‘Update in progress’: government departments on a continuing digital transformation journey

At a time when organisations across the public sector ecosystem are striving to modernise and digitise, central government holds some notable examples of success. Passport and driving license applications and renewals are often held up as exemplars of easy, intuitive, user-friendly services that enable quick digital fulfilment.

Nevertheless, looking across central government more broadly, just as with lots of other parts of the public sector and indeed many commercial businesses, there remains a way to go in the digital transformation journey – as recent research conducted by Forrester on behalf of KPMG amongst central government professionals highlights.

While nearly one in five (18%) central government respondents in our research describe digital transformation efforts as ‘completely successful’, over half (55%) characterise it as only ‘somewhat successful’. Over a quarter (27%) are neutral, saying that transformation has been neither successful nor unsuccessful.

It’s a mixed picture reflecting the reality that transformation is never really ‘done’ – and as a result, nearly six in ten (58%) say they are intensifying their efforts. They are having to overcome a range of issues in doing so – with the biggest barriers reported (by 43% of respondents) being a lack of a technology strategy, organisational silos with competing priorities, and budget constraints.

In our experience, these are common barriers right across the piece – including the private sector – and it is no surprise that they impact on central government departments too. The key question, of course, is what approaches are taken to overcome them.

Unsurprisingly – and unavoidably perhaps – central government decision makers flag an increase in their digital spend as key to accelerating progress. However, pure spend can be a blunt instrument – and so it is encouraging to see that respondents recognise the need to channel spend into areas of the biggest impact. The leading priority (73%) is to invest more in data & analytics technology – which is key to deriving the information and actionable insights that can enable organisations to work smarter and deliver improved user experience and outcomes.

Notably, over seven in ten (72%) say they want to increase spend of the digital transformation budget on training employees and executives on their digital skills – and this is certainly crucial to converting investment into actual adoption of technology and the unlocking of efficiency and productivity gains.

A similar proportion of respondents plan to increase the proportional spend on working with third-party service providers – valuing the customer support that is available and the change management support that they can provide.

Moving applications to the cloud, deploying Software as a Service (SaaS) and increasing the utilisation of agile development and security are also seen as key components for success.

The chief benefits that central government decision makers are looking to drive are increased agility (60%), an improved employee experience (57%) and better operational efficiency (55%). It’s interesting to see that these are essentially enhancements to internal working – recognising perhaps that if these are created, improved citizen experiences and outcomes should naturally follow.

With the public sector at large under pressure both financially and in terms of public perceptions – our recently published Citizen Experience Excellence report finds that citizen satisfaction with the public sector has fallen for a third year in a row – all organisations from central government to local government, from healthcare to transport, have a full and challenging agenda to pursue.

The signs are that central government departments have much further to go in their digital evolution. However, with a clear set of investment priorities and levers identified, there is reason for optimism that the refresh will accelerate in the years ahead.