What is digital transformation in local government?

Digital transformation is more than just using digital tools to streamline a service or save time, it is a culture and a new way of working, and it doesn’t just happen overnight. Arguably the most important part when digitally transforming an organisation is understanding your data and the value of it.  

In this article we will define the importance of your data to build your foundations right by explaining how to use and protect your data successfully. By the end of this article, you will know and understand the stages of a digital transformation and how best to implement it to reach your targets.

What is digital transformation? 

Initially, digital transformation seems like a complex term. This is not the case. It is a way of working that uses and understands how different technologies can improve processes, productivity, and deliver better outcomes, whilst managing risks and controlling costs.  

There is no one size fits all when it comes to digital transformation. Every organisation will have different objectives and their digital strategies should accommodate that.  

A digital transformation ensures the right digital foundations are in place to use your data effectively to drive efficiencies and adapt, when necessary, to create a continuous improvement cycle.
 

Digital transformation vs Digital Innovation – What's the difference? 

Both digital transformation and digital innovation are related but are distinct in the realm of technology and business. In most cases transformations lead to innovation, but equally innovation can lead to transformation.  

Digital innovation in local government refers to the creation and implementation of new ideas, methods and technologies to result in significant improvements or advancements. Often requiring encouragement and collaboration, digital innovation typically indicates clearer steps to ensure an innovation is successful.  

Digital transformation, however, describes the process of forming a strategy to implement technology to improve processes and productivity to meet the ever-changing demands. It involves broader more comprehensives change to an overall strategy by integrating digital technologies in all aspects of local government. 

Digital innovation therefore is about rethinking and reviewing processes that already exist to enhance efficiency, solve problems, and create new opportunities. Digital transformation goes further than that by both adopting new technologies and reshaping processes to be more adaptable, person-centred and efficient in the digital age. 

Digital Transformation and Digital Innovation in Local Government - Why are they important? 

Many local governments have been using the same systems to commission and deliver care across their communities for decades. Digital innovation and transformation in the private sector has raised the bar for the public sector. 

Digital transformation and innovation in local governments are equally  important because they it aims to use technology to improve the way councils cater and deliver services to accommodate the needs of their residents and other community stakeholders.  

Through transforming processes to more sophisticated solutions, digital transformation in local governments mitigates risks, drives efficiencies, and incubates innovation. It facilitates more efficient processes so residents and staff can access the information they need quicker, and at their own convenience.  

Currently many public sector organisations can struggle to know what data they have, how to use it, where it is stored, and how to protect it. Data is the golden thread to any digital environment to allow digital transformations to take place and take place successfully. 

Technology and digital infrastructure is essential for a truly modern local government. Digitally transforming your local government will help you: 

1. Better understand the specific needs of your local government  
2. Better understand the needs of residents in your local community  
3. Help create a better work-life balance by streamlining processes and reducing admin time 

Even though some public sector organisations seem to be adapting at a slower rate compared to private sectors, digital transformation is still important as it offers local governments to make more strategically  informed decisions to increase both their visibility and flexibility across the market.  

The new way of working generated through digital transforming your local authority will create a consistent standardised methodology. This standardised methodology can be used continuously as you adapt and improve more solutions throughout your digital journey.  

With the current changes to integrated care systems (ICS) and the increased responsibility from the CQC inspecting how local authorities are delivering their social care, having a standardised digital transformation strategy has never been more important.  

With these increased responsibilities, local authorities need to communicate with more external professionals, healthcare workers, companies, providers, charities, and 3rd parties. Digitally transforming your local government eases these communications as more sophisticated or automated processes can make sharing data easier so more informed decisions can be made seamlessly. This in turn, improves communications with residents  to mitigate any risks when transferring from one service to another, this improves the overall wellbeing of a community, and helps provide long term cost savings that can then be used in other departments, even with a restricted budget.  

Through digitally transforming a local government it paves way for local authorities to become a hub for local businesses and services to boost the revenue in their local community. It also helps commission more sustainable ways of working to help your local government achieve ambitious governmental targets, such as being net zero by 2050.  

Elements of digital transformation in local government- how does it work ? 

To undergo digital transformation in local governments successfully starting the journey early is key. Many organisations and councils may feel they have already started, others may have tried and failed, and others may not know where to start.  

Digital transformations in local governments can be difficult because often local authorities have multiple departments within them, and these can all have differing budgets, software they use, and ways of working. Some local authorities cover larger areas than others and these different areas may have different needs that need focusing on which can make defining shared goals challenging.  

By having complex local authorities, the responsibility of protecting data can get complicated. The responsibility of owning, and sharing data to keep the community and contacts safe isn’t always easy when multiple departments work differently. When this is the case, there are higher risks of duplicated data, misplacing data, and cyber-attacks.  

igital transformations allow local authorities to take a holistic approach to improving and digitalising its services, so staff can be best prepared for the changes that are about to take place regardless of the department they are in. For this to happen successfully they are three main stages:
 

1. Digitisation

The process from changing and modernising physical and paper processes to digital ones. You can’t be on a digital journey until this stage is completed.   

2. Digitalisation 

The process of using digital technologies and information to transform individual processes by integrating and simplifying them in the long term. 

3. Digital transformation 

This is the stage where culture, workforces, and technology are coordinated to innovate new processes and frameworks to transform a service’s operations, strategic decisions, and value proposition.

 

Data: 

For these key three stages to be successful it all comes down to data. The process of digital transformation does not take place overnight and when it is planned correctly it can be an easy and secure process.  

Data can be modelled in a variety of forms and if your digital foundations haven’t been built correctly it is essentially impossible to share both across departments and within them too. A study by  Deloitte stated that a lack of a digital workforce becomes a major obstacle to digital transformation. Therefore, until digital foundations have been built, and built correctly, public sector organisations will be insufficient in their decision making and will continue to deliver a poor user experience.  

When starting your digital transformation strategy understanding the data you have is crucial, speaking to vendors and respective teams can help strengthen your understanding as well as help solidify what your objectives are. This can also be done by answering the following questions: 

• What data do we have and is it secured safely? 
• How are your services performing and where would you like them to be in the future? 
• What are your aims, objectives, and priorities?
• What manual processes could be automated? 
• How can digital tools or solutions add value to the services your local government delivers? 
• What data needs to be collected to inform strategic decisions and how could technology collect this? 

Once this initial planning stage has been completed and everyone in the workforce knows and understands the objectives and how you are going to improve your services, you can then follow a robust framework. 
 

Continuous Improvement planning: 

Often when businesses, councils, and organisations are asked why they aren’t using a digital strategy there are two very common responses. The first being it is too time-consuming, and the second being they tried, and it didn’t work. For our local government customers at Access, 32% said that software not meeting all their needs was their biggest concern when digitally transforming their processes  in our social care commissioning report.  

What is important to note is that there’s never an end point with digital transformation as it is a culture of continual improvement. However, continual improvement only ever happens as long as your local government is prepared to adopt, evolve, and grow as the market and legislation changes. It is important to remember that new technology doesn’t always mean better. Instead, it is important to consider how new technology will help with existing applications and create benefits that reach your goals in the long term.  

To ensure you have a digital transformation continuously improves it is also recommended you do the following: 

• Phase your migration of new technologies so all new employees understand how to use it and the benefits it will provide  
• Create a roadmap for gradual decommissioning of older technologies as this tends to be simpler and cheaper than fully decommissioning a project  
• Reallocate resources to projects the will help future-proof services  
• Have contingencies plans in place for when things may not go to plan – e.g. accidental deletion of documents  

At the Access Group we offer a whole ecosystem of solutions that can help drive strategic planning forward in your digital journey and make the most of the solutions that are on offer by keeping up to date with local government technology trends to help drive better outcomes.  

Access Assure is just one brilliant example of this. The use of smart technology and digital telecare can help provide evidence that you are delivering the outstanding quality of services the CQC will be looking for and better prepare services when there is an emergency. 
 

Increase Visibility: 

One way to ensure data is being used correctly is by centralising it all in one place. This approach then allows data from multiple sources to be pulled together to make it easier to find, monitor, and track performance in all one place.  

Another way is to introduce automated services. Through automating services employees reduce time spent on more administrative tasks and can concentrate on higher priority tasks to ensure targets are met.  

A popular way to increase visibility is the use of integrating data sources together regardless of location, and to use analytics to actively suggest where data should be used and where improvements to services can be made.  

Our Access Adam Care Commissioning platform offers tools that can help increase visibility in healthcare, transport, and housing. Sutton District Council, a customer that uses our transport solution, found they had an increased visibility of the routes they delivered in their home-to-school transport service. Through this they could identify inefficient routes to improve saving both time and costs that were able to be used in other children services.  

Having an effective data management strategy therefore, is the fundamental to  provide  the opportunity for local governments to understand what data they have and how to use it to drive efficiencies, incubate innovation, and accelerate growth.
 

Use digital transformation frameworks: 

Often when businesses, councils, and organisations are asked why they aren’t using a digital strategy there are two very common responses. The first being it is too time-consuming, and the second being they tried and it didn’t work.  

To break it down into easier chunks at The Access Group we recommend you follow the SAMR framework. The SAMR framework concentrates on two key themes, enhancement and transformation.  

Substitution 

Integrating technology into the workflow to act as a substitute e.g. using online surveys for feedback instead of paper ones  

Augmentation 

Users begin to work with the technology and digital solutions and notice the day-to-day improvements  

Modification

 Users learn to adapt their workflow to accommodate and best utilise their technology  

Redefinition 

Full digital workflows are achieved with technology enabling the creation of new tasks 

The idea of digital transformation is that once your local government change your way of working this mindset can constantly evolve and improve further alongside market demand changes, legislation changes, and technological ones too when appropriate.  

Through following this process and highlighting where there are gaps in your services and acknowledging where they need to be modified, the process of digitally transforming your local government will achieve its aims as well as many additional benefits too. 
 

Benefits of digital transformation in local government

When undergoing the process of digital transformation in your local government there are many benefits you and your staff can experience. Every local government and each individual department can all experience different benefits depending on what your objectives are.

1. Saves Employees’ Time  

Digital transformation benefits to staff can vary across local governments depending on your objectives. One of the biggest benefits is the time saved for your employees. Centralising all information into one place ensures specific data and information is easy to find and identify.  

Allocating specific access to your employees is also a good way to save employees time as they will only be able to see the data and information they need instead of spending loads of time scrolling through spreadsheets and databases.  

Time-consuming tasks such as having to print notes off from meetings to send across to absent co-workers no longer needs to happen due to digital workflows. Everything can be recorded and saved in one place to make it even easier for employees to catch up on work missed from sickness, compassionate leave, or annual leave. 

Automating workflows also saves time and allows employees to spend more time on higher priority tasks instead of manually inputting information. 

This all means less time is spent on ‘low return’ or ‘low value adding’ activities and can instead be put to better use on tasks and activities that deliver more for services and the people using them. 

Our Access Adam Care Commissioning Housing solution is a great example of this because staff time on manual tasks has been cut down and automatic alerts can be triggered when safety and regulation checks are outdated, that way uncompliant providers can be removed to ensure all citizens get placed in safe accommodation.

Wren Housing, one of our customers, have really benefited from this as over 8000 safety certificates across 200 different listings have been automatically checked so over 1500 families could be placed in safe temporary accommodation.  

Digitally transforming local governments also means staff can process claims, applications, and license requests - to name a few - more efficiently, resulting in higher satisfaction from your residents.  

2. Increases Productivity  

A huge part of digital transformation is integrating platforms in order to break down silos and remove manual processes. It is estimated that employees can waste up to 1.8 hours every day searching and gathering the information they need to complete a task.  

Through using solutions that integrate platforms instead of using multiple different platforms across different departments employees become more efficient and have more time to focus on higher priority tasks instead of administrative.  

It also helps facilitate seamless interdepartmental collaborations so costly human errors are reduced by ensuring everyone across the different departments can access, manage, and make decisions based on current and accurate data.  

Due to the pandemic many businesses, councils, organaisations changed the way we work, and by having an organised digital transformation strategy it helped make the transition smoother.  

Now post-pandemic some of these new ways of working have stayed and through building digital foundations correctly, employees can access the data and information they need from any location, which has been crucial to maintain the continuity of workflow.  

3. Improves cyber security  

Previously many local governments have used multiple different digital tools across their different departments. This often leads to duplicated information, missed information, and human errors inputting information, especially when an individual is transferred from one department to another.  

With the increased use of cloud-based software in digital transformation strategies, records are stored more securely and backed up several times a day. Both maintenance and security costs are eliminated as the cloud provider then typically becomes responsible for following General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and your cyber security.  

By partnering with software companies that know and understand the challenges of integrating platforms and data seamlessly and securely your interoperability will be enhanced, mitigating the risk of fines due to data breaches and cyberattacks, which can be costly to your council, services, and your reputation. 

4. Better data insights 

Many councils in their digital transformation strategy have started to use analytics tools to help them gain powerful insights to make more informed decisions about their services.  

By structuring your data in this way employees have a more enhanced ability to analyse data quickly and have greater transparency across the market, allowing you to achieve your objectives faster.  

Using more sophisticated case management solutions case workers can also retrieve information in real-time to ensure the appropriate service and advice is provided and delivered to an individual.  

5. Reduces Costs 

Undoubtedly digital transformation saves money, but it saves money in lots of areas, some have already been discussed such as in cyber security, but costs can be saved in many additional ways too including: 

• Printing costs – e.g., sending out e-forms and contracts to sign instead of printing and mailing to citizens  
• Online payment options – this can reduce transaction processing costs  
• Reduces product development costs  
• Running costs – digitally transforming your local government can save costs to allow funding to be used in other services to maximise your budget 
  
  

Digital Transformation in Local Government - What are the mistakes to avoid?

Undoubtedly when making a change to the services you run it can cause some teething issues. But by having all users onboard and responding to feedback it can help with the cultural change and create a cycle of continued improvement in your local government.  

Despite this there are also a few common mistakes that are worth knowing, understanding, and avoiding:
 

1. Not having a clear strategy  

As already discussed, to implement digital transformation regardless of the field someone is in it will never fully reach its potential unless a clear strategic plan has been put in place. The technology and digital solutions that have been invested in must genuinely add a positive impact and achieve your objectives, otherwise it is a waste of investment and time.  

To keep a clear strategy, it is essential that every decision that gets made is data-driven and that it will help your local government achieve its objectives. If you can’t give a clear methodological answer, or understand your data, you are more than likely going to need to re-evaluate your strategy.  

2. Not engaging your workforce 

In every business and organization when big changes happen it can be difficult to get all employees on board. It is essential that you make sure everyone in the workforce knows and understands why the changes are happening. 

It is important when proposing your digital transformation strategy, you highlight and properly communicate the specific impacts and benefits different departments and personnel will experience. For example, how admin teams will have time saved through automated reminders being sent out rather than them chasing invoices, emails, and being on long phone calls.  

Digital transformation is a cross-functional effort across an entire organization, and without having everyone on board it will never be successful. Some people might not even use the technology, and some might use it incorrectly and therefore create more challenges than it solves.  

This is why it is crucial the entire workforce is engaged right at the beginning of the process and throughout. Ensuring you constantly get user experience feedback is just one way to help adapt and improve your strategy throughout the process.  

This will then prevent a local government investing in a solution that employees won’t use. Through checking in on how users feel when a new technology is implemented can help improve services in the future, as their feedback could show insights into weaknesses of a solution.  

3. Not utilising all funding opportunities

Another common mistake to avoid is not utilising all funding opportunities. The government are increasing aware of the pressures and challenges local authorities are dealing with in order to deliver high quality social care services across both adult and children services.

In January 2024 the government announced that to help councils address the challenges they were facing and to improve performance an additional £500 million of social care funding will be introduced.

This is a great opportunity to help overcome the challenges of reaching demand and maximising resources. Using the funding to digitally transform your services is a great change to enhance your local authority software for data sharing, enable more outcomes-based commissioning, and cater your social care services to your community’s needs to improve outcomes at the best value for money.

Summarising the importance of digital transformations in local government

At The Access Group, we are passionate about helping our customers make their day-to-day tasks as efficient and simplistic as possible. Whether that’s gathering or sharing data to make better-informed decisions about the future, helping local authorities commission services to find residents appropriate accommodation, or streamlining and making case management more efficient so support workers have real-time and up-to-date information on the residents they support.  

We offer an ecosystem of different digital tools that can help digitally transform your local government. We are aware as funding is reducing, and the demand is increasing across all your services how hard it can be to cater to everyone’s needs successfully and constantly develop your digital journey. We want to help make this process easier by supplying you with the tools and the skillset to do that.  

Discover our local government software today to find out first-hand how we can help digitally transform your local government by helping you make data-driven decisions that mitigate risks, drive efficiencies, and incubate innovation.  

Contact us today for more information and let’s get planning and updating your digital strategy together.