The positive legacy of a crisis

Pro­tect­ing the pub­lic from Covid-19 is a neces­si­ty for the UK gov­ern­ment, and as his­to­ry shows, neces­si­ty is the moth­er of inven­tion. Keep­ing peo­ple safe has required fresh think­ing, greater col­lab­o­ra­tion and increased fund­ing for gov­ern­ment agen­cies tasked with tack­ling the pan­dem­ic. In short, the Covid cri­sis has proved that the pub­lic sec­tor can inno­vate and deliv­er just as quick­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly as the pri­vate sec­tor. But can it still do so once the urgency of the pan­dem­ic peri­od fades away?

It’s a big ques­tion that can only be ful­ly answered in time. How­ev­er, there are clear lessons from the pan­dem­ic that could help to dri­ve fur­ther change in the pub­lic sec­tor. For instance, the need to act quick­ly helped to over­ride the risk aver­sion that some­times con­strains pub­lic sec­tor inno­va­tion. Exist­ing resources were rapid­ly ramped up and deci­sions were made faster. This meant projects were deliv­ered in time­frames that would have seemed impos­si­ble pre-pan­dem­ic.

One exam­ple is Spot­light, a Cab­i­net Office due dili­gence tool built on the Sales­force plat­form that checks grant appli­ca­tions and accel­er­ates approval process­es. It helped to unlock mas­sive effi­cien­cy gains at a time when grants were key to the sur­vival of count­less com­pa­nies and char­i­ties across the UK. “We’d [already] put the base tech­nol­o­gy in place, but very quick­ly it had to go from being a good idea with proven high-lev­el con­cepts to dis­trib­ut­ing bil­lions of pounds worth of grants,” says Simon Collinson, head of UK pub­lic sec­tor at Sales­force.

We were able to move from ear­ly dis­cus­sions at the begin­ning of Decem­ber to a pro­pos­al in the mid­dle of Decem­ber to hav­ing the Irish gov­ern­ment up and run­ning on vac­ci­na­tion man­age­ment by 9 Jan­u­ary

The rapid roll­out of Ireland’s vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme is anoth­er exam­ple of how quick­ly things were achieved dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Hav­ing realised their exist­ing IT sys­tem was unlike­ly to cope with the scale and speed of the pro­gramme, the gov­ern­ment decid­ed to work with Sales­force on a solu­tion. It need­ed to be cre­at­ed from scratch in record time, inte­grat­ed with the Health Ser­vice Executive’s sys­tems, and rolled out to hos­pi­tals and care homes with­in weeks.

“We were able to move from ear­ly dis­cus­sions at the begin­ning of Decem­ber to a pro­pos­al in the mid­dle of Decem­ber to hav­ing the Irish gov­ern­ment up and run­ning on vac­ci­na­tion man­age­ment by 9 Jan­u­ary,” says Collinson. He adds that this was only pos­si­ble because the gov­ern­ment was will­ing to rapid­ly shift from pre-baked ideas about its IT sys­tems to a stance of “‘I just need some­thing that works.’”

Lega­cy issues

While dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic sec­tor undoubt­ed­ly accel­er­at­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, “a lot of this was around enabling exist­ing tools and ways of work­ing to become remote, so set­ting up VPNs, dis­trib­uted call cen­tres, etc.,” says Paul Pick-Alu­as, who leads dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion for EMEA pub­lic sec­tor at Sales­force. His con­cern now is whether many of the changes will stick, as: “Once peo­ple get through a cri­sis, they tend to large­ly revert to the old way [of doing things].

“In cer­tain agen­cies, they’ve seen a new way of work­ing and will con­tin­ue to push for­ward. But to me, the jury is still out on whether this is a mile­stone moment in the UK pub­lic sec­tor – part­ly because of the crit­i­cal mass of lega­cy IT that is still out there.”

This mass of lega­cy IT is a seri­ous prob­lem for a gov­ern­ment that was once con­sid­ered among the most tech­no­log­i­cal­ly inno­v­a­tive in the world. Ini­tia­tives such as G‑Cloud, the Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­place, and the Gov­ern­ment Dig­i­tal Service’s ser­vice design stan­dards and prin­ci­ples were ahead of the curve. But the UN e‑government rank­ing for the UK fell from 1st in 2016 to 7th in 2020, which shows that some of the momen­tum around dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion has been lost.

In par­tic­u­lar, the gov­ern­ment has strug­gled to deliv­er cit­i­zen-cen­tric dig­i­tal inno­va­tion that is effi­cient, trust­ed and focused on users’ needs and pref­er­ences. For exam­ple, instead of deliv­er­ing per­son­alised, rel­e­vant mes­sages across mul­ti­ple dig­i­tal chan­nels or pro­vid­ing rich cit­i­zen-fac­ing apps, many gov­ern­ment agen­cies remain stuck in the era of post, print outs and PDF forms. Data-dri­ven col­lab­o­ra­tion across depart­ments for a 360-degree view of cit­i­zens is also a work in progress, along with the shift from one-off cus­tomer trans­ac­tions to rela­tion­ship man­age­ment.

To tru­ly improve ser­vice deliv­ery, bet­ter expe­ri­ences dur­ing the intake of a request and a clean, easy-to-use site must also be matched by the right busi­ness process­es, tech­nol­o­gy and archi­tec­ture in the mid­dle lay­er. Pick-Alu­as says this is a “crit­i­cal gap” in the UK’s over­all strat­e­gy, and one of the rea­sons for the country’s drop in the UN rank­ings.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, a lack of rel­e­vant data and con­cerns around data pri­va­cy and secu­ri­ty have also been a bar­ri­er to imple­ment­ing tru­ly user-cen­tric ser­vices. How­ev­er, “exam­ples such as the NHS Test and Trace app show that peo­ple are pre­pared to let the gov­ern­ment track their actions…in return for some­thing that is going to be of ben­e­fit to them,” says Collinson.

In fact, he believes that “a rubi­con has been crossed” when it comes to the government’s approach to cit­i­zen data and engage­ment. “I think that’s one of the effects of Covid-19 which will, to coin the gov­ern­ment phrase, allow peo­ple to ‘build back bet­ter’.”

Fur­ther fund­ing

Fund­ing for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is a peren­ni­al issue for gov­ern­ment depart­ments and pub­lic sec­tor agen­cies. Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, this ‘mon­ey prob­lem’ was swept away as the gov­ern­ment strove to meet the urgent need for covid-relat­ed ser­vices and sup­port. But as the coun­try moves beyond the peak of the cri­sis and the gov­ern­ment seeks to address huge lev­els of bor­row­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, could these increas­es in fund­ing go into reverse?

“What we’re wit­ness­ing now is actu­al­ly that fund­ing is con­tin­u­ing,” says Collinson. “The gov­ern­ment hasn’t just revert­ed to aus­ter­i­ty, and that pro­vides a gen­uine oppor­tu­ni­ty to build a dif­fer­ent set of out­comes going for­ward.”

But although there hasn’t been a slow down of spend­ing yet, Pick-Alu­as feels that there will inevitably be a shift toward greater aus­ter­i­ty. “Some­how, some­time, the mon­ey needs to be paid back, and it will come in the form of bud­get cuts,” he says.

This will undoubt­ed­ly impact IT, with the fund­ing “hair­cut” like­ly com­ing from the mod­erni­sa­tion bud­get. To con­tin­ue trans­form­ing and inno­vat­ing, organisation’s will need to adopt cycli­cal process­es that allow them to invest in mod­erni­sa­tion, cap­i­talise on the result­ing sav­ings in oper­a­tional expen­di­ture, and there­by free up fur­ther funds for addi­tion­al invest­ment.

There’s a real need to audit val­ue too – as demon­strat­ed by ten­sions around spend­ing on sys­tems inte­gra­tors (SIs) and con­sul­tants dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Con­sul­tants and tem­po­rary staff can be an impor­tant source of skills for depart­ments that need to rapid­ly trans­form. But spe­cial­ist staff are also expen­sive, typ­i­cal­ly cost­ing twice as much as their near­est per­ma­nent staff coun­ter­part.

One of the real lega­cies of the pan­dem­ic is that gov­ern­ment depart­ments have need­ed to adopt low-code plat­forms, and so what you’re left with is this scat­ter­ing across gov­ern­ment of lots of new tech­nolo­gies, and the abil­i­ty to deliv­er and devel­op more quick­ly on those plat­forms

Much of the spend­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic cen­tred on plug­ging the dig­i­tal skills gap that has long plagued the pub­lic sec­tor. “We see a gen­uine skills short­age with­in the UK at the moment, and that presents lots of oppor­tu­ni­ties in terms of what you do to resolve that,” says Collinson. For instance, he believes there’s a real need to pull more non-tech­ni­cal peo­ple into dig­i­tal pro­grammes.

“Low-code plat­forms are great for doing that,” he explains. Salesforce’s low-code devel­op­ment tools, for exam­ple, can reduce the need for expen­sive hard-to-find skills. This ulti­mate­ly “puts more con­trol in the hands of ser­vice teams, which allows tech­ni­cal teams to focus on inno­va­tion,” says Collinson.

Pick-Alu­as adds that: “One of the real lega­cies of the pan­dem­ic is that gov­ern­ment depart­ments have need­ed to adopt low-code plat­forms, and so what you’re left with is this scat­ter­ing across gov­ern­ment of lots of new tech­nolo­gies, and the abil­i­ty to deliv­er and devel­op more quick­ly on those plat­forms.”

Look­ing ahead, greater tech­ni­cal knowl­edge at the chief exec­u­tive lev­el is need­ed to keep dri­ving the shift toward cit­i­zen-cen­tric dig­i­tal ser­vices, as well as more col­lab­o­ra­tion with part­ner ecosys­tems. Retain­ing the ‘can-do’ mind­set cre­at­ed by the pan­dem­ic will also be a chal­lenge as the cri­sis recedes into mem­o­ry. But as the roll­out of Spot­light and Ireland’s vac­cine man­age­ment pro­gramme show, with the right fund­ing, skills and part­ners, the pub­lic sec­tor can deliv­er dig­i­tal ser­vices and engage­ments just as rapid­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly as the pri­vate sec­tor.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it salesforce.com/uk/publicsector

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Transforming lives with cloud employability services

The Depart­ment for Work and Pen­sions (DWP) – the largest pub­lic ser­vice depart­ment in the UK – has deployed a range of inter­ven­tions to com­bat unem­ploy­ment dur­ing the covid cri­sis, includ­ing the JETS Pro­gramme in Scot­land.

Job Entry: Tar­get­ed Sup­port, or JETS, pro­vides sup­port to unem­ployed peo­ple across Scot­land that have received ben­e­fits for at least 13 weeks. The pro­gramme analy­ses trans­fer­able skills and sup­ports CV writ­ing, job search­es, inter­view skills and con­fi­dence-build­ing. Capi­ta, the DWP’s ser­vice provider, select­ed Sales­force and Ven­er­ate to cre­ate the plat­form, which was designed, built and mobilised in just 10 weeks.

Capi­ta knew the plat­form would need to pro­vide sup­port with­in an increas­ing­ly dynam­ic job search envi­ron­ment and chang­ing employ­ment sec­tor. It also had to be user-friend­ly enough to work seam­less­ly across desk­top or mobile devices, as well as capa­ble of inte­grat­ing with job post­ing sys­tems and scal­ing up or down with demand.

“The Sales­force plat­form was mar­ket lead­ing, avail­able, flex­i­ble and could be deployed at real­ly short notice,” says Paul Dun­phy, ser­vice deliv­ery direc­tor for JETS in Scot­land at Capi­ta. “It had all the fea­tures that we need­ed in terms of being able to sup­port the JETS pro­gram.”

The Sales­force Cus­tomer 360 Plat­form for Gov­ern­ment col­lates infor­ma­tion on a job-seek­er in a per­son­alised record and rec­om­mends oppor­tu­ni­ties based on their pro­file – all while meet­ing GDPR require­ments. Job seek­ers who have been out of work for at least three months are referred to JETS by the DWP and asked to sign up via a com­mu­ni­ty por­tal built on Expe­ri­ence Cloud.

With­in the first three months of going live on Sales­force, JETS han­dled an esti­mat­ed 8,000 refer­rals. Dun­phy says that with­out a trust­ed part­ner like Sales­force, it would ulti­mate­ly have been dif­fi­cult to achieve every­thing the pro­gramme need­ed to do. “We prob­a­bly couldn’t have launched a prod­uct that quick­ly that was going to be used by thou­sands of peo­ple from day one,” he says, adding that: “It’s not just a reli­able plat­form; it’s actu­al­ly a very flex­i­ble plat­form that’s giv­en us a lot of addi­tion­al func­tion­al­i­ty that we can build off.”

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