The Future of Digital Government: What’s Worked? What’s Not? What’s Next?

by Eddie Copeland
170 views

On Monday 29 June 2015, I chaired an event for Policy Exchange on the theme: ‘The Future of Digital Government: What’s worked? What’s not? What’s next?’. Panellists included: Head of the Government Digital Service, Mike Bracken; Members of Parliament Chi Onwurah and Matt Warman; Steven Cox, Executive Director Public Sector, Fujitsu UK&I; and Laura Citron, Managing Director for WPP’s Government and Public Sector practice.

Mike Bracken outlined GDS’s successes to date, including building GOV.UK, GOV.UK Verify, and redesigning 20+ government transactions into digital-by-default services. Reflecting on what had not worked as well as intended, Mike suggested more needed to be done to increase the number of people making use of online services, and to improve the gender balance of the government’s digital teams. He saw the future as being about developing Government as a Platform – common pieces of technology that can sit across all digital services.

Chi Onwurah highlighted the need to improve digital inclusion initiatives, as well as open up participation in Digital Government to a larger number of small businesses. Matt Warman discussed the importance of advancing the political debate over the use of personal data, suggesting that – done securely – having a single ID for government could offer better, more personalised services for those who wished to use one. Steven Cox argued that digital government initiatives had succeeded in positively disrupting old ways of working, but must now focus on delivering transformation at a much larger scale. Laura Citron recommended that digital services learn from best practice in eCommerce, by focusing on promoting the right services to the right people and analysing how users felt about the experience of using the transaction.

This video provides full footage of the event.

You may also like