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Digital transformation in the public sector PART 2 OF 5

TRANSFORMING GOVERNMENT SERVICES

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Government organizations, like their corporate counterparts, are on a path of digital transformation. Countries,

regions and cities are at different stages as they invest in redesigning business processes for a digital world and in equipping employees to capture data at the point of creation and to communicate and collaborate virtually.

As well as empowering employees with modern ways of working, this transformation enables government organizations to carry on digital conversations with their citizens by providing services, some fully automated, through web sites and apps. For example,

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one authority in North London, UK, is using a bot to answer telephone enquiries. In Cape Town, an app provides citizens and tourists with travel information and in Croatia the telecoms industry watchdog helps consumers switch tariffs to encourage market competition.

LEADING THE WAY Some organizations have perceived early adoption as an advantage or a necessity. It’s well known that Estonia seized an opportunity to pioneer e-government as a way to compete as the European Union’s smallest nation by population. Other government organizations, whether national, regional or local, are now in a position to learn from early adopters to boost their own progress.

Estonia implemented e-government before the advent of cloud services – fewer than 5% of government transactions are on paper – and it is now moving data and legacy applications into the cloud.

“We are creating government as a service,” says Taavi Kotka, CIO, Government of Estonia. Everybody in Estonia has a card and equivalent digital ID, so that they are pre-registered for different government services, which can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

RESILIENT BY DESIGN Committing to digital on this scale has risks and Microsoft has been helping with skills, science and research to build resiliency against cyber attacks and natural disasters that could threaten

Government organizations are now in a position to learn from early adopters to boost their own progress

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digital government services. “It was a way more complicated task than we imagined but we have to do it because we want to be able to run all the meaningful applications that the country needs in the cloud,” says Kotka.

Microsoft Services carried out a deep security and data classification assessment to tease out how to rebuild applications on the cloud platform. It applied techniques it uses to develop its own software to be secure and resilient and showed the Estonian development team how to apply these. Consequently, Microsoft can provide the data center infrastructure to help meet Kotka’s need to guarantee that Estonia’s society is protected from disaster.

VALUE FROM DIGITALCloud-based systems can use all the data collected by government organizations to provide richer contextual information to answer management questions about the best use of resources. Digital transformation means the data flows

ESTONIA

Estonia seized the opportunity to pioneer e-government as a way to compete as the European Union’s least populous nation.

Fewer than 5% of government transactions are on paper and it is now moving data and legacy applications to the cloud.

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naturally both ways. Apps such as contacts lists automatically update themselves when they notice a change in an email signature or other piece of information, cutting out the need for data entry. Infrastructure itself – the equipment, vehicles and offices used by governments – is beginning to provide data as part of the internet of things (IoT).

USING DATA MORE EFFECTIVELY As the amount of data grows, the key to success is turning it into actionable insights that lead to higher-quality decisions. “Analyzing the skyrocketing quantity of information can be an overwhelming task. Microsoft Power BI is designed to overcome this challenge by making it simple to transform vast amounts of data into rich visuals that can be examined from multiple perspectives,” explains Parul Bhandari, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Services. “By reviewing data in visual form, governments can more easily identify critical patterns that move their communities forward.”

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By reviewing data in visual form, governments can more easily identify critical patterns that move their communities forward

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Microsoft recently showed how governments can turn publicly available data into critical insights by using open data in four areas of interest – optimizing transportation, promoting job growth, addressing citizen complaints, and analyzing government budgets – to spot patterns that can help government leaders better focus their efforts.

“In each of these instances, we used Power BI to visually display large amounts of data to easily examine the information by different variables, and ultimately obtain key insights that can improve how communities are governed,” says Bhandari.

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In one instance Microsoft examined San Francisco’s budget data from 2010 to 2016, gathering detailed information at the departmental level. Bhandari continues: “Visualizing this information using Power BI, we observed that public works, transportation, and commerce make up the vast majority of both spending and revenue for the city. Examining this data in greater detail, we were also able to see which departments are over budget from year to year. With these insights, the city could either allocate larger budgets to those departments, or focus on ways to increase revenue or cut back spending within those groups.”

REAL BENEFITS By understanding the data, government organizations can realize and increase the value of their information through digital transformation, with the value being expressed in better citizen services and delivery cost savings.

Norfolk County Council (NCC) in the UK is seeking value from digital by working with HP Enterprise Services to create a Microsoft Cloud-based information hub to transform the delivery of integrated public services. “Huge areas of expenditure are pensions, benefits and the cost of the National Health Service

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and social care, and we want to understand the levers for the large level consumption of those services. Can we do things differently, in a more cost-effective way, and make it better for the citizen?” asks Tom Baker, NCC’s Chief Information Officer.

NCC is responsible for education, social services, highways, fire and rescue services, libraries, waste disposal, consumer services and planning for a population of almost 900,000. According to HP’s Account Executive, Patrick Stephenson: “The information hub brings together data from many different public organizations. We’ll have a single view of the customer and their needs so we can make better decisions for them.”

“What I think we are able to do now for the first time is to start to join up all the pieces, that make up, if you like, that public service supply chain,” concludes Baker.

It’s predicted that enabling multiple agencies to effectively participate in joint service delivery will result in better services and make cost savings of about 20%. But the value doesn’t end there because NCC intends to use the big data gathered in the information hub to create a local knowledge economy, improve education standards and attract further investment to the county.

DEMOCRATIC RESPONSIBILITIESGovernment organizations are responsible for delivering democratic processes such as elections and referendums, in which

By understanding the data, government organizations can realize and increase the value of their information through digital transformation

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security and transparency are paramount. Election organizers have gone to great lengths to secure and speed up paper-based voting systems, inevitably pushing up the costs of providing government staff. In some regions postal votes are required due to geography. Digital transformation, through secure sign-in websites for registration and voting, and digitally enabled polling stations, hold the promise of improved security, efficiency and transparency. Politicians will also see it as an opportunity to increase participation, especially among younger age groups.

During an election, the City of New York manages 1,200 polling sites, 30,000 co-workers and delivers 15,000 pieces of equipment to sites. Until recently, paper-based votes were carried by the

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CITY OF NEW YORK

The City of New York has digitized processes to improve efficiency in the management of election voting systems.

During the presidential primary in 2016, 75% of the vote tally was processed by 10pm, an hour after the polls closed – a record.

New York Police Department for manual entry into a mainframe computer. The City asked itself: how can we upload the votes directly from the poll sites?

The City built a Universal Windows App to carry out a check-in process of co-workers at the start of the day so staff levels can be managed. It rolled out 1,800 laptops, choosing Microsoft Surface running the Windows 10 Operating System, which has security built in and which enables the devices to be remotely managed city-wide.

During the presidential primary in 2016, 75% of the vote tally was processed by 10pm, an hour after the polls closed – a record. “Having co-workers have access to a device that is easy to use, intuitive and reliable is an essential element of an effective election,” said Michael Ryan, Executive Director at the Board of Elections in the City of New York.

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JUSTICE FOR ALLMost citizens would put a properly functioning justice system alongside voting as part of a democratic society. Litigation involves large bodies of documents and IT can identify the relevant content in these documents more quickly than junior legal staff. The large numbers of emails and documents disclosed in business litigation can be intelligently sieved by software.

Running a court involves handling multiple clients in a fixed schedule. The UK’s Supreme Court has transformed its operations by moving to Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. ”Microsoft Dynamics CRM was identified as a solution that we could control ourselves – we can quickly make any changes we need internally, without relying on others,” says Paul Brigland, Head of ICT and Department Records Office for the Supreme Court.

In 2005, when Brazil passed a law that enabled judicial entities to receive processes in a digital format, Rosely Castilho, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of The State Court of Justice of Sao Paulo (TJSP), saw an opportunity to implement a change in the way the court did business to better serve the State of Sao Paulo’s 50 million citizens, and to comply with Federal law.

“Our vision was to provide better services to the population,” says Castilho. “Overall, the expectation was that we needed to change the perception that we were formal and bureaucratic and that we were slow to attend to their needs.”

Microsoft was the only company who could support the size and scope of the Court of Justice of Sao Paulo and the population of Sao Paulo without any stops in service

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Her planned 100% digital initiative was enormous and bore risks in security and business continuity. By the end of 2015, all new judicial processes needed to be stored digitally in databases, 50,000-plus employees needed to be trained to operate digital processes, and governance policies needed to be established. Castilho chose to rely on her prior experience and the Microsoft Enterprise Strategy Program.

“Microsoft was the only company, the only provider who could support the size and scope of the Court of Justice of Sao Paulo and the population of Sao Paulo without any stops in service.”

TJSP achieved 100% digital at the end of November 2015, a month ahead of the deadline. The new digital processes reduce the time to move, store and retrieve paper documents by up to 70%. Citizens can conduct simple court services from their home computers, such as requesting certification of legal standing or receiving updates on their court cases, instead of wasting time in traffic and lines.

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Judges rapidly access information remotely and make informed decisions much faster, increasing their productivity by 50%. Lawyers research cases and gather information to develop client cases more efficiently. TJSP reports that processing of new cases has accelerated by 87%.

TIME FOR TRANSFORMATIONThe advent of the cloud and mobile technologies means that government employees, from judges to social workers, can use digital tools to take the initiative to change service delivery for the better. Cloud-based services form the basis of digital transformation. They provide the secure virtual town halls for direct citizen engagement and the always-available virtual office for a mobile workforce – a new generation of tech-savvy employees who will happily upload documents to shared spaces and send out requests for help on social media.

The technology foundations are in place and there’s already a wealth of experience from early adopters to learn from. Government organizations already making the digital transformation are finding it straightforward, quick to achieve and delivering a rapid return on investment.

Transforming Government Services is part two of a five-part series of articles from Microsoft on digital government transformation. To read other articles in the series and how governments are benefiting from transformation today, visit aka.ms/transform-gov

microsoft.com/government

Government employees, from judges to social workers, can use digital tools to change service delivery for the better

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