Zaizi 2023 review: Thought leadership and insights in digital government

Jamil Hussein

As we enter 2024, we’re excited to continue sharing insights and thought leadership around our work transforming digital government.

Last year, we published over 50 blogs and news articles covering:

Before highlighting some of those posts from 2023, here’s a video we produced at the start of last year giving an overview of our impact on government organisations. 

Now, we recap some of our most popular content from the past year…

Our thought leadership

At the start of the year, austerity was in the news, and our founder and CEO Ainga looked at how that could impact digital public services. Ainga also explored how consultancies can help government organisations bridge the skills gap.

Managing director Esther shone a light on how to manage legacy tech — something the government has talked about a lot this year. 

Legacy was also on your lips at our roundtable with the Home Office at the Digital Government conference. At our 100% oversubscribed session, potential clients were keen to see how we’d turned a stalled legacy system project into an award-winning success. 

Later in the year we launched our ebook on how to overcome the inevitable challenges in government agile delivery. We dig in for deep insights on how to get user research right, how to master ambiguity in alpha, and how to unlock success through sustained technical input.

With government and CDDO plans for transformation continuing to gather pace, we thought about “India Stack” and what we can learn from India’s journey. 

Given that we work with clients in the secure space, we published thought leadership on implementing user-centric design principles to build a security positive culture, modernising secure legacy systems, and how we’re exploring a concept for national security vetting.

Meanwhile, as the buzz around AI reached a crescendo, product manager Steven talked about the risks of new tech obscuring the problems we’re trying to solve. We also shared our thoughts on the pros and cons of a ChatGPT for code we’ve trialled. It’s fair to say we’re big fans!

Finally, our thought leadership made it to several external publications. Just a few weeks ago, on Civil Service World, managing director Clayton spoke about why digital deliverability is vital for 2024 election policy pledges. 

We also published on systems thinking, the importance of building inclusive teams, while Ainga spoke about how his business journey began in a recent interview. 

You can read all our insights in our blogs section.

Download ebook: How to overcome the inevitable challenges in government agile delivery

Digital government: our impact in 2023

We did a lot to expand our expertise and focus on solving the biggest challenges in the public sector. 

We launched our new Transformation Day service and have run this successfully for several government departments. 

Homing in on solving long-standing challenges by bridging the policy-delivery gap, we introduced our Digital Read: User-Centred Policy Design service.

And we rethought our brand promise. Digital government is hard: together we’ll succeed, is our commitment to support our partners overcome their digital challenges and achieve success. 

As well as starting our external newsletter, we also created our first LinkedIn newsletter. Digital Government Roundup provides a curated summary of the latest news and views around digital government. We also launched another newsletter in December called Security Insights, which focuses on security and cybersecurity news and views.

Of course, amid all this, we’ve also been busy delivering. We’ve collaborated with DLUHC on diverse projects, enhancing policy outcomes through user-centric design, Agile methodologies, and technical support. Our efforts improved housing standards, data insights/access to data, and empowered local councils and citizens by modernising services and creating analytical tools.

For the Home Office and Border Force, we developed services to make operations efficient, modernise legacy and enhance digital security. We’re engaged with several other government partners on security-related products and services that are helping make the UK the best and safest place to live and work. 

Find out more about our work in our 2023 wrap up.

Transformation Day: Solve your complex digital problems and create a roadmap for success… in just a few days.

Zaizi’s accolades

We’ve been recognised externally for our approach to diversity and inclusion. We won four awards in the year, including the Growing Business Diversity and Inclusion Champion of the Year, the 2023 Women in Tech Employer Award and the ChangeMaker award at the Women in Software Awards.

More high-profile recognition came when US media giant Newsweek named us as one of the Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces® in the UK for 2023.

The National Cyber Security Centre selected us as a CyberFirst partner for 2023/24 and a member of its Industry Advisory Board. Organisations are selected based on their contribution across the wide range of CyberFirst activities.

Earlier in the year, our apprentices made headlines — even getting a mention from the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. We were also listed 8th in the Elite Business top 100 SMEs in 2023.

Meanwhile, we highlighted the stories of our talented team. Several shared their career journeys – from graduates starting out, to those who switched careers, to even long-tenured employees reflecting on their years of growth at Zaizi. We became a signatory of the Armed Forces Covenant, which means we encourage the recruiting and training ex-service people.

We aim to support professional growth at all levels while cultivating a diverse and inclusive workplace. Tracey blogged earlier in the year about how bringing together teams from different backgrounds means we can design public services which are inclusive and accessible to all.

And finally, we delved deep into the essence of our organisation’s culture. The values at the heart of our organisation’s culture really get to the core of who we are. Here’s how we developed them last year and why they shape everything we do

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