Whether you wave a stick to cut costs or dangle a carrot to help government engage with citizens, digital strategy is transforming public services.

1. Government’s
digital strategy
could cut red tape
a ComputerWeekly report in association with
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Governments can harness digital technology to
make public services more efficient and generate
significant cost savings, writes Lisa Kelly
THINKSTOCK/GORANQWhether because of a waved stick to cut costs or the dangle of a carrot to
help government engage with citizens, digital technology is transforming public
services. By focusing on citizens’ needs and adopting an iterative approach,
governments can learn as they go and evolve their online services.
More than 20% of government departments worldwide will appoint a chief
digital officer (CDO) to drive their digital strategies by 2014, according to
research by Gartner.
In the UK, the government is striving to be ‘digital by default’. The Government
Digital Service (GDS), with its key message of making core services faster, easier
and simpler for the user, expects to save the taxpayer millions of pounds a
year by providing services to the public online. The beta version of Gov.uk, the
government’s central web portal, is a key milestone on the digital journey and
will eventually become the platform for government online transactions.
Steve Halliday, president at Socitm (Society of IT Leadership), GDS Identity
Assurance Programme board member and CIO for Solihull Council, says
the ‘digital by default’ message is getting through, but it is not without its
challenges.
In the public interest

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“There is more talk of digital by default; but it is focused on communities of
digital interests or digital tribes – centred on transactions; business process re-
engineering or digital in a big data sense. All have different functions and it is up
to the CIO or the CDO to take the Kofi Annan role of peacemaker,” he says.
Digital is already saving the UK government money – £500m by digitising a
number of its services and controlling spending on IT – according to a report by
the government’s Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG) this summer. The ERG’s
promise to “increase digitisation and the use of alternative delivery models”
appears to be paying off and Whitehall departments are busy redesigning
their services for digital transformation for further savings. The Cabinet Office
estimates it could save £1.2bn by 2015.
No silver bullet
With more than a billion government transactions a year through 650 services,
this is no mean feat, but the goal of efficiency and saving taxpayers’ time and
money are business benefits that cannot be ignored.
This headline-grabbing business benefit of cutting costs is good news for
economies feeling the pinch in public services when money is tight, but there
can be pitfalls, however, if a digital strategy is not thoroughly assessed.
In the US, Obamacare encountered problems with its rollout, but with
HealthCare.gov improving, the will is apparent, even if the execution has hit
bumps.
“It seems more of an issue of politics and culture,” says Halliday, warning that
digital technology is not a panacea.
“Digital is not a silver bullet. Leadership and culture make the big difference,
and the old command-and-control style leadership doesn’t work. Digital should
liberate people with good ideas and recognise the talents of the maverick and
channel them into productive directions,” he says.
The first person in a company to use Twitter was probably disciplined, but this
lockdown attitude is fading, he says.
“Digital is more than a shiny web form. GDS is recruiting mavericks that
understand the customer-centred design and create things that work for people
rather than an organisation,” says Halliday.
Mark Thompson, group strategy director at consultancy Methods, says the GDS
vision is a good one, even if it can be difficult to implement.
“Exemplar government departments are trying to change the way things are done
with digital technology. The reason why some do less well is because ultimately
digitisation is about changing the machinery of government itself,” he says.
Digitisation is transformational and government departments have to have an
appetite for the changes it brings. Strategies must be carefully considered, but
Thompson believes digital works best where there are open standards.
“There is a critical link between open standards and huge volumes of traffic and
getting everyone involved,” he says.
Streamlined services
For digital to take off in government, Thompson says there must be a move
away from silos of activity where the same processes are done slightly
“Digital should
liberate people
with good ideas
and recognise the
talents of the
maverick”
Steve Halliday, president
at Socitm, GDS Identity
Assurance Programme
board member and CIO
for Solihull Council

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differently by multiple government organisations. Cutting out repetitive tasks
and processes that are common to many government services, such as identity
checking, is a major business benefit.
“There is a tonne of good stuff going on, but where it is appropriate it would
work better if one thing was done by everyone in a particular way – for example,
identity checking. It would trigger massive activity, and there is an enormous
opportunity here,” says Thompson.
For this to happen, he believes central government has to play a pivotal role. “It
is possible to assemble a rainbow of different services, but it needs coaxing by
people in the centre, so activity converges together,” he says.
Another business benefit of digital technology is its potential to improve the flow
of information – the lifeblood of public services.
Andrew Horne, a managing director of the CEB CIO Leadership Council, gives
the example of a US city where the CIO implemented digital technology to
improve the sharing of information between government agencies. For example,
when a concert takes place, the city is now able to send details electronically to
the police, the fire department and the concert venue simultaneously.
“In the past, information was not shared and each department had their own
little responsibilities,” says Horne. “Now information flows at the right time and in
the right sequence.”
Dave Aron, fellow in Gartner’s CIO research group, believes digital leadership
is a key skill for government departments. There are two flavours of digital
leadership favoured by CIOs and CDOs, he adds.
“Some CDOs and CIOs are focused on digital channels, which are really part of
marketing; and the other group is focusing on the broader question of how to
be successful in a digital world. This strategy-led group is informed by the digital
context and they need strategic skills and the ability to interact well,” says Aron.
The two groups are currently split, but Aron says the group with the broader role
will eventually take over.
“Government agencies and companies have to make specific decisions in a world
that is getting more digital and the vanilla IT approach is not appropriate,” he says.
The Flemish government implemented a digital strategy to
remove the need for its 5.5 million citizens to repeatedly
re-enter information.
The Magda project enables maximum data sharing
between administrations: every citizen is asked for
information only once so it can be reused by the 60
agencies within the Flemish administration.
Magda, which is built on an HP service-oriented
architecture platform, delivers many different web services
to the Flemish agencies. It makes the interaction of citizens
with the government smoother and less time-consuming
and optimises internal efficiencies.
For example, the Flemish government uses HP
applications solutions and the SOA platform to expedite
school financial aid processes.
To receive child benefit in Belgium, parents previously
had to complete several forms and provide proof that a
child went to school. This is no longer necessary.
Evidence is now automatically provided to the benefits
agency by the administration, which is informed when the
child is at school.
Savings arise from reducing the need to re-enter
information and the seamless integration between the
different agencies.
“We are making sure that all of the information we have
about citizens with their consent, we are reutilising to
everybody’s benefit,” says Geert Mareels, e-government
manager for the Flemish government.
Seamless data sharing delivers cost and time savings

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Digital revolution
Traditionally, IT strategy is a technical answer to a business question, but the
evolving digital strategy, which is a business answer to a technical question, is
potentially revolutionary.
“The traditional approach led to back-office efficiencies. Now, the tail is wagging
the dog,” says Aron. “Given all the crazy stuff happening with big data, analytics
and consumerisation of IT, the challenge for government agencies and business
is how do they respond to that craziness? Digital should not be separate to the
business; it should put a lens on any business strategy.”
Digital technology lets public service bodies think imaginatively, beyond the
efficiencies of shared services. This is when it can be truly innovative.
Aron highlights how the Norwegian National Collection Agency, which initially
collected funds only for the Ministry of Justice, developed anomaly spotting in
data of tax payments.
“Now it helps other agencies with their collections to spot anomalies of data.
Digital has led to the evolution of business intelligence by going beyond
internal processes to focus on lots of different parts of the government. Digital
technology has changed its mission,” says Aron.
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“Digital has led to
the evolution of
business
intelligence by
going beyond
internal processes”
Dave Aron, fellow, CIO
research group, Gartner

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The City of Anaheim and HP have developed mobile
applications to communicate with citizens, helping to
stimulate economic development and improve the city’s
service to the public.
Anaheim, based in Southern California’s Orange County
and famous for hosting Disneyland, like many public bodies,
wanted to do more with less in the face of economic
pressure to keep costs down and improve efficiency.
“In our drive to reduce bureaucracy and make
services easily available, we wanted to provide different
modes for the public to communicate with us efficiently,”
says Trevor Bennett, Anaheim information systems
manager.
Initially the city wanted to cut $15m from its budget in
2012, and although it reached a balanced budget the
following fiscal year, the efficiency drive continued, as well
as the push to promote a better quality of life for citizens.
Since 2003, Anaheim has partnered with HP and used
its technologies because of its results-orientated approach
to business challenges.
With HP, Anaheim developed the two mobile
applications, MyEVOC and MyAnaheim.
MyEVOC extends the reach of the city’s Emergency
Virtual Operations Centre (EVOC), which was created with
HP to give a web-based situational awareness view of
city-wide operations.
Now essential functions of EVOC are available to city
employees via their smartphones. As well as being able to
see city data from their desktops, such as police and fire
incident reports, and vehicle tracking, they can now see
that data in real time on their mobile devices, so they can
swiftly be alerted of emergency situations.
MyAnaheim is a free mobile application which citizens
and tourists can download to their smartphone. It allows
them to capture incidents such as graffiti via their
smartphone cameras and send the information to the
city’s non-emergency system, which can then react
quickly by pinpointing the exact location to dispatch
clean-up crews through GPS.
In the first year some 2,851 graffiti sightings were
reported via mobile, but MyAnaheim delivers many
more services, such as city events calendars,
suspicious-activity reporting, utility bill payment, and
alerts and advisories.
Bennett says the public/private partnership with HP
enables Anaheim to deliver innovative, cost-efficient
collaborative services to enhance public safety and
quality of life.
“MyAnaheim is a robust, bi-directional means of
communication that shows the city is responsive and
accountable to constituents,” he says.
It also allows residents to participate in the city’s ‘Hi
Neighbour’ community outreach and awareness
campaign to give them the resources they need to
increase involvement in communities.
Bennett says that during the development of the
two mobile applications, HP made sure the project
followed best practices and asked the right questions
to ensure the city’s goals were met. HP continues
to take responsibility for maintenance and next-
generation innovation.
Enhanced communication, less red tape, and a more
business-friendly environment, which reassures business
owners that Anaheim is a convenient place to do business,
is achieved at a low cost.
Development of MyAnaheim is continuous, with further
disaster recovery alerts and functionality planned, such as
healthcare tips, emergency contacts and evacuation
information.
Bennett says the partnership with HP means Anaheim
can keep moving ahead, and be educated as a customer
about what is possible and how to achieve it.
Case study: City of Anaheim
Socitm’s Halliday believes that although governments are at an early stage,
digital services will evolve quickly.
“GDS has set out its vision very clearly: to use digital where it finds high volumes
of transactions that are automatable and make them easy and simple to do on
the internet, but if you look at a local authority, there are only 100 or so services
of that type, such as fixing potholes or collecting bins. Most are more complex,
and how digital addresses that through a co-production concept will be a rich
vein,” he says.
Halliday believes digital will move to a second phase where complex or ‘wicked’
problems (where there are several interests involved, some of which are
conflicting), often found in social care, are addressed by people operating in a
digital network. Managed networks of care professionals, for example, will adopt
simple, secure, social media-style interactions, he suggests.
“Digital 1.0 is about transactions, but Digital 2.0 will have a substantive role in
helping find the best-balanced position for the really tricky stuff,” says Halliday.