The Covid-19 outbreak has demanded radical action on the digital front in the public sector. Organisations have had to quickly change their working infrastructure and develop new solutions to stay operational and meet the needs of vulnerable citizens.
This has been a major challenge, as they have had to deal with the complexities, and often the shortcomings, of legacy systems and quickly find adopt new services – often in the cloud. They have been confronted with questions for which the answers are not always clear, not only around what will work in the short term but the implications for costs and scalability over the long term.
Overall, the public sector has done an impressive job in responding to the crisis, but it has struggled with some of the complexities and is likely to do so in the future.
The issues around this will come under the spotlight in the next UKA Live discussion, Managing digital complexity in a pandemic, to be held on Thursday 9 July at 11.00 am and sponsored by Rackspace.
The panel brings together three digital leaders who have been on the frontline of pandemic response:
- Kurt Frary, deputy director of information management and technology at Norfolk County Council
- Owen Powell, ICT director at Central and North West London NHS Trust
- Amit Patel, director of technology design and engineering at the British Heart Foundation
- Rhys Sharp, public solutions director, Rackspace
- Helen Olsen Bedford, publisher, UKAuthority (host)
The discussion will draw on the experiences of the pandemic and the findings of the recent briefing paper on Dealing with Digital Complexity in a Crisis, and promises to provide some valuable insights into how organisations can make significant changes in their digital estate and develop new solutions at speed in response to a crisis.
Anyone watching the event live will be able to submit questions to the panellists, vote in polls and raise issues that they see as priorities. Register below to join us live on 9th July:
