The news this week that government departments must find 5% budget cuts, might make a good headline.
But in the context of savings from implementing digital workflows and questioning ways of working, it’s not very ambitious.
We know that a number of government departments now make use of cloud-based platforms such as ServiceNow.
But what’s not clear is whether there is a robust system for assessing whether work moved to digital platforms passes the, ‘why on earth are we doing this?’ test.
All too often at GWIT we see businesses wanting to replicate manual processes on digital systems.
We’ve always done it this way
… is a common refrain. It’s understandable because change can feel threatening. But taking such a stance is a wasted opportunity.
Implementing digital workflows is a golden opportunity to step back and reflect.
Why are we doing this?
What value does it add?
Can we automate this?
Done well this process always delivers significant productivity gains. Plus it frees people up to do more valuable work.
Culling ’10 projects’ per department is an arbitrary number. It certainly won’t be effective if the remaining projects all continue to run inefficiently.
Huge BAU productivity gains are there to be had across the public sector, from GP surgeries to government departments.
In a post-Brexit world, will there be innovation aplenty, along with better ways of working across our public services? Or just more of the same old done in a way Sir Humphrey would be proud of, but pretending to be 5% cheaper?