Study across 95 central government departments, bodies and organisations finds that legacy infrastructure is hindering the adoption of automation and other emerging technologies

Research commissioned by Zaizi, a leader in end-to-end digital services, found over half of government departments are seeing slow or partial progress in digitising their processes, with even less exploring automation. As a result, government digital transformation projects are not as efficient as they could be and not future-proofed to take advantage of emerging technologies and meet the ever-rising expectations of the British public.

The reason why departments are seeing poor progress could be because government departments are lacking the skills, expertise and vision needed to execute robust digital transformation projects. Legacy infrastructure is also stagnating progress with 65% of the respondents saying their existing ICT infrastructure is hindering or partially hindering the success of implementing digital services and automating their processes. The survey also found that 50 per cent of digital transformation projects are overlooking technologies that include: Internet of Things (IoT), Robotic Process Automation, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

When asked if their organisation had the skills and knowledge to apply these technologies, respondents replied overwhelmingly that they either ‘didn’t know’ or had none. Robotic Process Automation scored the highest for no skills (33 per cent), whilst a quarter (26 per cent) said that they had ‘some’ skills to implement IoT. 39 per cent did not know if they had the skills and knowledge to apply AI.

In contrast, respondents were more confident about their ability to implement more established technology platforms such as cloud services and Software-as-a-Service – with 44 per cent and 29 per cent respectively stating they had ‘quite a lot of’ skills and knowledge in these areas.

Aingaran Pillai, CEO, Zaizi, commented: “Every organisation is a software company of some guise in today’s world, yet this research indicates that government is yet to embrace this mindset. However, it’s hard to do so when you don’t have the skills and expertise to imagine digital transformation projects not just in the context of today, but also tomorrow. The risk is that current projects will become a burden on the public purse because in five years time – or less – they will need to be revamped.

“Brexit looms large on the horizon and will compound the digital limbo government departments find themselves in. In the short term, it will need to digitise rapidly and smartly to minimise disruption to how Government does business, but longer term now is the time to think more creatively about how this digital chasm is addressed from early talent capture through to embracing new ways working,” Pillai continued.

Other key findings include:

• When asked what the biggest barrier to replacing their legacy infrastructure is 73 per cent cited staff resources; 59 per cent said staff skills and 54 per cent outlined a culture that is resistant to change – with almost one in five (17 per cent) highlighting a lack of leadership
• When considering key success factors for digital transformation, improving data security (81 per cent), meeting standards (73 per cent) and knowledge transfer (72 per cent) were ranked as the top three priorities.
• Despite acknowledging the lack of internal resources and skills, just 42 per cent stated that working with SMEs was of high importance, indicating that SMEs – or the SME government tenders target – is front of mind.
   

Pillai concludes: “Digital transformation is complex – the pace of technical change has never been so great. That’s why it is imperative that agility is built into projects so that in the future they can flex to incorporate new platforms with ease and we can avoid the dark days of vendor lock-ins that strangled public sectors’ ability to innovate. Culture is a key element to delivering the digital agenda, so that over half thought there was a resistance to change is concerning – especially given that knowledge transfer and empowering employees (65 per cent) were considered high ranking success factors. The intent and the will are there, but there is still much work to be done on the digital agenda.”

To find out more download the full report 
 

Notes

The survey was undertaken by Zaizi & GovNews Direct during August 2018 and asked 119 individuals across 95 unique central government departments, executive agencies, non departmental public bodies and regulators.

If you would like to speak to us about the survey get in touch. 

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