Put citizens at the heart of public sector tech projects

The way the UK gov­ern­ment deliv­ers ser­vices is going through the same kind of trans­for­ma­tion we’re see­ing in our per­son­al lives with a shift towards online. Busi­ness­es that get our trust, trade and time are the ones which are most cus­tomer cen­tric. Yet offi­cials deliv­er­ing pub­lic sec­tor tech­nol­o­gy are only just wak­ing up to this idea with a new focus on cit­i­zen-cen­tric ser­vices.  

White­hall has ambi­tions in this area and top offi­cials are on the hunt for a chief dig­i­tal offi­cer. The job is to “bet­ter lever­age data and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies to design and deliv­er cit­i­zen-cen­tric ser­vices.” This new­ly cre­at­ed role, near the top of the Cab­i­net Office hier­ar­chy, shows how impor­tant these issues are. How­ev­er, it’s not with­out chal­lenges. 

Making public sector technology work for the end-user

Many sys­tems oper­ate in silos, since they’ve been built up and upgrad­ed grad­u­al­ly over many years, oth­ers are out­dat­ed, run­ning on incom­pat­i­ble archi­tec­tures and oper­at­ing sys­tems that are dif­fi­cult to inte­grate. At the same time, the needs of the cit­i­zen have fall­en between the cracks, as pub­lic sec­tor lead­ers have scram­bled to man­age tech­ni­cal com­plex­i­ty and resources.

How the pub­lic sec­tor pro­cures tech­nol­o­gy may be the issue and a major chal­lenge impact­ing many projects, includ­ing the roll­out of appli­ca­tions that are eas­i­er to use by the gen­er­al pub­lic.

“Ulti­mate­ly, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the pub­lic sec­tor must start by regain­ing con­trol over the sup­ply chain. For the last few decades, the pub­lic sec­tor has been encour­aged to out­source its IT ser­vices to third par­ties,” explains Romy Hugh­es, direc­tor at Bright­man Busi­ness Solu­tions.

“Many depart­ments have become behold­en to out­sourcers for the deliv­ery of many of their long-term goals, includ­ing cit­i­zen-cen­tric ser­vices. Since you can­not trans­form what you don’t con­trol, the pub­lic sec­tor needs to take back con­trol of its sup­ply chains before it can deliv­er many of its goals.”

Despite there being 17,000 dig­i­tal, data and tech­nol­o­gy spe­cial­ists across gov­ern­ment, £2 bil­lion is spent each year on IT out­sourc­ing, accord­ing to the Arva­to Out­sourc­ing Index, the val­ue of which has climbed over time. Yet many pub­lic sec­tor tech­nol­o­gy ser­vices aren’t meet­ing the needs of the very peo­ple they’re sup­posed to serve.

“Accord­ing to our research, more than two thirds of cit­i­zens we polled com­plain they receive dis­con­nect­ed expe­ri­ences from pub­lic sec­tor organ­i­sa­tions. This is a major cause of frus­tra­tion,” says Ian Fair­clough, vice pres­i­dent for cus­tomer suc­cess, Europe, Mid­dle East and Africa at Mule­Soft.

A 360-degree view of the citizen needed

That’s not to say there aren’t plat­forms out there deliv­er­ing first-class ser­vices. The sim­plic­i­ty of HM Rev­enue & Custom’s web­site to deal with mil­lions of fur­lough pay­ments dur­ing the height of the coro­n­avirus-induced lock­down ear­li­er this year showed how it can be done effec­tive­ly and with­out a sig­nif­i­cant melt­down.

“HMRC is a great exam­ple of cit­i­zen-cen­tric ser­vices, which con­tin­ues to evolve and improve. Many local author­i­ties have also led the way, as was demon­strat­ed by the speed at which many were able to deliv­er online por­tals to admin­is­ter grants and sup­port at the start of the first lock­down. They were able to deliv­er ser­vices quick­ly because they already had a wealth of expe­ri­ence doing it for oth­er local ser­vices,” says Hugh­es.

Also, local gov­ern­ment under­stands local needs and that’s a key ele­ment. Cit­i­zen-cen­tric dig­i­tal ser­vices start with pub­lic sec­tor lead­ers putting them­selves in the shoes of the pub­lic. Tak­ing a les­son from suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal-native con­sumer brands would not go amiss. Most of their busi­ness mod­els start with the cus­tomer and their data, then build out­wards. 

“It begins with out­comes. Pub­lic sec­tor organ­i­sa­tions shouldn’t be build­ing tech­nolo­gies that they think are the right ser­vices. It’s about engag­ing with the end-user and design­ing ser­vices with their needs firm­ly in mind. My 92-year-old grand­moth­er can work a smart­phone and What­sApp the fam­i­ly because it’s designed for sim­plic­i­ty; if tech­nol­o­gy is done well, it can be more inclu­sive, not less,” says Richard Walk­er, part­ner for data and insights at Agilisys.

A good exam­ple is the Dri­ver and Vehi­cle Stan­dards Agency’s use of GOV.UK Noti­fy to remind peo­ple when they need an MOT vehi­cle test. The ser­vice is easy to use, pared down and uncom­pli­cat­ed.

My 92-year-old grand­moth­er can What­sApp the fam­i­ly because it’s designed for sim­plic­i­ty; if tech­nol­o­gy is done well it can be more inclu­sive, not less

“It’s easy for prac­ti­tion­ers to assume cit­i­zens have a lev­el of knowl­edge about a ser­vice that is sim­ply not rea­son­able, which leads to work­flows that don’t match cit­i­zens’ expec­ta­tions and instruc­tions that don’t make sense,” says Char­lie Bru­in, chief exec­u­tive of Lib­er­a­ta.

“After all, an app may work for a pub­lic sec­tor leader, but they’re not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of their tar­get base. Com­pared to most users of an appli­ca­tion, they’re prob­a­bly more expe­ri­enced. Sim­plic­i­ty and tru­ly under­stand­ing the user’s needs are cru­cial.”

Joining up public data is crucial first step

Data, and joined up data at that, is also key to deliv­er­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of cit­i­zen-cen­tric ser­vices. The siloed approach with­in the pub­lic sec­tor has not helped, nor has the myr­i­ad of ser­vices deployed using count­less data­bas­es. As in the pri­vate sec­tor, a sin­gle, 360-degree view of the cus­tomer is essen­tial. Reduc­ing dupli­cat­ed infor­ma­tion sources could save the gov­ern­ment mil­lions.

“We need to be more strate­gic about join­ing up mul­ti­ple sources of data. I don’t think the Euro­pean Union’s Gen­er­al Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion helped. The tone around fines and penal­ties for data mis­use obscured the abil­i­ty to think of it as an enabler and the mech­a­nism through which you can share infor­ma­tion safe­ly and law­ful­ly,” says Walk­er.

“Take domes­tic vio­lence, there’ll be things that hos­pi­tals know, things the police know and local author­i­ties know, not to men­tion the third sec­tor. What hap­pens at the moment is we don’t share that infor­ma­tion any­where close to the extent we should to be able to take the pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures that must be at the heart of more effec­tive pub­lic ser­vice deliv­ery.”

Hope is at hand for citizen-centricity

One poten­tial answer is to dri­ve inno­va­tion from the citizen’s per­spec­tive by set­ting up chal­lenges that need to be over­come and how dig­i­tal ser­vices can solve these issues. Barcelona’s i.lab is a good exam­ple of this, which begins by defin­ing the prob­lem then works col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with stake­hold­ers, includ­ing the pub­lic.

“The chal­lenge is out­lined to rel­e­vant play­ers and the pub­lic. i.lab over­sees the roll­out of pilot inno­va­tion projects with dif­fer­ent areas at the city coun­cil and munic­i­pal lev­el, and if they are suc­cess­ful they then scale them up,” explains Georgina Maratheftis, head of pro­gramme for local pub­lic ser­vices at techUK.

There are also exam­ples in the UK. They include the Gov­Tech Cat­a­lyst chal­lenge, which is a £20-mil­lion fund to help solve pub­lic sec­tor prob­lems, as well as TechForce19, aimed at deploy­ing tech­nol­o­gy to help vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple iso­lat­ed because of COVID-19. 

Sav­iour of the pub­lic sec­tor and its dri­ve towards cit­i­zen cen­tric­i­ty is the avail­abil­i­ty of cheap off-the-shelf tech solu­tions that are being deployed at speed by even the small­est oper­a­tors.

“Ear­ly solu­tions were once cost­ly, bespoke and only designed to solve one prob­lem. How­ev­er, the world has changed,” says Anna Assas­sa, chief exec­u­tive of Tis­s­ki.

“Tech­nol­o­gy is now avail­able to build open sys­tems, acces­si­ble to mul­ti­ple organ­i­sa­tions, which brings all the rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion togeth­er. Not only does this reduce the bur­den on an organ­i­sa­tion itself, free­ing up valu­able resources and reduc­ing com­plex process­es, it also pro­vides a much bet­ter expe­ri­ence for the pub­lic.”

Cer­tain­ly, the future is now brighter.

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