Councils must lead digital transformation charge

A new digital experience will make or break efforts to truly engage citizens, writes Leo Hanna, UK executive vice president at TechnologyOne, in the final part of our six-part series on the new digital reality facing councils. Sponsored comment from TechnologyOne.

Local government is facing a perfect storm. Funding pressures and demographic challenges are getting worse, councils are having to pursue modernisation amid economic volatility, and they are still recovering from the disruption caused by covid. For some, this has been an accelerant to digital progress. For others, a blocker.

Leo Hanna, UK executive vice president at TechnologyOne

We partnered with Financial Times Longitude to survey 500 senior local government leaders across the UK to better understand how local authorities navigate the complexities of the digital landscape. In addition to these leaders, a survey of 2,000 citizens was conducted to gauge sentiment on trust and satisfaction with digital services delivered by local government.

The resulting report, The new digital reality, revealed that to navigate a path forward councils seek digital pragmatism – balancing value for money with joined-up services built on robust infrastructure. But to truly engage citizens in this new reality, an innovative digital experience will prove make or break.

Thirteen years of budget pressures, more cuts expected, and rising resident demand for services amid the cost of living crisis are putting significant pressure on councils. It’s clearly time for new thinking and everything should be on the table. Part of the solution is digitisation. Ageing IT systems must be replaced by modern solutions capable of effective planning, budgeting and forecasting.

Local government leaders know they must find ways to do more with even less. But they are also aware that there is no room for error on IT investment. Local government wants to innovate, and the challenges of recent years have accelerated digitalisation. But ambition must be tempered with realism: digital solutions have to come with genuine and measurable benefits.

As we have seen over the past few years, cyber attacks on councils are costly for taxpayers and pose a threat to democracy. We believe there is a role for government to provide funding to help local authorities invest in modern IT systems that act as a first line of defence against cyber criminals.

Leading the charge

This includes helping councils to move away from legacy, on-premise systems and upgrading to software as a service (SaaS) solutions. Systems haphazardly patched together still deliver mission-critical services at councils across the country but they need to be urgently overhauled if they are to remain secure.

Our modern SaaS solution, for example, is used by unitary authorities and district councils across the UK. One good example of a council that has made the transition to a joined-up ERP (enterprise resource planning) SaaS solution is Blackpool Council.

Having adopted our OneCouncil platform in 2019, Blackpool can now rely on the information its software produces, giving it access to a live, single source of truth. The speed of the information available helps the council model various scenarios depending on different future funding scenarios, enabling the council to be prepared, no matter what the future holds.

In a world where digital transformation is no longer a choice but a necessity, local government must lead the charge.