The Challenges in Implementing Digital Change
Summary
Digital transformation is one of the most influential drivers of organisational change today, challenging public sector organisations to come up with new ways of serving their customers and the public. Our way of life is increasingly digital, and technology is now widespread in large-scale government change programmes.
This is clear in much of government’s thinking about how to ‘build back better’ following the COVID-19 pandemic and the planned use of technology in policy documents such as Global Britain in a Competitive Age: the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy and Build Back Better: our plan for growth.
These plans suggest that the need to deliver successful digital change will be even more crucial in future.
As a result, those working to develop public services need to understand how to manage digital change, by which we mean how government brings together data, processes, technology and people to deliver high-quality and effective services to, for and with citizens. This requirement creates a challenge for the skills and capabilities of everyone involved, including senior decision-makers, senior responsible owners, delivery teams, digital leaders, those providing assurance and suppliers and delivery partners.
However, government is not a ‘green field’ site and added complexity arises from the need to transform or change existing services. The difficulties lie in understanding and determining how to make changes to these, often ageing, systems, known as the ‘legacy environment’, and what it means to build new systems on top of them. This type of change requires a level of analysis before making decisions that does not fit comfortably into government’s standard mechanisms for approval, procurement, funding and assurance.