money through sharing best practice and collaboration, improving customer experience

Digital transformation has a critical role to play in the future of local government. It offers communities more flexible access to services around the clock and also supports the Government’s levelling up agenda by making jobs more accessible, regardless of location.

But, against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, many local authorities are struggling to achieve their mounting digital change goals. They face many challenges, including existing incumbent technology, employee skill gaps and squeezed budgets. Local authorities need to make many key decisions as part of their strategic approach to digital transformation to overcome these challenges.