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Accelerate public sector transformation with the cloud: New technology
Accelerate public sector
transformation with the cloud: New technology
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Five challenges of digital transformation
Introduction
The cloud enables governments to accelerate the transformation of their services. Examples of successful transformation using the cloud, from Singapore to the UK, India to Iceland, Australia to Argentina and many countries in between, show that the public sector can respond to their citizens’ changing needs. However, they also show that transformation is about more than modern technology. There are common elements that underpin success. There are also common challenges. Some nations are well advanced, and those who started their transformation journey more recently can benefit from the experience of early adopters.
The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Institute has taught almost 5,000 government leaders in 23 countries through its Executive Education programme, in collaboration with leading academic and international non-governmental institutions. Participants deliver government services of varying types and sizes. They raise five common challenges.
Five common challenges to digital transformation:
1. Where to start
2. How to build capability
3. How to acquire new IT and manage legacy IT systems
4. The security of citizens’ data
5. How to design better digital services for citizens
This guide summarises the answers from experts, many of whom have first-hand experience of nation-scale transformation. There are links to real examples and additional resources, including technical guides. The guide is in five distinct sections that reflect the most common challenges. Find more insight and solutions for other transformation challenges specific to your region or service at the AWS Institute.
What new technology do I need and how can I manage legacy systems?
The expert contributors' summary
Digital transformation is not only about technology. It’s a mindset.
This section explains why it’s important to define the problem and how to assess the available technology solutions. It covers the need to simplify procurement to allow small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to access the process, with examples of how governments have achieved that. It also offers suggestions about how to deal with legacy technology.
Expert contributors
Liam Maxwell
Government Transformation Director, AWS
Shodhan Sheth
Enterprise modernisation, platforms and cloud service line lead at digital consultancy Thoughtworks
Warren Smith
Associate director and procurement specialist at transformation consultancy CURSHAW and former global digital marketplace programme director at the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS)
Identify the problem to fix
The technology that governments require for successful digital transformation is already available. The real challenges include:
1. Understanding the problem that you need to solve
2. Knowing the technology landscape well enough to identify the right solution
3. Simplifying procurement so SMEs are not excluded and your home-grown talent and national economy benefit
4. Building a technology ecosystem to solve other problems with the same components.
Digitalisation is about transforming the business model of government. New technology is simply the means by which that happens – and plenty of existing tools can accomplish it. Cloud technology offers flexible and scalable computing power and storage, with a vast range of plug-and-play services.
To get the best out of them demands a shift in mindset away from large, expensive systems that are built to deliver only one service, such as immigration, or border control, or tax collection. Instead, break services down into their building blocks, for example a form application component, which you can then use to deliver many services. These can be integrated via an application programming interface (API) to create the precise functions required.
Shodhan Sheth explains, “Think in terms of the capabilities you need and then ask what technologies can deliver them.” This is the opposite approach to starting with the monolithic system and trying to make it work with all the services you deliver. You can read more about breaking monolithic systems into microservices here.
Think needs not features
Warren Smith emphasises the need to engage with the marketplace early. You’ll find it easier to identify viable solutions if you understand the available tools, their strengths, weaknesses and overall maturity.
Smith recommends you approach vendors at the outset. “Talk about your programme, your organisational vision and contextualise your procurement within a strategic direction, so potential partners understand why you do these things. It’s almost warming up the market, so they become excited by the opportunity to collaborate with you.”
This time spent mapping the technology landscape is valuable and will help guide your next steps. The purpose is to evaluate how every solution fits your needs. It’s not about adoption of the latest technologies, such as blockchain, just because they’re new. Nor is it about investment in the tool with the most features – you won’t use most of them
Justify the cost
Cost is a common concern in digital transformation: they must be visible and managed. However, Shodhan says investment in new technology must be set against the cost of having to maintain legacy systems, which can account for a significant percentage of IT spend. For example, in the UK the government spends half its annual IT budget on maintaining legacy technology. Over time, Shodhan explains, money spent on new tools will be a fraction of what was being spent to keep outdated systems in place. You can appraise this through tools such as this Government Workload Assessment.
And it isn’t all about cost. Digitalised systems bring additional benefits, such as the ability to scale quickly, roll out additional services and introduce more modern security features.
Make procurement simple
To get the best out of existing tools demands a shift in mindset away from large, expensive systems that quickly lose their usefulness
Innovative technology and traditional public sector processes do not always align. Procurement processes can be complex, expensive and time-consuming, which can be a deterrent to small or medium-sized enterprises. They may also limit participation in tenders to big technology firms and consultancies who have the resources to support the process.
Smith shares an example of this in the UK, and how it was resolved, in more detail in the case study below. “The SME market was saying, ‘your contracts are complex, bureaucratic and create barriers for us to do business with government,’” he says. “They hadn’t got a team of lawyers to read contracts, so either they didn’t read them and signed them anyway, or else they did read them and stepped away because it was just too horrific.”
When the UK government wanted to make procurement more accessible to SMEs, it took these steps:
1. Created a digital marketplace of pre-approved suppliers, including SMEs
2. Rewrote and simplified contracts to eliminate irrelevant information, make complex language clearer and better meet the user need
3. Required civil servants to use the digital marketplace when procuring services
The UK government’s Digital Marketplace allowed some departments to get services up and running within days. The new Digital Marketplace replaced a system that ran for four years and 10 months, during which time government spent £178 million through it. In the first four years and 10 months of the Digital Marketplace, that amount rose to £2.8 billion. Around 50 per cent of government-bought services came from SMEs. The simplified process made it much easier for government to buy services from vendors other than the usual big providers.
The UK government experience benefits other governments. The Australian government worked with the UK GDS team to stand up a version of Digital Marketplace in six weeks, subsequently adapting it further to meet their needs. UK GDS worked with the Indonesian National Public Procurement Agency in 2020 on simpler contracts, bringing greater clarity to a previously complex system.
You (probably) don't need a bespoke solution for hosting
Despite the advance of cloud technology, many governments believe they need to host things themselves. This is partly because they’re concerned about the risks of putting services in the cloud, and there is a dedicated section in this series of transformation articles that focuses on security. This describes how national defence agencies and cybersecurity organisations, world leading banks and law-enforcement agencies trust hyperscale cloud platforms.
There are times when an internal solution might be needed, such as when you want to experiment with an emerging technology or provide something unique. However, today’s external solutions are faster, better and more flexible. “You may want to create a bespoke solution for differentiating capabilities, and use a commodity solution for undifferentiating capabilities such as storage and compute,” concludes Shodhan.
Managing legacy IT
Governments have legacy systems that can’t be switched off immediately and need to be managed. Replacement of a legacy system must allow for decades of legacy technological debt, which are the features and problems built up with each successive change to the system.
If it can’t be replaced immediately, then a system must be maintained. Maxwell says, “In the UK, we built a government company, Crown Hosting, that took the legacy off people’s hands and looked after it until you could turn it off.”
Not every legacy feature should be replicated on the new system, and it’s a mistake to try, according to Shodhan. For example, a new loan application system might not need to support a traditional call centre as well as a website, email and mobile messaging channels. Its users, typically younger people, might not want to use the phone. Challenger banks (retail banks whose non-traditional model is challenging high-street banks) show that an app and a chat interface can replace a call centre and a bricks-and-mortar branch. Once again, the user need must come first.
As Shodhan puts it, “The key is to offload capabilities, not applications. Application is the language of technology. Capability is the language of business. If you offload a capability, then you can get rid of legacy tech more quickly.”
The key is to offload capabilities, not applications. Application is the
language of technology. Capability is the language of business. If you offload a capability, then you can get rid of legacy tech more quickly"
How to buy new technology case study
Simpler contracts improve transparency and boost competition among suppliers
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Additional resources
Expert contributors
Liam Maxwell
Government Transformation Director, AWS
Liam Maxwell is director of government transformation at AWS. He leads the global AWS team that helps senior government leaders accelerate their modernisation and reform programmes. He was a civil servant from 2012 to 2018.
As the UK Government’s first chief technology officer, he led the reforms that enabled the modernisation of government technology and digital services. He was subsequently national technology advisor, responsible for accelerating growth in the digital economy, inward investment and creating intergovernmental and international trade partnerships post-Brexit.
He was twice elected (in 2007 and 2011) as a councillor and served as a cabinet member for policy at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. Between 2004 and 2011, he was head of computing at Eton College, Windsor. Prior to these roles, he was an IT director in FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 business service companies. He has a strong interest in education and is a founder of Holyport College, a Free School near Maidenhead, Berkshire, UK.
Shodhan Sheth
Enterprise modernisation, platforms and cloud service line lead at digital consultancy Thoughtworks.
Shodhan Sheth is enterprise modernisation, platforms and cloud service line lead at digital consultancy Thoughtworks.
He has more than 15 years of experience in software development. He has helped clients transform their business through technology. He brings together business, technology and consulting to tackle clients’ modernisation and platform challenges.
Warren Smith
Associate director and procurement specialist at transformation consultancy CURSHAW and former global digital marketplace programme director at the UK’s Government Digital Service.
Warren Smith is associate director with commercial lifecycle consultancy CURSHAW and co leads the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) ‘United for Smart Sustainable
Cities’ (U4SSC) Thematic Group on Procurement for Smart Sustainable Cities. He has more than 25 years’ experience in procurement and supply-chain management, across private and public sectors, leading transformative projects to introduce new ways of thinking and working in public procurement and contracting.
At the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) Digital Marketplace, he led the introduction of user-centred, design-led, data-driven and open approaches to public contracting.
Editor
Sarah Ryle AWS Institute senior content manager