You may have noticed it’s a lot easier these days to get things “done” online with government departments. After years of relying on the public to post forms or queue in an office to pick up the right documents, government bodies are now using the cloud to launch services which in the private sector would probably make headlines for being years ahead of their time.
Whether it’s filing and paying taxes online, renewing a passport, booking a driving test or registering to vote, online services are instantly and seamlessly connecting citizens with the information and services they need in their daily lives. When they are accessed, users are also finding data is being freed from silos so the latest information is made available and acted on.
The Driver and Vehicle Safety Agency (DVSA) is a good example. Deloitte has developed an innovative app for the organisation that allows assessors to check and record all aspects of a vehicle’s safety digitally, reducing processing times and removing the risk of lost paperwork. It can scan licence plates for immediate access to a vehicle’s test history and take and upload photos of any faults. When a vehicle passes, it is certified instantly.
This is a classic use-case for cloud technology. Opening up access from any mobile device or location ensures the safe and efficient transfer and processing of safety information, and means enforcement teams out on the roads have up-to-date data at their fingertips, so they can more easily identify unsafe and non-compliant vehicles. And, using only serverless technologies means it’s infinitely scalable and cost effective.
Mobile services such as this would not be possible without the cloud. It enables a new way of developing solutions to support business challenges and it frees up an organisation from traditional functions such as hosting and servicing data centres and patching software, allowing services to run via a third-party platform and empowering employees to focus on more value-added functions.
According to Kerry Appleton-Norman, partner for public sector cloud at Deloitte, the appeal of this approach comes down mainly to speed, flexibility and, sometimes, cost.
Moving to the cloud not only saves time on purchasing and managing physical environments, it also opens up access to a suite of software on the internet as a service. It is far quicker to amend these to an organisation’s requirements, rather than have software written from scratch. “Traditional procurement and development processes could take several months, by which time an organisation’s needs may have moved on,” Appleton-Norman explains.
By moving to the cloud, Appleton-Norman has found that Deloitte’s public sector clients are able to embrace the pioneering attitude found at exciting startups where new ideas can be tested at breakneck speed.
“The cloud empowers companies to be part of the new wave of fail-fast, agile development,” she says. “With the cloud you can leverage the necessary storage capacity very quickly and there are usually software packages you can try out and adapt that already work on that platform. The real beauty for organisations is that the technology enables them to get pilot projects set up really quickly. If they work, it’s great, if they don’t, they can be shut down immediately with no extra expense incurred.”
This flexibility applies to the server space required, too. One of the drawbacks of traditional software development has always been that a server would be commissioned and set up to permanently handle the peak flow of traffic it needs to deal with.
“You would typically end with situations where a computer system was set up to be able to permanently work at maximum performance, but that’s just not necessary all year round,” says Appleton-Norman.
“It works out way too expensive to have that capability available to you all the time when, say, a tax authority only needs to handle their maximum level of traffic around particular deadlines at known times of the year. Most organisations will have peaks that are far more efficiently handled by moving to the cloud where capacity can be dialled up or down as needed, it doesn’t have to be permanently available.”
Experience of working with public sector bodies has shown there is more to digital transformation than the project at hand. One of the biggest impacts is a change in how the organisation serves the public and this often changes the roles of employees. For this reason, Appleton-Norman believes they need to be aware of the need for strategy and to consider the knock-on effects of what they are trying to achieve.
“Most organisations start out considering the cloud as part of their digital transformation work, they generally want to work more efficiently and provide new frictionless online service to the public,” she says.
“The thing they don’t always realise, without guidance, is that the programme will impact their entire organisation, it’s not just about servers and software. If you’re rolling out new interfaces that staff or the public use, you will also need to look at how to best structure your organisation to do this and how to equip your staff with the right skills to execute. A move to the cloud is part of a broader organisational transformation, and organisations need to understand how this will often require a change to the culture of the organisation. How can you support increased collaboration, how do you deal with more focus on the citizen, what are the new roles and responsibilities that are going to be created?”
This extra strategic perspective empowers public sector bodies to test and launch innovative services that make citizens’ lives much more convenient while also getting the most out of IT budgets. Forward planning also makes sure that the organisation’s employees are prepared for their changed roles in serving the public in a new way.
