The UK Government has been loudly banging the drum for digital public services this week, with a stream of announcements and publication of two major documents on the state of play and its plans for the sector.
It has involved plenty of evangelising about the virtues of digital tech – most of it familiar from the ambitions of earlier administrations – claims of a “wholesale reshaping”, and a lot of detail in promises of new services and a reorganisation of the approach at the centre.
This can lead to some head scratching, but it is possible to pick out key plans and get a sense of the priorities and how the efforts to build ‘digital government’ – which has become the favoured term – will be organised.
It begins with Government claims that in recent years things have gone badly. It flagged this up at the weekend with claims that the public sector is missing out on massive productivity savings because of “archaic technology”, and followed up on Tuesday with the publication of the State of digital government review.
Slow progress
This paints a discouraging picture of slow progress, missed opportunities, misdirected spending and a failure to make the most of the data held by the public sector – which will restrain its efforts to grasp the potential of AI. It comes with a claim that net public satisfaction of digital government services has declined over the past decade from 79% to 68%.
The review attributes all this to five root causes:
- Leadership that has not prioritised service digitisation, partly because leaders are not paid, promoted or valued for doing so.
- A fragmented structure in which most public sector organisations choose to build and maintain their own technology estates. This inhibits standardisation and makes it harder for them to work effectively with each other.
- A lack of consistent metrics of digital performance.
- Salaries and career path progression that are uncompetitive compared with the private sector, and an over-reliance on third party contractors which degrades institutional knowledge.
- Spending is biased towards new programmes with not enough for the effective operation and maintenance of existing systems. This is exacerbated by the shift towards using subscription based digital and data services.
These have all been identified in the past and the Government, having only been in office for six months, has the leeway to suggest all the shortcomings are down to the previous administration. But it has acknowledged that this will not be the case indefinitely, and set out its policies to accelerate progress with the publication of the Blueprint for modern digital government.
It is notable that it is not presented in a way that draws a direct relation to those root causes of the current shortcomings. It is hard to believe that the documents would have been written without reference to each other, but it would have been a good step to draw a stronger line between the weaknesses and specific plans for change.
Again, the blueprint sets out a vision and a plan for digital reform that looks very familiar. There is talk about using technology to make people’s lives easier, increasing public sector productivity and efficiency, creating smart organisations and encouraging economic growth.
Similarly, the six-point plan looks very familiar, with ambitions to: join up public services; harness the power of AI for the public good; strengthen digital and data infrastructure; elevate leadership and invest in talent; fund for outcomes and procure for innovation; and commit transparency and accountability.
Substance in the detail
But there is a lot more that is new within the detail of how the Government – essentially the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) – aims to achieve all this.
Firstly, it has clarified its talk about creating a digital centre of government within DSIT, confirming this is a generic term and that the effort will be led by a beefed up Government Digital Service (GDS). The other digital government bodies – Central Digital and Data Office, Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI), Geospatial Commission and parts of the Responsible Tech Adoption Unit – will all be rolled into GDS to cut any duplication of effort and make clear there is a single place to which other government bodies can go for support.
Other structural changes include: setting up a new Service Transformation Team within GDS to look at the improvement of priority services and whole public sector transformation; working towards an account management structure to enable more strategic partnerships; and aligning with DSIT’s approach to digital technology in the broader economy.
Equally important will be appointment of a government chief digital officer to lead GDS, and who will have second permanent secretary status within DSIT. The role will include oversight – through a dotted reporting line – of decisions on recruitment, coaching support and feedback performance by other chief digital and information officers in central government.
All this promises to have a significant effect on how things are done, with a more consolidated structure for central initiatives, strengthened by someone at the top with the appropriate seniority.
Tech ambitions
Then comes the plans for technology. It is no surprise that a big commitment to using AI figures highly, reflecting the prime minister’s statement from last week.
The blueprint says that i.AI will build on its work in prototyping, identifying, buying and building AI solutions, with an emphasis on public sector productivity, and offer specialist assurance support. This will be accompanied by: the creation of an external Responsible AI Advisory Panel; building a technical market intelligence capability to support procurement; developing a sourcing and procurement framework; and setting up AI and data communities of practice across the public sector.
Reforms to strengthen the digital and data public infrastructure include one measure already underway, the creation of a National Data Library to make it easier to find and reuse public sector data.
This will be accompanied by the introduction of a Digital Backbone to encourage the sharing of capabilities through the tech industry publishing details of its services and products, and the creation of APIs. There will also be a requirement for all public sector organisations, beginning with central government bodies, to publish a standard set of their APIs.
Infrastructure work will also involve the deployment of a new vulnerability scanning service for the public sector, a more interventionist model for cyber security and technical resilience, and the setting up of a Technical Design Council led by practitioners to address strategic decisions on tech and data.
Need for joining up
The blueprint reiterates the priority of joining up services, emphasising the role of the new Service Transformation Team and outlining plans for a ‘once only’ rule, under which people will not have to repeat their information to different services as it will be shared with appropriate safeguards.
There will also be work towards all legislation being ‘digital ready’, and to streamline the provision of devices and tools.
Efforts to deal with the identified problems in leadership will include developing optimum employment models to attract digital talent, assessing the overall package for digital and data professionals in the public sector, and requiring that all organisations have a digital leader on their executive committee and a digital non-executive director on their board.
In addition, a digital hub will be set up in Manchester working with the Government Property Agency.
Funding and commerce
Plans for funding include: the development of tailored funding models for digital products and services, taking into account legacy remediation and risk reduction; expanding the use of outcomes focused models; defining a comprehensive sourcing strategy; and setting up a Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence. The latter will be responsible for identifying further opportunities for reform and enabling tech start-ups and SMEs to access government contracts.
Then comes the efforts to improve transparency and accountability, including: the creation of an inventory of services; a methodology for measuring the administrative burden; requiring departments to publish metrics on their outcomes at least annually; and an expectation that all central government bodies will publish their public facing roadmaps at least annually.
The blueprint rounds up with handful of ‘kickstarter’ projects for the first six months of this year, aimed at showing what can be achieved. They include the development – highlighted by DSIT in advance of the launch – of a beta version GOV.UK app and GOV.UK Wallet in which people can store their government issued documents.
These will be accompanied by pilots of the GOV.UK chatbot, aimed at resolving complex queries from the public in a matter of seconds. It is powered by a large language model and seen as a good way of demonstrating the responsible use of AI in digital public services.
Another plan is for GDS to collaborate with organisations across the public sector to pilot improvements on managing long term health conditions and disabilities. This is part of an effort to get more of the 2.5 million who are economically inactive due to health issues working again.
AI upskilling
Finally, a new AI accelerator upskilling programme is aimed at helping digital professionals become machine learning engineers, and therefore increasing the AI expertise in government departments.
Everything is topped off with a mention that a new Government Digital and AI Roadmap will be published in the summer of this year, and aligned with the approaching Spending Review to secure the necessary funding.
While the blueprint includes its share of repeating old mantras, there is plenty in these plans to give it real substance and show that the Government has done some serious thinking about how to press on with its digital transformation.
Open questions
It leaves open a couple of big questions. Firstly, will HM Treasury allocate sufficient funding in the Spending Review to make the plans achievable?
The document refers to a new approach to digital funding, but it will all require considerable sums and there are a lot of demands for big funds in other areas of government. This will be relevant not just for procurement and the development, but in building up the skills and leadership capability that is needed.
Secondly, will the new government chief digital officer have the clout to ensure that all other departments are ready to follow the lead of DSIT in these areas? There is always talk about improving collaboration in Whitehall, but a history of frustrated ambitions and a culture in which departments and agencies are often insistent on doing things as they see best.
A lot could depend on whether the Treasury will tie some of their funding to going along with the DSIT’s plans. This remains to be seen.
But the blueprint, and the promotional campaign staged by DSIT this week, convey a strong burst of energy and intent to accelerate the digital transformation of public services. Let’s see if the momentum is maintained.
