Public sector IT association Socitm has said local public services need to further exploit the rapid implementations of digital services during 2020 over the next year.
It has conveyed this as a key message in its new report on Digital trends in local public services 2021, saying the response to the Covid-19 pandemic should be seen as a big step forward rather than having held up progress.
“There is a need to consolidate and build on the energy and changes made in 2020 to embed the new ways of working,” the report says.
“The pressures facing public sector chief information officers will increase, not level off in 2021, but so will the opportunities.”
It says the way public sector bodies have developed and launched new services in days has changed expectations about acceptable risks and made them more genuinely agile.
It has also demonstrated the crucial role of CIOs and encouraged many organisations to revisit their plans. CIOs are having to complete the roll out of new digital services from 2020, often with an emphasis on remote working and automation, but also look at new approaches taking in localism and urban redesign.
Six steps
The report highlights six steps for CIOs in public services over this year: prioritising cyber security and data protection; building data science and predictive analytics as a new discipline; creating new models for investment in digital; redesigning services to embrace digital methods; accelerating the use of artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT) and robotic process automation; and developing new models of collaboration with staff, partners, suppliers and the public.
It also predicts there will be increasing attention on emerging technologies, including IoT, low code development, AI, 5G, drones, driverless cars, mobility-as-a-service and gamification.
Martin Ferguson, Socitm’s director of policy and research, said: “We have seen digitally mature public sector organisations fare better than those with a traditional IT focus.
“This was not because of ‘clever technology’, but because of how IT was used in purposeful and agile ways, a key factor which the report picks up as it shines the spotlight on this year’s key digital trends”.
Image from iStock, Dilak Kaisataporn
