What does ‘digital transformation’ mean for the Public Sector?
Microsoft’s UK Public Sector General Manager, Derrick McCourt gives an interesting viewpoint on the nuts and bolts of digital transformation and what ‘transformation’ means for the public sector in the UK
While speaking at a UK Authority event on digital transformation last week, I was asked what ‘digital transformation’ means for the public sector. Instantly, I began to highlight a few of the great exemplars I have had the pleasure of working with this year. Then I stopped, and directed the question back: What do you think digital transformation means for the public sector?
Because as someone who spends much of the working week speaking to different organisations across the public sector, I have learnt that each journey to becoming more digital, and more agile, is different. In healthcare, for instance, this may mean a Virtual Fracture Clinic saving patients unnecessary travel by offering outpatient appointments via video and telephony, while local governments delivering ‘Council as a Service’ are allowing their residents to access all services online with minimal contact.
At Microsoft, we talk about the move towards digital services as the dawn of a fourth industrial revolution. Just as the rise of industrial scale manufacturing disrupted business in the 18th century, the blurring of lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds at the forefront of the current wave of innovation is allowing businesses and services to reimagine outcomes.
For me, then, digital transformation for the public sector simply means rethinking how to bring together people, data and processes to create innovative and responsive services that add value for citizens…
