GPSJ Autumn 2024 ONLINE - Flipbook - Page 28
GPSJ
IT & IT SECURITY
A simple digital experience in the
public sector benefits everyone,
everywhere
By Erik Nicolai, co-founder and CEO, Workspace 365
Erik Nicolai
Digital transformation in the
public sector is no longer a
‘nice to have’. It is essential,
however it is not something
that can be achieved overnight
or without due diligence.
Changing the way that millions
of people work is a complicated
process: budgets are tight, but
there are also outdated, legacy
systems to consider as well as the
impact of technological change on
the employees who use them. For
a transition to be seamless and
smooth, all of these factors need to
be taken into account.
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Giving time back to healthcare
workers
The NHS is probably the most
significant example of this need for
a multi-faceted approach towards
digital transformation. To maximise
the benefits of digital for patients
and clinicians alike and to harness
the power of joined-up data, the
service is investing £1.9bn in the
Frontline Digitisation programme
which will lay the digital foundations
for the service’s future.
Furthermore, the new Chancellor’s
first Autumn Statement recently
outlined a £2bn investment in
further technology and digitalisation
in the NHS, contingent on 2%
GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SECTOR JOURNAL AUTUMN 2024
productivity in the next year.
Yet the UK is far from alone in its
desire to make healthcare more
efficient via the use of digital tools.
The need to transform outdated
IT systems and processes has
also been noted across the North
Sea in the Netherlands, where
Dutch healthcare workers spend
an estimated 40% of their time on
administrative tasks. Much of this
time could – and probably should –
instead be spent delivering patient
care.
As part of a collaboration with
Open Line in the Netherlands,
Workspace 365 completely
overhauled a public, privately
managed Dutch company’s
healthcare system to reduce
the time employees spent on
administrative tasks.
Through Workspace 365’s
platform, information from diverse
sources was seamlessly organised,
eliminating silos, reducing time
spent searching for important
patient information, enhancing
collaboration and fostering a much
more productive work environment
The results speak for themselves,
with each healthcare worker saving
between five and 15 minutes per
day. When multiplied by the client’s
4,000-strong workforce, this
equates to between 333 and 1,000
hours returned to the delivery of
frontline healthcare every day.
In terms of financial, Open Line
helped its healthcare client to
make considerable cost savings by
consolidating multiple IT licences
into the single Workspace 365
system – expenditure that could be
redirected to other business-critical
needs.
Transformation comes in
different forms
Workspace 365’s approach
demonstrates how digital
transformation is not an allencompassing silver bullet with only
one endgame. It is a collaboration
between public sector stakeholders,
civil servants, employees,
taxpayers, and the vendor tasked
with delivery digitisation for the long
term.
Great care should be taken to
research what is needed by endusers and to centre transformational
work around this. In many cases,
particularly in the public sector,
this will be to simplify IT systems
and processes in a way that will
enhance the digital experience of
the employee.
A streamlined, integrated,
easier-to-use IT system will have a
significantly greater benefit to public
sector workers when it comes to
completing their daily administrative
tasks in comparison to the
wholesale introduction of an entirely
new and complex system.
The latter may take significant
time to implement before
onboarding and training can even
be considered. On top of this, there
is also the time the employee will
spend familiarising themselves with
a new and potentially confusing
interface that they are now
expected to operate.
The simplified approach
empowers employees to go about
their day with greater speed. There
is reduced potential for mistakes,
as the centralisation of data makes
it easier for people to access the
information that is crucial to them,
whenever they need it.
This is an outcome with a
two-pronged, holistic benefit; it is
advantageous to the employee
and benefits tax-paying citizens
who are relying on a public sector
employee’s work to deliver an
equally swift outcome for them.
People first, then functionality:
how to improve the digital
employee experience
This, then, is the beating heart
of digital transformation. It is not
just about the bells and whistles
of functionality and claims of
lightning-fast applications that can
perform countless calculations in
the blink of an eye. These elements
are rendered superficial unless
