iPads, app stores and online services: What innovation means in the public sector

silicon.com speakeasy: Government IT chiefs on how technology will transform public services...

silicon.com's speakeasy event discussed the role of new technologies in the public sectorPhoto: Chris Beaumont/silicon.com

Public sector is not always known for its innovation. In an age where everyday tasks such as banking and shopping are carried out online, too many government services still rely on face-to-face interaction and paper trails.

But the public sector is changing, beginning to grapple with how consumer technology such as app stores, online services and mobile devices including tablets and smartphones can change the way government is run.

At silicon.com's speakeasy event in London this week, two senior government IT chiefs discussed how the public sector can best engage with innovative technologies.

Loving the iPad

Mark O'Neill is the founder and head of the UK government skunkworks - the Cabinet Office body that is helping devise new ways the public sector can use IT more efficiently, from creating an app shop for government to more agile development of IT projects.

It's time the public sector starts to let the best consumer technology into government, O'Neill told the silicon.com speakeasy.

"There is a growing disconnect between the world outside work and the world inside work. Outside work is a world where we have access to all of the world's information, where we can connect to anyone at any time and where we have flexibility. Inside work tends to be characterised by rigidity, a lack of access to information, rules, restrictions and limitations," he said.

But there is a growing appetite within the public sector to start using "tech from our private lives in our working lives", according to O'Neill, with even the information security arm of GCHQ starting to explore how more consumer devices like iPads and iPhones could be used by public sector officials.

Consumer devices such as the Apple iPad 2 are finding more of a home in the public sectorPhoto: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

"The usual excuse for not letting people use iPads in the office is security. Now the security authority itself is saying we should be looking at this tech, that safety net has gone."

Introducing new tech to the public sector may require new practices and difficult security issues to be overcome but these challenges are not insurmountable, O'Neill believes, citing the example of how access to NHSmail, the largest Exchange mail service used in the public sector, is now available via iPad.

"The pressure was coming from clinicians who said, 'Why can't I use this technology? I can access notes and information from the medical system vastly more quickly, and I can save patient's lives because I have access to this material.' It's a very hard thing to say, 'I am not going to let you use this tech because of security rules' despite the fact that someone might die."

Jos Creese, CIO at Hampshire County Council and recently voted the most influential head of IT in the UK, said there are many advantages to letting staff use their own devices at work.

"We have been allowing people to use their own iPhone and iPad, and we have a...

...policy that is moving people towards having to use their own equipment because it is a lot cheaper in support, disposal and maintenance. There are security issues, of course, and there are solutions to those."

Staff at Hampshire can work flexibly thanks to technologies, such as two-factor authentication, that allow them to log in to the council's systems securely over the internet, Creese said, enabling them to cope with disruption like transport strikes and heavy snowfall and still get work done.

Bring on the app store

One of the ways Whitehall wants to change how public sector uses IT is by setting up something akin to a centralised app store for government, according to O'Neill.

The CIO envisages that the government "app shop" will have three layers: the first to host code that can be shared and reused by developers, the second to host the apps and systems and the third to be a pool of managed services - contracts for IT systems managed by a third party.

If government moves towards this more modular system of purchasing IT it could open up public sector procurement to a greater range of SMEs, which in the past have not had the resources to bid to provide large government IT contracts, O'Neill said.

Digital services by default

Technology needs to be used to help councils design services "around the way we want to interact with them", according to Hampshire's Creese.

"That means you should have access to your records, information and activity in the same way you would with your bank," he added.

Most people should access government services online in future, the Hampshire CIO said, with face-to-face service reserved for those who are unable to interact with government digitally.

"We need to devote our scarce face-to-face resources to those people who need it and for the rest of us, we should be interacting with government electronically - whether it is renewing a library book or paying council tax."

One of the greatest challenges when moving services online and linking up different public services is the issue of getting people to prove their identity, Creese said.

"That is the biggest challenge facing the public sector: how to do federated identity management that does not move into ID card domain. The range of transactions in a typical unitary council could be in the many hundreds and trying to authenticate in a way that is consistent across all of those is a non-trivial task."

The importance of shared services

Local authorities need to consider pairing up with other government bodies and aligning departments and the tech that underpins them - both in the frontline and back office, Creese said.

Shared services operations can work where authorities have common demographic, geographic and political needs, according to the CIO. Too often councils have shied away from bringing together back-office systems because of a feeling that...

...we cannot do that because we are all different", he said.

"Actually," Creese continued, "we are not all different."

"We can only achieve 25 per cent efficiencies to IT services if we deploy IT more cleverly than we have in the past," he said, backing the idea that public authorities should be able to choose from a range of systems and services through a government store.

Counting the costs

The topic up for debate at the silicon.com speakeasy event was, 'How can the public sector best engage with new technologies?'Photo: Chris Beaumont/silicon.com

With councils being asked to dig deep on savings, innovation also means IT has to play its part in reducing running costs and in ensuring it's providing bang for its buck, according to the Hampshire CIO.

"We need to make sure what we are spending on IT gets the maximum amount of return. We have not always been very good at that in the public sector and we have not always known what IT costs.

"When you do you can ask why different organisations cost different amounts to run."

Communication

Communication is key to innovation, according to O'Neill, who backs the idea of establishing groups that ensure regular contact between people involved in IT across both public and private sector.

""We need to build a collaborative community across the public and private sector so we can stop reinventing the wheel and discover the things that work," he said.

"How do we build the partnerships with the wider world to make that happen because we do not want to do things as if we are different and special. We want to say, 'Who is doing this now?', 'Who has done this before?' and 'What can we learn from them and what can we share?'."

Seizing the moment

O'Neill said the appetite for finding more cost-effective ways of delivering public services presents a great opportunity for IT to shine in government - provided it can move away from the way it approached IT in the past.

"You can get transformation paralysation, where you cannot do it because an organisation says, 'It's too difficult and we have always done it that way'.

"I would like to see the public sector IT market in this country be the most dynamic, diverse and best in the world. We spend £16bn a year on IT and if we cannot create the best market out of that then we are doing something wrong.

"In terms of innovation and transformation, this is one of the most interesting times I can remember in public sector IT. The real challenge is are we going to have the confidence, the skills, the awareness and the chutzpah to seize the opportunity?"