The UK Government’s Digital Agenda Strategy spells out the need for continued national investment in the digital economy.In his foreword, Chris Philp MP, Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy, DCMS, writes, “The UK Digital Strategy is a roadmap we will follow to strengthen our global position as a Science and Tech Superpower. Our future prosperity and place in the world depend upon it.”
The Strategy includes the Government’s ambition to build on the digital transformation delivered over the past decade and “improve the use of digital, data and technology across all public services.”
Bringing people on the journey
The Digital Agenda Strategy cites the example of the publication of Transport for London live data in 2017, which enabled the creation of public-facing services that provide the latest travel information, via people’s preferred channels. The open data feeds more than 600 apps, used by over 42 percent of Londoners, allowing people to reduce commute times and ease congestion on public transport.
It is well-recognised that the social distancing necessitated by the Covid pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital public services, whether it was the general public scanning QR codes to check-in to venues on the NHS contact tracing app, children accessing lessons online, council meetings conducted on Zoom, or patients booking online consultations with GPs. The Government aims to maintain that momentum and deliver a comprehensive range of digital services.
The benefit of ‘headless’ content management systems
Maintaining and improving digital engagement demands that central and local government departments can share timely, accurate information with the public, which can be delivered across a range of touch points, so that no-one is digitally excluded.
One of the ways that the public sector is achieving this level of engagement is through the application of ‘headless’ content management systems (CMS) that separate back-end databases and software code from the presentation layer, or ‘head’, whether that be the council website, a digital information kiosk, or a mobile app.
As an example, digital agency, Great State, recently developed the MyNavy Progressive Web App, which provides Royal Navy personnel with mobile access to information and digital services that help them to more easily manage their training, apply for leave, check their pay, order fresh uniform, and view career opportunities. The headless CMS used to develop the app allows the Royal Navy to regularly update the app with new features and functionality, so that service personnel can use it throughout their careers. During the COVID-19 pandemic a feature was built within three weeks that allowed Naval staff to update their vaccine booster status and the mobile app is an important channel for the Navy to provide consistent and up-to-date information to its geographically dispersed personnel.
Evolution to digital experience platforms
While a good content management system enables the creation of excellent website and web app experiences, a digital experience platform (DXP) centralises all relevant data and services, allowing a public sector organisation to share the same information and services across all of its touch points. This delivers a consistent digital experience across the organisation’s website, email, mobile apps, chat, public information kiosks and social media channels.
The power of ‘composable’ platforms
A ‘headless’ architecture, which decouples back-end databases and code from public interfaces, offers organisations the freedom to select from best-of-breed, cloud-native applications that suit the specific digital service that they wish to launch. This ‘composable’ approach can reduce software licensing costs and speed the delivery of public sector digital services.
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Rather than being locked into a single vendor’s feature set, the composable approach allows organisations to choose precisely the right CRM, digital asset management, CMS, analytics, and interfaces that best suit the intended service users.
Sheffield City Council’s Marketing and City Futures department commissioned digital agency, Jaywing, to create a modern website that attracts visitors, residents and business investment by raising awareness of the ‘outdoor city’ as a desirable place to live, work, study and visit. Jaywing used Umbraco’s composable digital experience platform and intuitive editing tools to empower content owners to tailor Welcome to Sheffield’s content for a diverse range of audiences, while ensuring the best user experience for everyone.
How composable DXP improves agility
Choosing a blend of ready-made solutions reduces coding effort and improves agility by helping public sector organisations to rapidly launch new digital services in response to developing situations and changing citizen requirements.
A composable DXP, with an intuitive CMS at its core, allows public sector organisations to configure digital experiences and deliver more timely, relevant content, enable interactive user-flows and improve user experiences, which can be measured by the seamless integration of analytics.
Because composable DXP architecture allows the most appropriate technologies to be selected for new digital service delivery, this can facilitate the prediction of costs prior to launch, making it easier for budget-holders to approve new digital services.
The composable approach also aligns with the government’s drive to embrace open-source technologies in order to avoid duplication of coding effort and cost and prevent lock-in to individual technology vendors. Government Service Standard 12 states, “Public services are built with public money. So, unless there’s a good reason not to do so, the code they’re based [upon] should be made available for people to reuse and build on.”
Conclusion
The Digital Agenda Strategy lays out the roadmap to deliver the government’s vision to make the UK the best place in the world to start and grow a technology business and acknowledges that doing so is vital to maintain our standing in the global economy. The user experience provided by public sector websites and apps will play a crucial part in bringing everyone along on that journey. To support the agile delivery of digital services that can reach people on their preferred device, without leaving anyone behind, the road ahead should be open, composable and headless.
Mike Pedersen is UK partner manager at Umbraco.
