Tech can play a leading role in ambitious plans to make the service ‘more agile, mission-focused and more productive’, according to Peter Corpe, Industry Leader in UK Public Sector at Appian
The government’s plans to reform the civil service are much in the news this week. Critics are concerned at the prospect of job losses and cuts to levels of service. Yet the government and others suggest that more can be done, and better, by embracing new technologies.
Photo by Arlington Research / Unsplash
Cuts and other such ‘analogue’ measures certainly seem part of the planned package. Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that the central service, ‘would and can become smaller’, with more civil servants working outside London to ensure that ‘the state can get better value for money’.
Despite this, yesterday Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote to some half a million civil servants across the UK to say that he seeks to make the service, ‘more agile, mission-focused and more productive’ by empowering staff.
He said: ‘We know many of you feel shackled by bureaucracy, frustrated by inefficiency and unable to harness new technology. Your talent has been constrained for too long.’
As we reported last week, research by Appian and Coforge suggests that the UK’s 6.12m public sector staff lose, on average, five hours a week each to tedious, unnecessary ways of working. So what can be done to remove those ‘shackles’?
Peter Corpe, Industry Leader, UK Public Sector at Appian; photo courtesy of Appian
Peter Corpe, Industry Leader in the UK Public Sector at Appian, says: ‘With the top three reported obstacles to efficiency being manual and repetitive tasks, a need to access multiple legacy systems to view or enter the same information and a lack of training and support, it’s clear that major reform is needed to support civil servants in their current roles.
‘With millions of hours at stake, sadly it becomes easy to blame bureaucracy, and in particular employees. Civil servants are under immense pressure to deliver on programmes that are critical to how our country operates.
‘Equipping the civil service with better tools creates a virtuous cycle. Workers spend more time helping citizens and citizens waste less time navigating bureaucracy, ie having to call HMRC multiple times, rearranging hospital appointments, chasing council services, National productivity then rises as people focus on their actual jobs.
‘By automating low-value admin tasks and resolving inefficiencies through process automation and AI technologies, this offers government a real opportunity to work more efficiently. This means more time for the strategic and value-driven activities to improve service levels and directly impact citizen outcomes for the better.’
On Thursday, the Prime Minister is due to reveal more details about the government’s plans for reform…
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