Why Digital Best Practice Is Important For Public Sector Innovation

Technology offers enormous potential for improving efficiency, overhauling ageing IT infrastructure, and improving citizen service in an increasingly digital world. Here, we explore how the right approach to legacy technology and data management can bring significant benefits to public sector organisations.

Legacy systems

All public sector bodies carry a significant investment in legacy IT, with data often siloed in disparate systems. The data landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, especially during the pandemic, when innovations in data management played an important role in protecting vulnerable people. Better data sharing and integration is one of the keys to successful digital public service provision. In its Digital and Data Strategy policy paper published last year, the UK government outlined plans for integrating emerging digital technologies across the public sector whilst identifying risks associated with legacy systems.

Over many years, legacy technology has racked up a growing list of problems. In the long run, “making do” means security, data protection, efficiency, productivity, service delivery, and value for money are all at risk. Due to the wide variety of bespoke and outdated legacy technology used by public sector bodies, compatibility issues can seriously hinder users’ ability to perform their duties. And, rebuilding these applications to work with modern platforms can be prohibitively expensive.

These systems are also expensive and complex to support, as the necessary knowledge and experience to maintain these aging legacy technologies becomes less readily available. 

Despite these challenges, the pandemic has taught us that there are solutions available to address the impact on technology delivery. From improving bottom-line financial results, enhancing efficiency, and supporting the transition to remote working, technology offers a range of tools organisations can take advantage of.

Better data = better decision making

It’s no secret that there is a wealth of data used by the public sector, which only continues to grow year on year. Additionally, organisations are sharing more data between themselves – and with third parties and partners – which is often held in different sources, creating further hurdles to gain insights from these datasets. How can public sector organisations collaborate better in order to make high-value decisions and policy recommendations? 

A recent ONS Statistically Speaking podcast discussed how to combine administrative data with census data in order to get a clearer picture of how decision-making can be improved at a local level. By combining those datasets, local councils are able to compare regional data with twin regions and draw upon each others’ experiences, see what is working and what can be improved. For example, a region in the north might have the same demographic, education status and population as a region down south but policies may differ in each region. 

Cloud 2.0

The public sector needs an infrastructure, provided by cloud computing, if digital transformation is to be successful. In light of this, bodies at all levels need to adopt these technologies, especially since citizens, businesses, patients, and others have increasingly high expectations and demands from public services.

In the case of legacy applications that are simply too old to be moved to the cloud, the ideal option may be to re-architect or re-purchase in a cloud-friendly version. However, for organisations with a limited budget, that may be out of the question. And recently, it has been recognised that ‘lift and shift’ may simply be moving a problem from point A to point B.

Organisations need to decide whether they want to keep running old infrastructure and applications, which may negatively affect the user experience by requiring them to use only certain legacy devices to access them, or move only the front-end interface to the cloud. A more digital approach would allow users to access their services without disrupting legacy systems. And as a result, legacy systems can gradually be phased out.

Wrapping up

Digital transformation to date could be described as somewhat sporadic and inconsistent when looking at the public sector as a whole. In many cases, data quality is poor and it is stored in silos, limiting the insights that can be drawn. As the government strives to transform the way public services are provided, breaking down data silos is a key priority.

Improved operational efficiency as well as a more collaborative and productive work environment are key benefits of modernising public sector IT infrastructure. The next phase is to move toward cloud infrastructure as the norm rather than the exception. In the coming years, the UK public sector could become a leader in this area if it is bold and ambitious in its approach to digital transformation and as a result, the outcome would be transformative both for the government and the public.