Predictions 2016: UK Public Sector

TechMarketView’s 2016 theme ‘Surfing the Waves of Disruption’ perfectly encapsulates the difficulty that public sector organisations face in dealing with a mass of internal and external forces disrupting the status quo. All, whether their budgets were protected or not (see Autumn Statement: Digitisation & Collaboration for efficiency), must make further efficiency savings, while also implementing new Government policies.

Meanwhile, in deciding how to use ‘digitisation’ and ‘collaboration’ to drive efficiency, they must consider the increasing demand for public services, the array of new technologies on offer to support that delivery, and the vast amounts of data, within and outside government, that if used effectively, could release huge value.

All the time, they must hold steady while riding the wave, in order to continue to do what they have always done: serve the UK public.

Increased collaboration: Without the political will to go back to the drawing board and restructure government in line with today’s requirements, increased collaboration is the only viable alternative. In 2016, we expect, for example, further integration of health & social care, of organisations involved in mental health, and of those responsible for our national security.

Acceleration to the cloud: The drivers encouraging public sector organisations to embrace cloud services are increasing. While private cloud arrangements will continue to dominate, public cloud will be an increasing feature of the landscape. The opening of UK datacentres by US giants Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) will give public sector organisations more options and help accelerate decision making.

Increased understanding of the value in data: During 2015 the public sector slowly began to grasp the importance of its data (and of everyone else’s data). The potential benefits are significant, so the drive to ensure growing volumes of structured and unstructured data become a help rather than a hindrance, and to ensure the security of that data, will intensify in 2016.

More use of private sector to deliver public services: Under a Conservative Government, the “shrinking of the state” is a core belief. This will mean more investment in ICT to improve productivity of those that remain, a boost to the white-collar BPO market, as well as a greater push to utilise the private sector (often blue collar outsourcers) to deliver core public services.

Continued drive to adopt alternative procurement models for ICT services: Mega ICT outsourcing deals are history. But Government is still trying to find out what works and what doesn’t. There is an increasing acceptance that organisations will never be able to cope with complex transformation alone, despite a drive to build up in-house capabilities. The ‘strategic partner’ model will, therefore, rise in popularity over 2016.

Large SIs/outsourcers and ‘alternatives’ on a more even playing field: As long as suppliers can show a commitment to the public sector and align their positioning with the Government ICT agenda, for example around the open source agenda or agile development, opportunities will be open to them. This will be the case whether large, mid-sized or small.

Ongoing tug of war between centralisation & localisation agendas: Centralised procurement frameworks, Government-as-a-Platform, and shared services will encourage greater commonality and reuse, as well as economies of scale. However, it will be tough to balance this agenda with the desire to shift decision making to the front-line.

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Posted by Georgina O'Toole at '08:00' - Tagged: publicsector   predictions