The public sector is undergoing a significant period of digital transformation, with the Australian public sector adopting new digital capabilities every day. However, this transformation is more than just a shift from legacy systems to modern ICT applications.
Matt Watkins, digital and technology partner at Synergy Group, explains how the technology landscape has changed with new business-friendly technologies (such as intelligent automation platforms) promising the next wave of service delivery and productivity improvements.
And importantly, why now is the time for public sector organizations to consider a different approach to digital transformation – one that is based on adopting business-friendly platform-based technologies while educating the workforce to adapt to and trust the modern ICT world .
The changing world of technology
During his years of managing large-scale digital transformation programs, Matt has observed many technology trends, including:
- Shift to cloud services and greater mobility – fortunately, the cloud is no longer an uncertain option for government service delivery. In fact, citizens expect anytime, anywhere access with a high degree of personalization.
- Convergence of ICT capabilities – the functionality of core systems and platforms is converging, so we can do more with fewer systems. For example, there are only so many ways to do things like case management, service management, process management and workflow.
- Moving to no-code or low-code platforms and democratizing IT – we have seen the rise of citizen developers and citizen data scientists, which is a good thing! This allows business areas to self-help their ICT needs and achieve a level of solution sophistication that previously required a systems integrator to deliver. For example, modern platforms like RPA, digital forms and simple workflow tools, service management tools and cloud-based CRM can all now be quickly configured and deployed.
- Rapid pace of change – Recent times have shown us that the pace of change is becoming faster and, as a result, the need for a quick political response has increased. Modern technologies allow business areas to be more agile, adapting their ICT capabilities to their changing business processes in short time frames, improving responses to these policy or environmental changes.
- Clearer focus on business processes – modern ICT platforms allow business areas to focus on what they know best: their business processes. By knowing the processes inside and out, they can standardize and optimize before automating or digitizing them.
- Greater focus on data – data management and quality, data security and understanding that good data will drive the future of ICT, especially artificial intelligence (AI) powered applications.
Matt says all these trends allow us to imagine a future in which the Australian public sector has an augmented workforce: one that can be built through bottom-up transformation, bit by bit, with enough top-down strategy and design to communicate intent , without being a brake on innovation.
Challenges of change
In all of this, ICT’s role is to remove complexity for business – to provide modern platforms in a way that can scale with demand and remains cost-effective, providing a good user experience (whether for employees or citizens). Now if only it were that simple.
“Last year I worked with one of our public sector customers who were implementing one of these modern platforms, designing and implementing an operating model that allows the organization to use the platform to maximize impact,” explains Matt. “And we had a number of confounding factors that could have hindered success if we hadn’t worked around them as part of our digital transformation strategy.”
For example, these are issues of governance, ethics and politics. “When implementing technologies such as artificial intelligence, there is a need to think about transparency, integrity and openness, but also considerations about what to do with the part of the workforce that the new technology may displace. This deserves thought and action ahead.”
With recent reviews of the Australian public sector calling for investment in improving the digital maturity of the workforce, Matt believes this should apply equally to civil servants and contractors. “It needs to be an investment in education at scale, large enough to provide the critical mass of digital skills we need for widespread adoption of digital platforms.”
“The augmented worker of the future needs to be as comfortable with modern work technologies as we all are with a smartphone today. I also believe that the industry has a role to play in upskilling their clients to deliver services, so at least you all know how to leverage technology in your transformation, and outwardly you can build things yourself.”
Matt also says that the operating model of ICT organizations needs to be reviewed to support the provision of modern technology. “We have a history of delivering ICT capabilities in a fairly rigid service model with prescribed processes, usually based on some form of planning, build, operations and application-based services. I would not underestimate the need to focus on culture change in ICT organizations and also educate employees on newer ways of delivering ICT services on a business-friendly platform.”
Here, ICT (both internal and consultants) must be an advisor to the business, and the operating model must be adaptable – tweaked to free up some core processes. “It will be essential to encourage and accelerate innovation while driving the business towards quality and standards,” says Matt.
“It needs to be an investment in education at scale, large enough to provide the critical mass of digital skills we need for widespread adoption of digital platforms.”
– Matt Watkins, Synergy Group
Another confounding factor is funding. In particular, how innovations and investments in ICT are financed. Matt says seed funding – perhaps a dedicated percentage of ICT operating budgets – is needed to test new technologies and their potential benefits as a commercial organization would, with no guarantee of success.
“We need to realize that ICT capabilities are not static, they are constantly growing and improving, and we want to be able to take advantage of that,” says Matt. “This is why we need continuous investment in ICT, not just one-off cases to the government.
“With Covid-19, we have seen a once-in-a-generation investment made by the government to support the economy. Imagine if some of that was spent on modernizing public sector ICT and preparing us for the next 30 years of innovation and service delivery?
Finally, to foster a culture of continuous innovation, Matt suggests that the public service should address the role of trust and its general appetite for risk. “The current crisis has tested our collective appetite to take risks, to break what have been work norms and to take some risks in areas of ICT that have traditionally been off-limits to some. We pushed the boundaries and everything was fine. Modern platforms are proven technology. They allow us to fail quickly and cheaply and iterate until we achieve a successful outcome.”
And the good news? Teams in the Australian public sector can start the journey now, with a small transformation, process, team, division, and grow from there. Where some industries have gone, the public sector can follow and we can learn from their experiences as early adopters and jumpstart our transformation.
“I believe the time is right for the public service to be bold in its ambitions and use modern technology to make the once-in-a-generation shift towards a modern, augmented workforce.”