Ian Blackburn
Founder & CEO
Bbits
The intelligent use of technology which encourages citizen engagement can simplify routine tasks, improve where we live and cut costs. However, it’s vital not to lose sight of what the customer wants for E-government to succeed. Citizens want E-government to be available immediately, and on their favourite device, regardless of where they are. That means that E-government has to be designed for mobile devices, because this is where the web lives now. “Responsive” web sites designed to work on mobile devices are attractive, but they often lack the immediacy, the features and the clear purpose of a properly designed app. Compared with a website, an app is often a better user experience, the absolute key to encouraging interaction. Behind the scenes, the vital component is the intelligent integration and routing of the information captured, because that’s where the big savings are. Properly designed E-government with clever, cross-boundary, integrated applications is destined to grow, because it’s what people want.
www.bbits.co.uk
Neil Mellor
Director
PSNGB
If E-government means just replicating existing services online it doesn’t have a future, it’s not what users need. Straightforward transactional services work well online, like licence or passport renewals, and GDS has made good progress here. But citizens need services delivered to meet their often urgent needs, not designed around the organisations delivering them. Take a complex service in high demand, such as dementia care. These needs aren’t one-off, standard or transactional; they’re complex, individual and persistent. They must be met by cross-agency response – online, over the phone or in person. They must be more sustainable, less costly and improve user outcomes. Public service delivery demands better collaboration, common approaches to information sharing and analytics, proactive cross-agency response and integrated, consistent multi-channel access. The PSN is a good step towards delivering this, but it takes more than technology. It means changes to processes, practices and cultures. That’s the future of E-government – meeting this much tougher challenge.
http://psngb.org/
James Rigby
Chief Executive
SCC
The future of E-government is dynamic, flexible and highly cost-effective. Nobody can predict what new applications or developments the future might bring, but we do know that public sector ICT will be defined by function rather than scale. As the government’s recent decision to put out a tender to procure infrastructure for a crown hosting service (CHS) – which will consolidate hosting services across Whitehall departments with the aim of saving £530m – demonstrates, the era of vast, inflexible public technology projects is over. This is part of the SIAM tower model, the government’s strategy for moving away from large IT service management contracts handled by a single major outsourcer. Instead, favouring an approach where separate IT components – such as hosting, applications development, security and desktop support – are contracted to different providers. With the cloud first policy, this will lead to competition, enabling a richer variety of players to compete for contracts, introduce different dynamics, provide fresh perspectives and deliver more value for money.
www.scc.com
Simon Hansford
Chief Technology Officer
Skyscape Cloud Services
From a political perspective E-government is re-badged as “digital”. The fundamental intent is the same: if a citizen transaction with government can be digitised, then it should be digitised. The digital revolution has been described as the “third industrial revolution” and its reach is global. It will change the way we work, the way we interact, whether socially or as a citizen, and it will change the way we live our lives. The UK government has started to deliver agile, highly cost effective digital services that meet the needs of the citizen. As more digital services come online, citizens will expect better experience as the norm, and government will expect its suppliers to be better, faster and cheaper. This is a digital revolution that is here to stay, irrespective of which political party is in power. There will be challenges, not least around data privacy, digital inclusion and in growing government’s digital skills base but, as a digital world leader, the UK government is in an excellent position to overcome these.
www.skyscapecloud.com
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