Public Sector Digital Transformation: 5 Benefits for Your Organisation

Digital transformation is becoming an increasingly important term for public sector organisations. Utilising a more seamless digital experience ensures an organisation can remain relevant, helpful and accessible for citizens in the future. Without a concerted effort when it comes to digital transformation, an organisation can easily stagnate.

With advancing trends in digital technologies used within the sector, it’s worth discovering what kind of benefits are on offer. The benefits of digital transformation include:

• Operation Digitalisation
• Increased Innovation and Agility
• Easier Collaboration Across Departments
• Increased Data Transparency
• Creating A Better Organisational Culture

If you’d like to learn more about issues like the above and the wider role of digital services and technology within the public sector then please do join us at the UK’s leading public sector tech event, DigiGov 2024.

You can find the agenda here and if you’d like to register for the show then please click on the banner below:

1. Operation Digitalisation

Operation digitalisation is a universal benefit of digital transformation, for both employees and end-users such as citizens or customers. Throughout digital transformation, the architecture of an entire organisation can come together as a digital ecosystem.

When we consolidate things like social media, analytics and project management, we’re able to better connect with a target audience and provide helpful solutions for their needs.

Once we digitise, especially over something like a singular integrated platform that utilises cloud-based computing, we can communicate better. Essentially, bringing together our digital processes means that teams are brought together, which allows for siloed working to be a thing of the past.

2. Increased Innovation and Agility

For continued success in a world that changes due to technological advancements, we need to be open to trying some of these emerging technologies. This can help us become more agile - which can help us to thrive alongside changing public demands.  

Due to the rapid development of the digital landscape, there are many types of software available for the public sector to use. Virtual reality, AI, blockchain and natural language processing - these are all types of tech that can deliver some form of innovation and agility.

The key thing to remember is that innovation and agility are not automatically guaranteed by simply adopting new technology. You have to create a culture of innovation and collaboration for new ideas to be tried and tested.

3. Easier Collaboration Across Departments

While digital transformation can be a daunting process, it’s also an opportunity to increase unity, solidarity and collaboration across a workforce.

For example, the Department for Work and Pensions’ Chief Digital Officer Simon McKinnon has spoken about the pronounced need for cross-government collaboration within digital services. 

“Our colleagues generally have a very difficult time providing the services they want to customers and that’s largely because, like many organisations, we have an extremely varied set of technologies which support them – often a different set for each of our [150] benefits,”. McKinnon has been working on this increased collaboration by improving systems for data sharing and removing the duplicity inherent within government digital tech.

Both before and after implementing digital transformation, communication is key. Once the transformation has been implemented, organisations can gain the benefits of increased collaboration. This comes from providing the right digital networks and platforms that employees can use and interact with.

It’s all about providing the basis for digital congruence, which MITSloan defined as ‘culture, people, structure and tasks aligned with each other, company strategy and the challenges of a constantly changing digital landscape.’

When departments are aligned across their goals and their software, a strong working culture is formed, which eases the targeting and completion of any agendas.

4. Increased Data Transparency

Through an effective digital transformation strategy, we can benefit from greater visibility and insight into our data. By updating data capture and management, we’re able to gain a transparent view of our operations, particularly in terms of performance.

This data is also made more universally available, meaning that everyone can have access to a project. By giving everyone fair access, ideas and updates are shared more efficiently and problems can be solved in an increasingly timely manner.

By gaining more transparency over data, we can understand our users and audience better, feeding that information into better-developed business strategies. In turn, we can see a greater ROI for our connected efforts.

5. Creating A Better Organisational Culture

While we’re on the topic, we must state that digital transformation aids the creation of a strong organisational culture. But digital transformation is also dependant upon the creation of this digital workplace - it’s very much a give-and-take relationship.

A better, more adaptable organisational culture is one that remains productive and engaged within the digital functions and services of an organisation. This is especially important within the public sector, whose services are evidently important for the largest number of people.

Having an organisational culture helps employees to match and support the digital changes and organisation will undergo to stay relevant. It helps employees to consistently improve their skill base by providing a culture that rewards innovation.

Digital transformation is heavily tied-up with cultural transformation. In fact, they’re two sides of the same coin, depending upon each other to grow and survive. If you’re looking for more information on developing an effective cultural transformation within your organisation, you’ll need a guide.

Explore The Cultural Transformation Roadmap

Our guide, The Cultural Transformation Roadmap, touches upon the best practices of a cultural transformation within the workplace. It explores the key data, benefits and even includes the insight of some current industry experts.

If you’re looking to capitalise upon the benefits of a cultural transformation, click the link below to get started.