Feedback on the Government's 'Transforming for a Digital Future'​ Strategy

Transforming for a Digital Future is the Government's blueprint for the digitisation of the publicly funded organisations, including social housing.

Published in June 2022, Transforming for a Digital Future is the Government’s blueprint for the digitisation of the publicly funded organisations, including social housing. It reveals the Government’s ambitious vision for digitally enabled and empowered services. (Transforming for a Digital Future – Government’s 2022-25 Roadmap for Digital and Data)

The Government has now carried out a survey to establish awareness of the strategy and to gather feedback. A few of the resulting highlights are:

• Of the 6 ‘missions’ within the strategy, respondents said the one that would deliver greatest benefits was “Better data to power decision making”
• The majority of respondents still consider they have barriers to embracing transformation, with the decommissioning of old applications being a significant barrier.
• ‘Costs/budgets’ were considered to be the primary issue hindering progress, although most accepted that change should improve operational efficiency.

The report’s conclusions state that ‘Good information management is a foundation for transformation, agility, and effectiveness and that these types of projects can be cornerstones to value as they focus on providing access to high quality information.’ So clearly we need to overcome the above challenges around software and cost concerns.

The results of the survey also reflect that strategic solutions are often eclipsed by more tactical and perhaps more obvious projects targeting key processes. This is on the basis that tactical approaches can seem like a faster, often cheaper ways forward….

Many are trying to use “Faster horses rather than cars” as Ian Wright from Disruptive Innovators Network has been saying recently. If you haven’t seen his article, it is thought provoking and definitely worth a read!

The crazy thing is that the ‘cars’ are out there and readily available; their performance is proven; they are affordable and if used correctly, they are extremely cost effective. The only barrier to their use is our mindset and aversion to introducing change. For the good of customers, staff and indeed management, this has to be overcome.

There are so many benefits that can be drawn from using data better, but purely based on if you too consider that great benefits will be drawn from using “Better data to power decision making”, then ask yourself what your organisation is doing to address this. Is the mentality ‘faster horses’ or are they considering converting to ‘cars’, that is to say the use of far more efficient and effective technology-based solutions.

I feel passionately that the question is not ‘if’ they should start using such technology, but when can they start. Those that continue to ride horses, will be left behind.