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I think that it is only ever likely to be a success if you’re going through any kind
of digital transformation, if you have absolute support at the top of an organisation.
It’s much better if digital is led and championed by somebody who is responsible at board level
for driving change throughout the organisation and transformation.
I think it’s really important to have big hitters, if you will, at board level. Because
when you’re having the conversations at board level that says, “Should we invest
in a piece of technology? Should we invest in a particular approach? Should we deliver
that change?” you need someone that understands it. You need someone who understands it and
can genuinely advocate for it.
It needs to be somebody who has a real passion for the subject and that can persuade their
colleagues, and is a credible individual that can persuade their colleagues of the reason
for change.
The benefits of digital by default are numerous. I think what I would see as the principle
benefit is that in order to drive the sort of change that we, along with the rest of
the public sector, are having to drive to deliver better for less and critically, to
take a huge amount of money out of the business during the course of this spending review,
we’ve got to change the paradigm of how we’re working.
It’s got to be thought of as a process of dramatic transformation.
What is important is that it’s taken seriously by the people at the top.
Politicians don’t like things going wrong, and that tends to lead to a fairly risk averse
approach to new ideas and new things. So my advice would be find something which is really
reasonably easy to do, try something different and then move on from there.
I think that the most important thing is that the person feels as though they understand
technology and can see it’s possibility, and are not afraid to ask questions about
the way technologies are used, and the way that they might be used in the future.
I think the secondary thing is also an ability to inspire and lead and put out the art of
the possible.
To my mind, it’s not just about bringing in digital experts who can tell us how to
do the business differently; it’s about re-thinking our business in a digital way.
You genuinely need to understand what the user needs today in language that they would
understand, rather than language that the organisation understands. They may not be
the same thing. But also to recognise things that may appear to be relatively small and
minor, but actually are really big for those users.
I believe that as a country, we should help unlock their full potential, and that is more
achievable if they are able to use technology than if they are not. And for me, government
needs to take a lead in that, and it needs to take the lead by creating brilliant services.
It’s hard, you know, it’s hard when you’re the lone voice, but I think the great news
is that the tide is in your favour.
We’re trying to reform and transform the way we do business, so partly it’s about
increasingly automating functions that we provide, which makes it more efficient to
provide them, but also makes it much better for our users. People want us to be online
now, they want to be able to do things online, and we need to be able to be responding to
that.
We’ve got a great pilot project going in Kent, which is looking at a virtual court,
where we’ve had so far 2,500 people appear in court on video technology instead of having
to travel to court. This has so far saved 300 policeman hours. But it really just makes
it much more convenient for people, and most of the people that we deal with in justice,
or many of them, are actually vulnerable or they’re victims or they’re witnesses.
So we’re trying to give them a better service, and it also happens to be more efficient.
I think that whoever is chosen as a digital board member is likely to be somebody that
feels inspired and feels keen to make sure the message is spread, and I would urge them
to do so both in, out of the board, and all around it. This is complex change, this is
hard change, and you’ve got to feel as thought the person is somebody that you would want
to listen and will want to work with – if not on a daily basis – but on a monthly,
weekly, yearly basis. That’s the first thing.
I think the second thing is you’ve also got to make sure that you feel as though they’ve
got that digital credibility.
Well, at the heart of change is that people feel it here.
People change is they’re incentivised to change. It was often we tend to assume that
people will change because we’ve told them to. Nobody ever changes because they’ve
been threatened. They change to something because they perceive it better. If you look
at the way a number of us use internet banking now, its because we perceive the service to
be better and we perceive that being able to do your banking at 11 o’clock at night
is better than standing in a queue on a rainy Saturday morning.
The notion of innovation, which cycles very quickly, where people try things out, they
have an alpha release, a beta release and then it’s live, all of those concepts are
not things that are within the normal way we do things. It’s not the way we do policy,
it’s not the way you make laws, it’s not the way we do our regular business. So getting
that notion of agility into the way departments think I think is going to be the real challenge.
That notion that you’ll try something, you might fail and then you’ll move onto something
else, sounds fantastic when written down, but actually making that happen when you’ve
got to satisfy a minister who’s having a hard time in parliament over something which
you’ve tried and failed is something which I think many civil servants would really struggle
with. Because ultimately, we spend our time trying not to put our ministers in harm’s
way.
I think that the opportunity is enormous. All the momentum is with us, both the macro-economic
environment, but also the potential to really empower individuals through better use of
technology, both inside and outside government. But it needs to be bedded down and it needs
to be brought into senior levels. It needs to keep having that top support, it needs
to have the board members in place and through every single department, people who are able
to affect the change and help with the change. So I am optimistic but it’s going to be
hard work.