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Blueprint for a Modern Digital Government: LGA response

The UK government is right to champion digital transformation. It has the power to revolutionise public services, making them more efficient, user-friendly, and ultimately, more effective in improving lives. The move towards working across the public sector is a significant opportunity.

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Introduction

On Tuesday 21 January, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) published a Blueprint for Digital Government: a long term vision for digital public services, a six-point plan for reform, and the role of the new digital centre of government (the LGA response is available on our website). The case for change was laid out in a second publication, ‘The State of Digital Government Review’.

Summary of the changes

The case for change was informed by on the State of Digital Government Review that was commissioned by the Rt Hon Peter Kyle MP, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. The LGA worked with the DSIT team to ensure local government context and priorities were understood and reflected in the review. A summary is available below and our full submission is available online

The State of Digital Government Review identified deep systemic challenges: institutionalised fragmentation, persistent legacy, cyber and resilience risk; siloed data, under-digitisation; inconsistent leadership; a skills shortfall; diffuse buying power and outdated funding models.

The systemic change outlined in the Blueprint proposed a ‘digital-first operating model’ where digital leadership skills are essential for senior leaders, services are redesigned, and digital and data infrastructure is shared to meet common needs. Digital inclusion is centred to ensure that as many people as possible can access digital public services.

A vision for modern digital government

The Blueprint is working to enable the following outcomes:

  • Easier lives: delivering transparent, next-generation public services that do the hard work for citizens, can be accessed and used by everyone who needs them, and are designed around the user. This includes services with built-in timelines and status updates, services that meet users where they are, and services that are accessible to everyone, no matter their needs.
  • Faster growth: helping businesses start and scale by delivering services that work as well as they do for citizens. This includes ensuring that government services for businesses are as good as for individuals and that there’s clarity in government requirements for businesses, such as licenses and certifications required. Businesses will be able to connect to digital public infrastructure to build new products and services with appropriate security and privacy controls, and Government will be a partner to industry – collaborating with innovators and entrepreneurs to ensure the public gets the best value for money.
  • Firmer foundations: securing public services so they are trustworthy and resilient. This includes having a clearer understanding of the risks facing digital public services to build better cyber security, and technical silence; Government holding itself publicly accountable for safety, security, and quality of services by publishing performance and progress transparently; and ensuring the public sector is more connected and integrated.
  • Smarter organisations: changing how delivery is done to embed the right ways of working, moving at the same pace that people’s lives do, and working as agile, user-centred, multidisciplinary teams by default. This includes enabling more automation for uncomplicated tasks; strengthening the skills and support to all areas of the public sector; agile, user-centred and multi-disciplinary teams being the default to build better bridges between policy and delivery; more innovation and learning from failure; and balancing the right mix of internal teams with external suppliers whilst working in partnership with industry.
  • Higher productivity and efficiency: saving public money, delivering outstanding public services at a price we can afford, and enabling frontline workers to focus on delivery. This includes reducing costs of delivery by harnessing more AI and automation technologies; improving value for money by reducing waste and fraud; ensuring public servants have the appropriate tools, training, data access, and autonomy to innovate and adapt; and as technology is used for uncomplicated tasks, services can become more human by freeing up capacity to focus on interactions where they matter most.

LGA’s view

Enabling a digital revolution in local government

  • The UK government is right to champion digital transformation. It has the power to revolutionise public services, making them more efficient, user-friendly, and ultimately, more effective in improving lives. The move towards working across the public sector is a significant opportunity. The LGA has also been championing digital transformation and working closely with Government and councils to support the digitalisation of local services.
  • Local government is a sector with an annual spend of £121 billion, with approximately £3.2 billion (23/24) spent on technology and digital services, and a workforce of 1.4 million. Across England, there are 317 councils all operating as independent organisations responding to community and local needs. Local government in England is facing a severe funding crisis. A 6.2 billion funding gap over the next two years, coupled with a 31.5 per cent reduction in staff over the past 12 years, has resulted in significant pressure on essential services exacerbated in recent years by post-pandemic trends. 
  • Councils have a unique position within the public sector technological eco-system where – whilst holding information on every resident, exchanging data with nearly every branch of government, and enabling the economy in the places they serve – they have a pivotal role in driving forward technological progress in every part of the country to support the progress towards the Blueprint’s outcomes. 
  • While there have been pockets of impressive digital innovation in local government, as evidenced in the good practice examples of both Hillingdon and Camden Council in the Blueprint, a worrying disparity remains across the country. Many councils struggle with outdated legacy systems, a lack of digital expertise, and the rising threat of cybercrime. Digital leadership is often siloed within technology departments, hindering cross-council collaboration and the scaling of successful initiatives. This fragmentation leads to duplicated efforts, wasted resources, and inconsistent service quality for citizens across the country.
  • To fully realize the potential of a digitally-enabled public sector, central government must invest in a decentralised yet coordinated national strategy that empowers local councils to embrace digital transformation. A dedicated sector led Local Government Centre for Digital Technology (LGCDT) within the Local Government Association (LGA) is crucial in this endeavour.
  • The LGCDT would serve as a national hub, collaborating with regional hubs based within existing authorities. This structure would drive digital transformation across the sector, ensuring that all councils and residents’ benefit, regardless of location or current digital capabilities.
  • This sector-led LGCDT would act as a sector specific enabler for regional innovation hubs throughout the country. These hubs would function as extensions of the LGCDT, and in turn GDS, disseminating best practices, skills, and support, ensuring consistent awareness of the opportunities, challenges, and innovative practices specific to local government.
  • This regional sector specific focus is essential to address the unique needs of local government in different localities, encourage collaboration between neighbouring councils, and ensure equitable distribution of the benefits of digital transformation. By empowering these regional hubs, the LGCDT will cultivate an interconnected network of innovation, accelerating the adoption of successful initiatives and ensuring that no council is left behind.
  • Through nationally coordinated efforts and a deep understanding of the sector’s specific needs, the LGCDT can collaborate effectively with the Government Digital Service (GDS). This collaboration will foster partnerships between local government and the wider public sector, facilitating seamless cooperation across regions.

Connecting communities: 

  • The UK’s ambitions for economic growth and regional equality depend heavily on achieving widespread digital connectivity and digital inclusion. While the government has set ambitious targets for broadband and mobile coverage through initiatives like Project Gigabit, reaching these goals requires a more nuanced approach than simply issuing top-down mandates. It demands a concerted effort to empower local authorities, who possess the unique local knowledge and understanding to effectively address the specific connectivity challenges faced by their communities. Furthermore, many local authorities lack the resources and expertise to effectively plan, deploy, and manage complex digital infrastructure projects. This capacity gap hinders progress and exacerbates existing inequalities. Local government needs capacity and capabilities support to address some of the barriers experienced locally, including capacity for street works, digital infrastructure planning, and coordination of infrastructure projects across councils and regions. 
  • The LGA welcomes the Government’s prioritisation of digital inclusion and is engaging regularly with the expanding team in DSIT to ensure that local government’s leadership role in digital inclusion is understood and integrated into national policy development. Ensuring all citizens and businesses have the skills, motivation and confidence as well as the connectivity available to them will be critically important to achieving the outcomes set out in the Blueprint. 
  • Councils play an important role in tackling digital exclusion. Councils know their communities best and have the responsibilities, relationships, and assets to play a key role in encouraging older, vulnerable, and disadvantaged households to get online. Functions, such as children’s services, adult social care, adult education, business support and libraries, all have contact with people who may be digitally excluded. Councils run initiatives to tackle digital exclusion such as offering programs that enhance digital literacy and refurbish used devices for residents in need, ensuring they have access to essential technology. Councils also have well established relationships with local voluntary and community sector organisations which are an effective channel for socially excluded groups.
  • Government must invest in local digital inclusion capacity and coordination – maximising the expertise and networks of the voluntary and community sector and building more opportunities to leverage social value clauses and influencing industry initiatives to ensure they meet community needs.

The six-point plan

In the Blueprint, DSIT has laid out a six-point plan for government digital reform expanding the focus for the whole public sector, facilitating senior ministerial sponsorship, bringing together specialist digital, data and AI skills into the centre of digital government in the Government Digital Service, and a commitment to fixing systemic blocks such as designing funding models for digital delivery in the upcoming spending review and opportunities within the Procurement Act 2023.

1. Join up public sector services: The Blueprint envisages the public sector acting as one, ensuring an integrated interaction for the public in service delivery. Priority reforms include

  • Introduce a Digital Wallet to store government credentials:
  • Establish a ‘once only’ rule so that people who have provided information to one service can be reused by others with appropriate safeguards. It will start with central government but over time will extend to the broader public sector. 
  • Work towards all legislation being ‘digital ready’ to reduce complexities in service delivery and improve efficiencies. 
  • Stand up a Service Transformation Team to look at whole public sector service transformation and improvement of priority services. 
  • Save money and effort by streamlining the procurement and provision of devices and tools.

LGA’s view

  • Local government is uniquely positioned to understand and respond to the needs of communities, and are fundamental to joining up public services and strengthening our data and digital infrastructure.
  • Local government is not simply a mini-Whitehall. Too often Central Government will develop approaches centrally and assume it will fit for local services. Time and time again we’ve learned this does not work. Local government needs a new devolved operating model that would enable engagement, coordination and impact across the sector and country.
  • There are significant savings to be made if local government could procure more collectively across the sector, and if negotiations with key strategic suppliers were better coordinated. While the LGA has made efforts working with the Crown Commercial Services to represent councils’ needs in national negotiations with major suppliers like Microsoft and VMware, a national approach is rarely taken with ‘legacy suppliers’, solely serving local government. Local government specific suppliers are often omitted from central government’s strategic supplier relationship management, such as the Central Digital and Data Office’s strategic supplier relationship management programme, and the Cabinet Office’s Crown Reps. This is arguably due to the supplier not meeting the cost threshold defined by central government. A broader definition of ‘strategic’ is required to include data risk, number of customers, and/or challenging negotiations.

 

2. Harness the power of AI for the public good: The AI Incubator (i.AI) will focus on building and testing AI tools to boost public sector productivity targeting the £45 billion in potential productivity savings highlighted in the SDG review. Priority reforms include: 

  • Build on the work of the i.AI to provide rapid prototyping and innovation, identifying and buying and building solutions focused on productivity including customer service, casework, prevention and policy work, 
  • Offer specialist assurance support including a service to rigorously test models and products before release. 
  • Create an external Responsible AI Advisory panel and dedicated in-house team which will bring together expert insight from the public sector, industry, academia and civil society to provide constructive challenge and advice.
  • Build and regularly convene AI and data communities of practice across the public sector to shape the Government’s response and support practitioners by providing expert advice on AI and reusable technical solutions. 
  • Build strong technical market intelligence capability to inform procurement and design decisions given how rapidly evolving the technology is. 
  • Develop a sourcing and procurement framework for AI including rapid procurement and mission focused national tenders.

LGA’s view

  • With the significant financial and service demand pressures facing local government, digital transformation, including the use of AI, is seen as a way to deliver the next generation of public services, which are cost efficient and enable frontline workers to focus precious capacity on service delivery. You can read more about the LGA’s position on the AI Opportunities Action Plan and learn about local government use of AI on our use case bank
  • The LGA supports the proposals to build more public sector wide communities of practice. At the LGA, we’ve developed two active local government communities of practice with over 700+ local government officer members that meet each month. We invite policymakers and other parts of the public sector and AI ecosystem to share and learn best practice with councils, and to ensure councils are shaping national policy development. The LGA is also represented on several cross-Government AI communities of practice. 
  • The LGA strongly supports the ambitions of the AI Incubator (i.AI). We’ve been engaging with the i.AI to ensure local government can avail of the tooling developed and the development pipeline is being informed by local needs. i.AI presented to our 140 councils at the LGA’s AI practitioners’ network on 22 January to introduce the tools available, and there was huge enthusiasm for the tools. We’re looking forward to working collaboratively with the i.AI to facilitate local government pilot cohorts, drive productivity gains for the sector, and deliver cost savings for councils. 
  • The LGA has been calling for clear assurance processes for AI tooling to provide clarity for councils as buyers and to strengthen trust between councils and suppliers, and councils and residents. The external assurance support should be offered for all forms of AI, such as the tools that are already being used in local government, and not just the most advanced models. 
  • The LGA supports a cross-societal Responsible AI Advisory panel and will look forward to working with DSIT to ensure that local government is appropriately represented.
  • It’s vital that there are more opportunities for market shaping and pre-procurement engagement between the public sector and innovators, to ensure that those in local government have access and knowledge of cutting-edge innovations. At the LGA, we piloted a Tech Innovation Showcase where we showcased SME solutions against challenge statements submitted by local government to facilitate more use case learning exchange between SMEs and councils, and to support local government’s key role in fostering SME markets.

 

3. Strengthen and extend our digital and data public infrastructure: Building on GOV.UK One Login, building data infrastructure, and strengthening cybersecurity and national technical resilience. Priority reforms include: 

  • Create the National Data Library making it easier to find and reuse data across public sector organisations 
  • Introduce a digital backbone which would facilitate the integration, orchestration and instrumentation technology needed to share capabilities and build true end-to-end journeys including cross public sector APIs. 
  • Mandate the publication of a standard set of APIs and events by public sector organisation starting with the expectation that every new service in central government departments will have an open API. 
  • Develop and implement a more interventionist model for cyber security and technical resilience to ensure more coordination and to help prioritise required funding for remediation of risk. 
  • Deploy a new vulnerability scanning service for the public sector 
  • Set up a Technical Design Council led by expert technology, data and AI practitioners to tackle the toughest and most strategic technical decisions with the needs of the whole sector in mind. 

LGA’s view

  • The LGA supports the ambitions of the National Data Library. Councils are often described as ‘data rich and insight poor’ organisations holding data on every resident in the UK in the delivery of vital public services but often data is stuck behind legacy systems that aren’t interoperable with other council systems and/or not easy to access; or the foundations are not strong enough for sharing. The LGA welcomes the Government’s proposed strategic initiatives for making public sector data use work better across the public sector and economy. As data rich environments, local government must play a key role in these discussions, and public trust must be paramount throughout. Local government needs support in addressing data foundations, and shared data standards across the public sector and technology suppliers are key to these discussions.
  • The LGA supports the ‘digital backbone’ across the public sector as data and systems interoperability is key to realising the opportunities of digital transformation. Councils interact with and share data with almost every government department and a wide range of public sector bodies in the delivery of the 800+ services to residents. Therefore, councils are fundamental to joining up public services and strengthening data and digital infrastructure. Consideration must be given to how data can be reused more easily for smarter, more responsive local public services. Legal gateways should be considered as a priority, and capacity and support provided for data sharing agreements between local government and other parts of the public sector. 
  • As part of the ‘digital backbone’ consideration must be given to the integration of key technology suppliers. It can be challenging for councils to ensure that systems and data are interoperable due to barriers by legacy suppliers and/or the high costs of APIs which can significantly hinder digital transformation.
  • Over the last 6 years, the LGA has worked closely with the Government Security Group and MHCLG to promote cyber security and resilience across local government and want to ensure this relationship continues. The LGA is strongly supportive of the Government Cyber Security Strategy (GCSS) and believes this, if properly implemented with local government priorities understood and integrated, can be a key driver in improving the cyber resilience of the UK. The LGA supports a more coordinated effort to address risk, including a cross-public sector vulnerability scanning service, and has been working closely with other lead government departments to address supply chain risk when a council is impacted by an incident.
  • The LGA supports the proposal for a Technical Advisory Council and will work closely with DSIT to ensure that local government is represented.

 

4. Elevate leadership, invest in talent: the Government aims to reduce the outsourcing of contracts, invest in digital leadership and raise digital skills baseline for all public servants. Priority reforms include: 

  • Develop and assess the optimum employment models to attract, grow and mobilise expert digital talent.
  • Assess the overall package for digital and data professionals, including remuneration, with a view to ensuring our offer is competitive within the market.
  • Require that all public sector organisations have a digital leader on their executive committee and a digital non-executive director on their board by 2026 at the latest and publish this information publicly.

LGA’s view

  • On capabilities, digital upskilling and reskilling across local government demands substantial effort and customisation to respond to varying levels of digital maturity across the sector. We need an approach tailored to the sector’s unique needs, demands and characteristics.
  • The LGA supports initiatives that provide pathways for graduates and apprentices, promote essential digital skills for all employees, and enhance the capabilities of frontline staff, and middle and senior leaders.
  • We are ready to expand our national graduate campaigns to help fast-track careers in digital across local government supported by a comprehensive system for defining roles, skills, career progression paths, and competency levels within the local government digital workforce.
  • Digital transformation requires radical rethinking. We are shifting digital mindsets through a first-of-its-kind Digital Excellence programme. Adapted from a programme designed for senior civil servants, our training meets the needs of senior managers who have excelled in ‘non-digital’ professions and now lead services with substantial data and digital elements. We have seen high demand for this programme and would welcome the ability to build on its success. 
  • On capacity, local government is plagued by skills shortages across its digital workforce, as referenced in our State of Digital Local Government submission. At one level, fixing this problem needs better diagnostic tools, more digital training and learning communities, and an improved proposition for attracting and retaining digital staff.
  • The LGA’s Cyber, Digital, Data and Technology (DDAT) Skills Framework provides a common language and framework for understanding and developing the cyber and DDAT profession across local government. We would welcome collaboration with DSIT and MHCLG to further develop and promote this framework, integrating it into broader workforce planning initiatives to support councils in their digital transformation journeys.

 

5. Fund for outcomes, procure for growth and innovation: ensuring that public sector can focus on outcomes, ways of working facilitate prototyping, ideations and pivots and enables joined-up action across the sector. This would also ensure that the public sector can streamline governance and approvals to enable agility and iterative delivery while protecting value for money. Priority reforms include:

  • Launch tailored funding models for digital products and services, legacy remediation and risk reduction, and staged, agile funding that better enables exploratory work with new technologies.
  • Expand use of performance-based, outcomes-focused funding models that tie funding to metrics and accelerate the shift from ‘boom and bust’ transformation programmes to continuous funding of persistent, multidisciplinary product teams. 
  • Define a comprehensive sourcing strategy for what is built, what is bought and how the public sector partners with industry.
  • Launch work on a Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence to identify opportunities for further reform and improvements needed to enable tech startups, scaleups and SMEs to access government contracts.

LGA’s view

  • There’s a unique experimentation opportunity within local government given the 317 councils that exist across England delivering the same services albeit with different governance approaches, local demographics and service pathways. If coordinated ‘test and learn’ pilots were supported and applied to local government, with rigorous evaluation from the outset for the factors that contributed to its success, learning could be shared across the local government sector for faster scaling and across the wider public sector. However, support must be provided for coordinating the pilots, including technologist and evaluation support, facilitating collaboration and shared learning across councils, as well as wraparound support for safe and responsible deployment. More innovation investment in local government is also required given the financial constraints facing councils, and the ambitions to ‘de-risk’ innovation. 
  • The LGA supports the exploration of funding models and new procurement mechanisms to facilitate prototyping. Providing a mechanism for the collective purchasing of AI products that numerous councils could use is vital. A key function of the LGCDT will be an intelligent procurement operation. This function will analyse technology markets, facilitate collective bargaining, and enable councils to collectively procure products and services, addressing market failures and improving value for money. This approach will foster innovative procurement practices that promote localised economic growth and productivity. This would save public funds and foster collaboration between councils, and local government with other parts of the public sector. This could also ensure strong cyber security, data protection and ethical standards are created at a sector level. 
  • The LGA supports the proposal for a public sector wide sourcing strategy and where capacity can be targeted to support the ‘building of products’ that also meets the needs of local government. A more strategic approach to public sector purchasing, including maximising the opportunities within social value clauses and capabilities within partnership agreements, is vital, and these benefits shared equally across the public sector.
  • The LGA supports the Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence. Local government, in the £121 billion spent every year, has a significant role to play in fostering SME markets – as we demonstrated through our Technology Innovation Showcase.

 

6. Commit to transparency, drive accountability: the digital centre will work in the open publishing more performance data and act on it to improve accountability. Priority reforms include:

  • Empower public servants to work in the open to improve our services and build public trust. 
  • Create an inventory of services to measure the progress of service modernisation and publish a version of this in the open
  • Set an expectation that all central government departments publish their public-facing product roadmaps at least annually and talk about what services they’re working on and why. Encourage other public sector organisations to do the same.
  • Co-develop a methodology for measuring the administrative burden including the ‘time tax’ government places on people, and track progress on reducing it, involving civil society groups in the design.
  • Require departments to publish metrics at least annually on the outcomes they achieve, including service performance, value for money, resilience, digital inclusion and AI adoption.
  • Hold Secretaries of State accountable for their department’s performance against these measures, including through regular reviews with the Digital Inter-Ministerial Group (annually for the largest operational departments).

LGA’s view

  • Trust is earned over time through trustworthy, open practices which include transparent uses of technology and AI, and meaningful public engagement to understand public concerns and to facilitate resident input into solutions. As frontline public service providers, councils play a crucial role in fostering public trust in technology, particularly AI. Trust by communities in the use of AI will be key to ensuring the UK can unlock its potential. 
  • As well as working in the open, and driving accountability from senior leaders, more public engagement opportunities should be supported. Councils are currently grappling with how and when to engage residents in digital transformation initiatives, and councillors particularly as community leaders are facing challenges in addressing the concerns of the public. 
  • Local government is uniquely positioned to facilitate meaningful public engagement, with councillors serving as integral members of their communities and local democracy providing a platform for amplifying resident voices. To this end, robust public engagement strategies are essential. Public engagement can be resource-intensive, but it is crucial for building and maintaining public trust. More must be done to support this vital work, and innovative approaches by councils should be elevated, promoted, and learned from. 
  • Developing a robust ‘time-tax’ methodology will require a strong focus on digital inclusion, and consideration must be given to regional inequalities facing councils and communities in digital transformation. As stated initially, despite progress by councils in digitally transforming services, there have been worrying disparities. Digitally excluded residents, lacking the skills, motivation, confidence, and devices or connectivity to access online services, will be disproportionately ‘time-taxed’, as well as residents residing in local areas where the council is less digitally mature or in areas with poor connectivity. The LGA can work with Government in the development of this methodology, ensuring that local government context is understood and integrated for the benefits of communities across the country.

The State of Digital Government

The State of Digital Government Review, the case for change underpinning the Blueprint, identified over £45 billion per year, 4-7 per cent of public sector spend, in unrealised savings and productivity gains the public sector could make by utilising the £26 billion annual spend on technology and staffing more effectively. 

As acknowledged in our State of Digital Local Government (SDLG) response, it is particularly challenging to assess the current state of digital transformation in local government, given the diversity of experience, resources and lack of consistent data collection on digital transformation and technology estates. Yet, in this review we have seen a comprehensive assessment of the state of the sector and welcome the findings which reflect the opportunities and challenges that the local government digital community is facing every day when seeking to build the next generation of public services.

As the review highlights, satisfaction with public services is dropping, productivity has fallen and the public sector is facing a number of challenges and opportunities related to service delivery, technology infrastructure, data access, centralised co-ordination, skills and in the supply chain. While the review showcases the challenges councils experience are not novel to the sector, specific recognition is given to the independent and pronounced challenges that councils are facing and calls for digital reform to address them, these challenges include: 

  • Market concentration: some services are highly concentrated with a small number of suppliers dominating the market which without appropriate mitigations can often lead to higher prices, greater barriers for SME entry, lower levels of innovative products, and a lack of data and system interoperability that enables digital transformation.
  • Digital resourcing: local government has the lowest proportion of digital and data professionals in the workforce.
  • Supply chain dependency: due to a lower proportion of digital and data professionals there is an increasing dependency on outsourcing and a concentration supply chain, challenging compliance assurance. 
  • Cloud adoption: is lower in local government than central government due to a lack of capacity and skills.
  • Sector fragmentation: the inherent structure of local government increases fragmentation of talent buying and systems.
  • Citizen proximity and digital inclusion: there is a particular need to ensure services are inclusive as local government services feature so prominently in citizen lives. 

Innovative and sustainable solutions are needed to address the identified issues facing digital transformation and deployment across the country. Local government stands ready, with our experience, expertise, and connections to communities, to work with Central Government and the private and voluntary sectors to deliver them.

Services

The review finds that public sector services are under-digitised, and whilst councils and the wider public sector are making it easier for residents to access services and engage with their council online, overall digital services are not keeping pace with the rising citizen expectations driven by private sector standards. This is in part, the review cites, due to the fragmented nature of the public sector and archaic UK policy, such as the need for physical signatures. Overall, the review finds these missed opportunities are hindering productivity, life standards and the ability for public sector authorities like councils to prioritise communities effectively. 

Technology 

It is outlined in the review that spending on technology in the public sector is well below peers with council funding shortfalls identified as the most pronounced. The impact of which is increased costs and a sector heavily reliant on maintaining legacy systems. The cautious approach to spending on technology the review finds is hindering the adoption of emerging technology such as AI, holding back gains in automation, productivity and service delivery across the sector. In addition, the fragmented nature of the public sector, something we see within and between councils, is creating inefficiencies, with many organisations lacking standard integration frameworks and resulting in the need for costly bespoke point-to-point integration. 

To add to this, the review finds that while cloud adoption has been well taken up by central government, other public sector bodies are not keeping pace. Councils in particular have low levels of cloud adoption, due in part the review finds to lack of skills and capacity. Those that have adopted a cloud first approach are increasingly reliant on 1 to 2 providers the review finds, increasing risk and something the review notes needs to be addressed by central government. 

The review also finds that under-investment, the duplicative and inefficient technology landscape, and increased risk from cloud servers is driving increasing cyber risks. As is being experienced by councils across the country, cyber risk and attacks on the public sector are growing. The review concludes that the public sector is under-prepared for the current and evolving threats, and that the lack of co-ordinated effort to support and tackle this issue is hindering resolve to deal with incidents. 

Data and AI 

The review finds that councils have some of the lowest maturity in the public sector for using and managing data, in part due to technical limitations, risk averse cultures, unclear regulations, and different governance standards. This is replicated across the public sector and is not helped by strong sense of data ownership and reluctance to aggregate personal data. As the review recognises, work and legislative frameworks to tackle these problems have had limited impact. Despite examples the review lists, public sector data remains underutilised holding back AI, machine learning and advanced analytics potential.

Central and shared capabilities 

The review highlights how various attempts have been made to drive digital transformation in the public sector through central teams and shared capability. While these efforts have had impact, they have been focused on specific areas within the sector rather than on the broader public service reform. For example, the review points to the success of the Service Standard in supporting performance across 75 priority service areas run and administered by central government. Our own research into the use of a common service standard across local government shows that adoption is inconsistent due to various barriers. Our ongoing research will inform a series of recommendations for promoting and supporting the wider adoption of a common service standard that works across local government. 

People leadership and skills 

Highlighted in the review is the stark figure that only 2 per cent of council workforces across the country are digital and data professionals the lowest in all the public sector. The review notes that there is a consistent lack of digital skills in the whole sector, and the sector lacks training, and leadership needed to sufficiently deliver tech enabled programmes. Simply digital leadership and skills are not a priority. As a result, findings suggest that the public sector is not an attractive place to work for digital or data specialists due to dissatisfaction with pay, career progression, long tenure.

Digital Supply Chain 

The public sector digital supply chain the review finds has not evolved to the modern technology market. Across the public sector it notes, organisations are heavily reliant on external providers to support digital and data capabilities, have not adopted co-ordinated digital sourcing strategies, and funding for digital is not up to date with the sustained investment needed for supporting subscription-based services such as SaaS and Cloud, or funding continuous improvement of tech-estates, instead favouring new programmes and priorities. 

Root causes

The review identifies 5 root causes of its findings and challenges to public sector digital reform these are:

  • Leadership: There is a lack of incentive for prioritising digital services, reliability, or risk mitigation. Leaders are not rewarded for focusing on these aspects.
  • Structure: The public sector is fragmented, making it difficult for organisations to collaborate and share resources.
  • Measurement: There is no consistent way to measure digital performance across the public sector.
  • Talent: The public sector cannot compete with the private sector in terms of compensation and career progression, especially for senior leaders.
  • Funding: There is a lack of funding necessary to invest in digital transformation