Last month’s Government Transformation Summit brought together industry experts and public sector leaders to discuss the future of government services. While digital transformation initiatives are accelerating globally, the challenge lies in ensuring that investments made deliver meaningful outcomes for citizens.
Last week, Neil Gladstone, AI & Data Practice Director discussed some of his insights from the event. Building on his perspective, this blog combines some takeaways with our expertise in delivering large-scale transformation programmes, offering practical insights on how governments can reshape services to better serve citizens in an increasingly digital world.
Insight 1: Trust Matters
The importance of trust between governments, their citizens and suppliers was a leading theme throughout the summit. Government officials equated trust with a license to operate. In the context of digital services, citizen trust acts a prerequisite to adoption. Suppliers, as partners of the Government have a key role to play in enabling trust between themselves, governments, and in turn citizens. The ability to gain and maintain trust is not an easy task and one which official’s suggested is further exacerbated by the Governments current fragmented and legacy estate. The following insights share some thoughts on priority areas to build and maintain trust during digital transformations.
Insight 2: Transformation as the norm
‘We cannot afford to stand still,’ suggested Andrew Western. Digital transformation is no longer optional, and leaders emphasised that with growing public expectations and rapid technological advancements, governments cannot ignore the changing worlds around them.
The importance of transformation was emphasised across every level of government, but, taking digital transformation from concept to reality is not an easy task. Legacy contexts and the competing demands of maintaining service delivery whilst also driving transformation can introduce real complexity.
Whilst often digitally driven, enabling transformation requires strong business change. This means ensuring that we are clear on our intent and desired impact upfront, that business problems and changes required are comprehensively understood, and that people and organisations are best supported to reshape their strategies, operations, and culture to make best use of digital technologies.
Insight 3: Citizen Centricity – ensuring real life impacts.
Another theme championed throughout the summit was the importance of citizen-centred design – ‘when it’s done well, you know it, and when it’s not, you feel it.’
For citizens to trust and adopt public services, they should be accessible, efficient, and responsive to their real-life needs. Effective transformation demands a deep understanding of citizens needs and this means emphasising user needs from the very start of the transformation agenda.
Business requirements should go hand in hand with user needs and this requires us to reframe traditional approaches to transformation, to reframe our line of questioning and to ensure that humans remain at the heart of transformation efforts, so that services are accessible, efficient, and equitable for all – staff and citizens.
Insight 4: Rethinking the Modus Operandi of government
Speakers acknowledged that the traditional siloed structure of government departments hampers cohesive service delivery. Today’s challenges—from public health to national security—are inextricably linked. This demands a cohesive and joined up approach across departments, and despite the modus operandi of government, people’s lives do not operate in silos. Citizens are not concerned about back-end complexity, they expect simplicity and efficiency, but breaking down these silos is not an easy task.
For true progress, collaboration and cooperation across supplier landscapes and government departments is vital. This requires both bottom-up and top-down approaches, whether it be exploring approaches to overcoming data sharing across government or joining up at a policy level, effective transformation will require establishing common goals, aligning incentives, and fostering a culture where collaboration is rewarded.
Taking Action: Aligning our collective efforts across the digital transformation agenda
The Government Transformation Summit reaffirmed that successful transformation requires an integrated approach, one that is built on strong foundations, prioritises citizen experience, champions the purposeful use of technology and importantly, prioritises and rewards collaboration.
Our experience points to three critical actions that organisations should prioritise:
- Building digital ready foundations ensuring that existing contexts are fully understood.
- Embed Citizen-Centric design practices which embed accessibility and inclusion by default.
- Adopt shared outcome frameworks/ an ecosystem approach which enable trust and collaboration between departments, suppliers and citizens.
To explore how these insights apply to your transformation journey, reach out to Elika Moradi. We combine deep government experience with cutting-edge digital expertise to help organisations navigate their complex transformation challenges.