The UK government’s digital agenda has been cast as a centrepiece of the public sectors cost savings initiatives, designed to tackle the national deficit, with 2014 positioned to become a breakout year for the strategy.
The digital agenda initially undertaken back in 2012, is set to come into its own this year as services make the transition from trial periods to live iterations. The move to transform UK public services into becoming ‘Digital by Default’ represents one of the largest changes over the last two centuries, in how government services are delivered to the public.
With the changing ways in which people access information, with increasing expectations for 24-hour online access point for public services, the digital agenda is aimed at bringing public services into the digital age and help the government to meet increasing public expectations for a 24-hour online access point for public services.
The strategy has attempted to push the uptake of open source services and move away from proprietary enterprise systems employed in the past, such as Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. While the move to open source is expected to generate significant savings and provide increased flexibility, currently the public sector still relies heavily on these legacy systems.
The potential of the digital strategy has yet to be seen, with full utilisation of digitals services and the realisation of potential benefits having yet to be seen. Big data is one such example, with the digital strategy encouraging the sharing of data between departments, allowing for the employment of advanced analytics across department data that could never be employed without the shift to digital.
In total the government has revealed that it expects to create £500 million in savings from its digital-by-default agenda in 2014, eventually achieving savings of between £1.7 and £1.8 billion each year. The strategy, in the government’s own terms, is to: “redesign its digital services so well that people prefer to use them” is a fairly simplistic notion but covers a huge range of departments and services. Currently of the 25 services selected for digitalisation in 2013, one is already live, 15 are currently in beta, and six are currently in alpha while three remain in discovery, with further services set for digitalisation over the coming year.
Technology is also being used to drive the government policy of promoting increased transparency and proving the UK public with increasing oversight into the workings of governments.
Current government schemes in progress include Universal Credit, which replaces multiple welfare payment programmes, and the transition of public services to the GOV.UK domain, the new location for services and information replacing Directgov and Business Link, while offering a cleaner interface for users with faster service speeds.
Digital strategies including the movement from paper based sources to digital services have helped to reduce costs and meet government green targets, while increasing efficiencies and ease of access, while helping the government to meet environmental targets.
The implementation of electronic invoices in the NHS has already helped to drive savings and efficiency targets, while the cloud based public procurement network known as the G-cloud has helped to promote the use of SMEs by departments.The former director of the G-Cloud has urged public sector departments to have confidence to take increased risks in order to drive savings.
Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, said. “we need to make more savings so the country can live within its means. Our digital-by-default agenda is part of our long-term economic plan to tackle the deficit we inherited. I’m pleased to announce today that we expect to save at least £500 million from IT spend this year, on top of the £500 million we saved from government’s IT spend last year and £250 million the year before”.