We recently hosted an event as part of Newcastle’s TechNExt festival, bringing together a broad range of technology and public sector experts to deliver sessions on the innovations shaping the future of public services.
In an ever-changing tech landscape, it’s clear there isn’t a perfect solution for maintaining the UK’s position as a leader in digital public services. However, as the event went on, a common theme emerged throughout the various discussions and presentations – the public sector must ensure that digital services deliver value for UK citizens.
Innovation and inclusion
Delivering digital services successfully is a difficult task; one that we’re improving on daily. But many challenges remain. Some are obvious, such as budgets and the availability of crucial skills. But it was enlightening to discuss other emerging themes at the event:
- Addressing accessibility: One-in-five people in the UK are officially classed as having a disability – that’s the same number of people that have brown eyes. But even this number doesn’t fully reflect the reality. With missing data, stringent definitions of disability and hidden disabilities all impact a much greater proportion of the population. Standards, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidance (WCAG) do exist to help organisations develop services that are accessible to all. This is an important reminder the public sector shouldn’t take a one and done approach, and constantly revisit digital services, improving them to ensure that they are as inclusive as possible.
- Data driven value: Progress often stalls during public sector transformation projects because departmental data isn’t high enough in quality to drive innovation. To deliver value through digital services, the public sector must break down data siloes and improve cooperation between departments. Only then can data science be layered on top, for example, using machine learning to optimise resources in the NHS. But the takeaway is that these advanced techniques must be powered by high-quality data.
- Effective AI: Of course, AI was a hot topic at the event, given that it has dominated the tech vernacular over the last two years. There will be many citizen-facing applications of AI in the future, but it also has the power to revolutionise the working lives of public sector employees, from High Court judges to call centre staff. Truly effective AI will break down siloes, helping to enhance back office processes and interrogate data, freeing up time on dry, manual work and enabling staff to provide better services. But AI must be implemented correctly, with strong governance and guardrails in place, and built on a solid foundation of trusted data.
Starting from strength
Whether it’s exploring sources of data that can be used to define disability and aid accessibility, ensuring AI is empowered by data or laying the groundwork for data science, the public sector needs to overhaul much of its existing infrastructure. Otherwise, it risks throwing money at innovations that are doomed to fail.
But technology isn’t enough to guarantee success in isolation. All of our speakers agreed that for public services to deliver value, they have to take users into account at every stage. Every facet, from the tools bought to power solutions, to the design of products and considering the potential biases of AI, must take a user-centred approach. One speaker at the event had even grown a moustache to test the capabilities of the lip-reading software he was developing to help with citizen engagement. Actions like this will be crucial, as no matter how technologically advanced a service is, it’ll never deliver value if it doesn’t work for its users.
Designing a brighter future
With concepts like accessibility and new technologies such as AI proliferating throughout the UK’s digital public sector services, there is a bright, inclusive, innovative future ahead. Both UK citizens and the civil servants working in the public sector will feel the benefits of these advances and the increased value they’ll yield. However, it simply won’t be possible to reap rewards if we don’t partake in the necessary modernisation of existing infrastructure that underpins innovation.
So, for now at least, the biggest challenge facing the public sector is transforming current systems to enable a better tomorrow.
