Mark Gibbison, AVP Global Public Sector, Unit4, explores how local authority reform presents both challenges and opportunities and why getting IT strategy right will be critical to delivering effective, future-ready public services.
On paper the proposed drive for local authority reform in England is logical. By integrating councils into unitary authorities, there is an opportunity to streamline the delivery of services and reduce costs, meaning much-needed resources can be re-directed to the frontline. However, if the very essence of devolution is handing authority back to people at a local level, how do you ensure the merging of larger authorities with smaller ones delivers an equitable share of power and resources? And equally, if devolution means centralising services in a far-flung hub remote from the local needs and issues of a community, how does this fulfil the original brief?
Ensuring a fair and balanced outcome clearly involves some politics, but how these new unitary authorities approach their IT strategies could become symbolic of the tension between stated ambitions and the reality of merging distinct authorities. According to Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC), local authorities are already facing a significant funding shortfall which could hamstring any efforts at reform.
IT transformation remains a huge priority for the public sector, with a distinct set of challenges. Resources are tight, the in-house skills and knowledge that are essential to ensuring a successful implementation are scarce, and meeting the needs of a workforce based both in the office and in the field can be hard.
Individual authorities that have already been in the throes of their own transformation strategies are now having to consider the prospect of further amalgamation. This could introduce new headaches caused by integrating different applications running the same business processes and having to decide the best way forward. Every authority has a range of legacy systems that must be assessed, and a plan agreed on whether to keep or remove those older systems.
Tied to this is the crucial goal of any transformation which is to enable greater integration between applications so that public sector bodies and professionals have a single view of all the information within their organisations. If you are joining one or more distinct authorities together, you must map out how to integrate these systems, while ensuring data quality and security across the whole IT environment is consistent.
Avoid the decision-making doldrums
Addressing these challenges has probably not been the top priority for every local authority Chief Executive, but while the government has opened a consultation phase, decision-makers should avoid entering the decision-making doldrums – particularly around IT strategy. It could be argued it does not make sense to invest time considering IT strategies if the make-up of the future authority is not known. On the contrary, this is exactly the time to be preparing. If the authorities making up the potential new entity can understand their IT footprint before they begin the process of integration, it will give them a headstart. This will lead to a more successful IT transformation, which should be online sooner meaning less disruption to essential services for the public.
Organisations should set themselves a challenge to see how their IT systems could fulfil the ambitions of the Devolution White Paper to achieve system harmonisation and standardisation, enable interoperable data and integrated workflows and cloud-based accessibility for employees to key IT systems.
Making this happen will require careful consideration of skills development – how do you build confidence among all levels of staff to use new systems? This is also a change management exercise, so you must get employees comfortable with new ways of working and completing tasks. It should also involve engaging stakeholders at every stage in the design of the new systems for the combined authority.
As PAC outlines in its paper there are different options including outsourcing systems to a third party or pooling resources through a shared services model. Based on its research, shared services are making a resurgence. Not only do they allow greater efficiency through consolidation of IT systems, but they also give combined authorities greater heft when it comes to procurement, as well as reducing borrowing and debt management costs by leveraging the financial position and credit rating of partner organisations.
The shared services model also helps to fend off concerns about a potential skills gap. According to research from PAC, figures from the Office for National Statistics found that just 4.6% of the local government workforce in England and Wales is under 25, while 67% are aged between 40-60.
Given the age profile of the workforce, it is safe to assume public sector bodies could lose significant institutional expertise and memory in the coming years, making it imperative to pool resources to ensure services are maintained. More importantly, though, this approach also appears to offer employees benefits as it manages their workloads and potentially frees them up to focus on more rewarding work.
Furthermore, the shared services model has the potential to address the growing cybersecurity threat to public sector bodies. As attacks in the UK increase, the ability to combine knowledge and resources is critical if organisations are to combat ever-changing threats.
Using time wisely to prepare
Whatever the approach, any potential combined authorities should already be thinking about and engaging stakeholders to understand what they want from their IT systems.
Implementation presents the biggest challenge for any public sector IT team, but this window presents an opportunity to start mapping out what is needed to deliver a successful merger. As the Devolution White Paper rightly says, implementations should be phased using pilots to test how new systems are performing before completing a full roll-out.
Get these basics right, and local authorities can also begin to lay out aspirations that reflect the goals of the Devolution White Paper. By having properly integrated IT systems with a single view of all the data the unitary authority will be able to consider using AI for predictive analytics and performance monitoring. Automating back-office processes will also free up capacity for staff to focus on frontline services while having a functioning cloud-based environment will also enable seamless citizen access.
This is a huge change management exercise for local authorities, but if organisations use their time wisely now there is real potential to transform citizen services.
