Digital Transformation - Q3 2020

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DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

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Digital tools and ways of working became a crucial part of how the UK responded to COVID-19

As a result of the pandemic, our use of technology changed overnight

11 million people in the UK still lack basic digital skills

Alison Pritchard Director General (Interim), Government Digital Service

Julian David CEO, techUK

Felicity Burch Director of Digital and Innovation, Confederation of British Industry

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IN THIS ISSUE

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How digital teams across government stepped up to confront coronavirus Coronavirus was and is a public health emergency. It’s not the first the UK has faced in its long history, and it may not be the last. But, the government’s latest response had an important difference to that of centuries gone by: the role of digital.

Virtual leadership is here to stay Melanie Franklin Co-Chair, Change Management Institute

06 The next five years will be a significant time for the UK Paul Wilson Chair, Smart Cities World, UK5G

08 The COVID-19 crisis is a watershed moment for digital infrastructure Isabelle Mauro Head of Digital Communications Industry, World Economic Forum Project Manager: Nick Craig nick.craig@mediaplanet. com Business Development Manager: Ross Bannatyne Content and Production Manager: Kate Jarvis Managing Director: Alex Williams Head of Business Development: Ellie McGregor Digital Manager: Jenny Hyndman Designer: Thomas Kent Content and Social Editor: Harvey O’Donnell Paid Media Strategist: Ella Wiseman Mediaplanet contact information: Phone: +44 (0) 203 642 0737 E-mail: uk.info@mediaplanet.com All images supplied

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T WRITTEN BY

Alison Pritchard Director General (Interim), Government Digital Service

he nature of the pandemic robbed everyone of face-to-face communication.

Not only with loved ones and colleagues, but with essential public services. And, for the latter – there was no option to stop their work or suspend their service.

This meant digital tools and ways of working became a crucial part of how the UK responded to COVID-19. Led from the centre by the Government Digital Service (GDS), digital, data and technology teams helped millions of people. Under tough time pressures, we set up new services, provided clear and timely information on GOV.UK and solved interoperability challenges.

Building new services to adapt to COVID-19 People needed new services to adapt to the new realities they were facing. So, to date, digital teams have created more than 150 new or augmented COVID-19 related services to help people navigate their new circumstances.

One of these was the Vulnerable People Service; a collaboration between the public and private sector to help those shielding. Set up over four days, the first food parcels were on people’s doorsteps the following weekend. By early August, more than four million boxes had been sent to those shielding.

As well as helping people, the government was itself inundated with help. To coordinate this, we set up the Business Support Tool in just four days – which received 40,000 offers of help.

The work on these services continues. As policy evolves, so will what we offer, to keep pace with these challenging times.

The power of a single domain: GOV.UK Most of these services were hosted on GOV.UK – the canonical source of government information. It was the centerpiece of coronavirus communications and its trusted reputation and site reliability meant millions of people could find what they needed to know.

The GOV.UK coronavirus page gathers the latest pandemic information in one place. GDS built the page in five days and in its first month it received at least 26.4 million page views, and remains under constant iteration.

As with our services, all our work on GOV.UK is data driven. We use data to see what works and what doesn’t – and we make iterations constantly to make sure we continually meet user needs.

By early August, more than four million [food] boxes had been sent to those shielding.

‘Operation Unblock’ All this work required remote communication across government. Silos had to be broken down, and departmental boundaries crossed, to get stuff done quickly and get it done right.

This is where ‘Operation Unblock’ came in. We published guidance on interoperability between video conferencing tools, meaning people could talk to each other and make the necessary decisions. And this work was used right at the highest level of government – with it facilitating the first remote Cabinet meeting.

The culmination of nearly a decade’s work Our digital response to coronavirus was 10 years in development. It required a decade of knowledge, established tools and embedded ways of working to react at speed, with the confidence and the expertise to help people when and how they needed it most.

Whatever the next stage of COVID-19 entails, digital government has proven it can meet the challenge.

©Image provided by Government Digital Service

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Paid for by BAE Systems

There are different options: • Mission Cloud: enables organisations to achieve the benefits of public cloud for sensitive projects with a lower security risk • Hybrid/cross domain cloud access: for businesses that want to take advantage of public and private cloud environments at different security levels to allow collaboration and the transfer of data between domains • Secure serverless: a new secure way to achieve efficiency and agile benefits by building security around the functions within the applications without the constraints of servers.

How digital transformation brings a competitive advantage Challenges are a perennial feature of any digital transformation but can be particularly acute in high trust environments, says BAE Systems. That’s why culture, empowerment and advice are all important.

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Mivy James Digital Transformation Director and Head of Consulting at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence

Read more at baesystems.com/ governmentinsights

overnments and other organisations in high trust environments will benefit from digital transformation if they embrace an enterprise-wide agile culture, empower their employees and use tech as an enabler to meet business goals.

That’s the view of Digital Transformation director and head of consulting at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, Mivy James. She says data sensitive clients face huge risks when adopting new technology but, with expert advice, they can predict future trends, react to continual change and gain competitive advantage.

“The whole organisation needs an agile and digital transformation culture to take decisions quickly,” says James. “This is about having a fluid hierarchy and empowering employees to collaborate and use tech confidently within a set of rules.”

COVID-19 has accelerated the need for digital transformation James, a vastly experienced computer scientist at the trusted security company, says digital transformation has risen further up the corporate agenda during the pandemic.

Throughout the crisis, BAE Systems Applied Intelligence has transformed clients into modern digital organisations, putting in place secure remote working procedures to adapt to the new normal.

“Going digital is one thing, transformation is quite another,” says James. “Alignment from the leadership teams to the front line

is critical when designing complex digital processes in a fast-changing and unpredictable environment.”

Machine learning must be fair and ethical There are huge benefits from machine learning for organisations in high trust areas if they understand why they are investing in it and how to do it correctly.

Machine learning has become increasingly mainstream. However, organisations must also ensure that any system is ethical, fair, accountable, reliable and transparent. If it is, machine learning can boost consumer trust in how data is used by developing creative outcomes that improve people’s lives.

Without this understanding of the ethic and bias aspects, machine learning will not reach its potential; it’s no longer the technology that’s the limiting factor.

Process reengineering James also advises clients to consider improving business processes before investing in digital technology.

“Many companies go straight to automating and putting something in the cloud without first looking at how a process could be enhanced to meet business goals,” she says. “Sometimes you have to dismantle a process, look at it again and then decide what technology you need, or in fact, whether you need new/more technology at all to address that particular business challenge.”

The use of cloud technologies will benefit these organisations that want to achieve the agility and resilience the cloud offers without compromising on security.

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Many organisations use public and private cloud facilities, but often prefer the flexibility of public cloud to interact with consumers in areas such as e-commerce. It is easier to adapt the functionality and for stakeholders to collaborate.

Digital collaboration One of the myriad consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic has been an increase in digital collaboration. With workforces deployed to kitchen tables and home offices around the country, employers have had little option but to trust people who are working remotely and accessing potentially sensitive data and sharing documents.

“It is crucial to keep track of who is making use of what technology and data to do their job effectively,” says James.

She adds: “This goes back to creating a digital transformation culture where you empower people by educating them on what is safe to do. If people continue to work from home, there must be secure remote systems in their own environment.”

Organisations are being urged to use intelligence gateways that filter inbound and outbound traffic, so it is clear what is being moved from one person to another and how sensitive the information is.

Be prepared But the pandemic is no excuse to let your guard down. Expert outside counsel is critical because there will always be security risks for high trust organisations. These can come from disgruntled employees, industrial espionage and state-sponsored hacking attacks.

“We monitor threats through threat intelligence so we see trends emerging and can warn clients to take preventative action before it is too late.”

Without this understanding of the ethic and bias aspects, machine learning will not reach its potential; it’s no longer the technology that’s the limiting factor.

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How do we maintain momentum in digital transformation?

As a result of the pandemic, our use of technology changed overnight, with it playing a vital role in keeping us connected and our businesses functioning.

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©fizkes

he pandemic, and the speed at which technology was thrust to the forefront of our lives, really put rocket boosters under elements of tech deployment that already had some momentum – for example, the shift to cashless payments and online shopping.

The technology industry has really got behind businesses and individuals during this time and we now have many more businesses much further along on their digital journeys than we otherwise would have. Crucially, we will see a recognition among leadership that digital is a strategic priority not an afterthought – an issue we have seen hamper digital transformation progress previously.

Effective management in a virtual world

• More clock-watching - we have to schedule time together, often for 30 or 60 minutes, missing the flexibility in the time and attention we give each other when we arrive and leave from physical meetings.

• Concentration - relationships via video take more focus, looking out for the body language that tells us the real story, rather than just the words that people think we want to hear. Not knowing if people are giving us their full attention or if they are sending emails and scanning documents.

• Connections - being unsure how much of our personal lives to share, when we are on screen reduces the humanity between us, as we feel we must present our “best” selves for fear of being judged negatively.

These are the easy issues, but there are deeper seated impacts of not working alongside each other. Generating team motivation, understanding what is getting missed, hearing enough detail to be able to detect problems early and fix them rely on the “peripheral” vision that face to face engagement gives us.

Longer term issues impact staff development as it is hard to train someone from a distance, skills are developed by watching others and being watched by them, stepping in with a helpful comment or sharing a technique or short cut.

Melanie Franklin Co-Chair, Change Management Institute UK

Necessity builds confidence In the same thread, COVID-19 has nudged many individuals to use digital technologies for the first time. To take personal finance as an example, since the lockdown began, the volumes of people aged 40+ registering for digital banking significantly overtook those of 2019, and among those aged 70-79, the proportion of registrations in the week commencing the 22 April were three times greater than during the same week in 2019.1 We have seen that, out of necessity, has come greater confidence. We recently conducted a survey into attitudes around technology during COVID-19 and we found that 31% of respondents said they had become more confident using digital

Virtual leadership is here to stay, so we need to lead ourselves through this change.

Leading with purpose The secret to solving these issues is to become less accidental in our leadership activities. We must be deliberate in our choice of role modelling activities and of the stories that we tell to illustrate what good looks like. We must make the effort to praise the behaviours we want to see, not give blanket congratulations for hard work.

This means noticing individual effort and giving early, constructive feedback.

We will have to change our own behaviours, to give ourselves the time to be more present, more focused and more deliberate. We will have to make choices about how we distribute our time, to give us the space to observe, design our interventions and not rush engagement with our teams. Individual growth requires one to one time to absorb the lessons we need to share, to test out their understanding of the points we are making and to try out their responses as they develop their ability.

Virtual leadership is here to stay, so we need to lead ourselves through this change, because there is another change on the horizon, which is going to be even more challenging. When the move back to our offices begins, we are going to be left with a mixture of those working from home and those physically co-located. Ensuring we are even-handed with our time and attention between those in front of us and those on the video link will not be easy. So lets start now, sharpening this latest evocation of millenial leadership.

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ne unexpected outcome of the COVID-19 crisis is the realisation that leading virtual teams is hard. We used Skype and Zoom before lockdown, but when it became our only way of engaging with our teams, we realised its limitations.

WRITTEN BY

WRITTEN BY

Julian David CEO, techUK

technology in general since the restrictions on daily life have been in place in the UK. The tech sector must ensure that we maintain this momentum so that we can see further digital transformation across the economy and make the case for technology being at the heart of our recovery.

We are seeing great work already on the skills front, capitalising on the uptick in interest. In collaboration with industry, the Department for Education launched The Skills Toolkit,2 a new online learning platform to help boost the nation’s skills while people stay at home.

Cisco’s Networking Academy, one company contributing to the Skills Toolkit, has seen usage increase by 45% in the UK over the past year.

Transformation key to recovery However, we must work closely with government in certain areas to ensure that we can continue to move in the right direction in terms of supporting digital transformation and keeping the UK at the heart of global digital economy.

Technology will sit at the heart of our economic recovery. This is a time for forward-thinking policies that transform the UK through innovation.

Our digitally-led recovery starts here.

References 1. https://www.lloydsbank.com/assets/media/pdfs/banking_with_us/whats-happening/lb-consumer-digital-index-2020-report.pdf 2. https://theskillstoolkit.campaign.gov.uk/

We are seeing great work already on the skills front, capitalising on the uptick in interest.

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Digital transformation is more human powered than data driven

Paid for by Alteryx

Tangible business transformation comes from investing in data analytics and empowering employees to deliver change, says analytic process automation experts, Alteryx.

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While transformation strategies are not onesize-fits-all, unifying data, analytic processes, and people with the right technology is a core driver of successful transformation. ©fizkes

E INTERVIEW WITH

Alan Jacobson Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Alteryx WRITTEN BY

Steve Hemsley

very industry in every country is undergoing digital transformation, but organisations only truly transform when their business processes are changed, frequently beyond recognition.

Alan Jacobson, chief data and analytics officer at business process automation specialists Alteryx, says the businesses that use data analytics at the start of their transformation journey gain a competitive advantage because the changes are noticeable and have impact.

“If a process has been really transformed, you typically can’t recognise it anymore,” he says. “For example, in a big city, we used to stand on the curb and raise our arm to hail a cab, now we use an app. The process looks different and the change is transformational.”

Data-driven transformation Jacobson says business processes can either be optimised or radically disrupted, but many organisations still wrongly associate digital transformation purely with automation technology. In reality, it is when the people who own the process are open to changing it with data-driven approaches that real change happens and return on investment improves.

“While transformation strategies are not one-size-fits-all, unifying data, analytic processes, and people with the right technology is a core driver of successful transformation.”

Whether it’s Gymshark predicting the best location for a pop-up event, or a company like Sellafield predicting the contents of nuclear waste containers using machine learning and analytics to help the national government utilise spatial mapping to visualise all nuclear decommissioning work in the UK over the next 40 years, these new practices are entirely different than the prior. This makes you a leader in your industry.

“Many processes have been transformed over time, such as the assembly line and the printing press, so it’s unsurprising analytics technologies are having similar impacts today on business automation.”

Data culture Organisations only achieve effective data-driven transformation when they promote an analytics culture.

This means bringing everyone in the company along on the journey by democratising data, providing access to one centralised platform, and amplifying human intelligence so anyone can solve complex data science challenges.

“It’s those closest to a process who

1. Democratise data and analytics: Provide access to one accessible, centralised platform, so analytics can be transformed into an asset to inform business.

2. Educate and train your employees: Provide the right data analytics technology and training to those subject matter experts who have a feel for what is right and workable.

3. Encourage a culture of analytics: Are you asking the right questions to enable transformation and do your employees feel empowered to use analytics to change current processes?

4. Invest in your data ecosystem: Spend time and money cleaning your data and engineering processes to collect the right data and generate actionable business insights.

5. Find a problem to solve: Consider which processes are less effective than they could be and how a data analytics-led transformation might bring business benefits.

know where the problems are and can harvest business-critical insights to drive change.”

Additionally, having a data science team to teach and ask the right questions encourages a culture of data literacy. It empowers and incentivises employees to make data-led changes where they see opportunities.

Jacobson says employees must have access to the valuable data needed and be empowered to ask business-relevant questions and obtain swift answers without relying on highly trained data professionals – quickly making informed decisions that benefit the bottom line.

“If workers have the right technologies that are easy to use, combined with access to the data, magic can happen.”

So much data is held across organisations, yet only when they empower their workforce to affect business-change with data will their digital transformation initiatives deliver.

Most importantly, only by making all data work collaborative, and relevant insights seamlessly (and securely) accessible to relevant parts of the organisation, will businesses fast-track their digital transformation journey.

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Using 5G slicing to innovate across industries Many products are offered in slices: pizza, a slice of pie – and 5G networks. However, it is not as simple as one might expect to deliver slices of pizza or pie to the satisfaction of customers.

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o, if it takes proper planning and management to offer pizza by the slice, imagine the complexity of managing, orchestrating and monetising 5G network slicing. This is the challenge communications service providers (CSPs) are facing.

There’s nothing inevitable about how those digital futures are going to play out so our aim is to get ahead of that and to think in a really systematic and structured way about how the future is shaping up.

WRITTEN BY

Annie Turner Contributing Editor, TM Forum

The Catalyst, championed by AT&T and BT, with participants, Cango Networks, i2i Systems, MYCOM OSI, Oracle Communications and Wipro, demonstrates how complex, multipartner 5G services can be designed and mapped to slice types that can be ordered in a few clicks.

Creating a digital nation

Making money by the slice 5G network slicing allows CSPs to offer In-flight wifi available to airline passengers differentiated services, each of which A further instance could be using 5G has a guaranteed quality of service, to enable passengers to download bandwidth, and security to match the content in the airport on their own unique application requirements. devices to enjoy during the flight, 5G slicing will not go mainstream which costs airlines less than until there is widespread deployment managing back-of-the-seat screens of 5G, at least a year away. But the and entertainment content. technology alone will not turn Depending on the business slicing into profit. model – providing That requires IT differentiated solutions for service bandwidth in management, airports could The advent of 5G orchestration and generate revenue monetisation, and airport owners technology and conditions for an industry that can – airlines, content benefit. owners and CSPs triggered by the current One example is could charge for pandemic presents a the airline industry, a tiered quality of which makes use service or something compelling opportunity of many forms of similar. to re-imagine the future communications Another angle technology – from being explored of aviation. simple, bestis using data to effort terminal improve operations wifi, to secure and mission critical and reduce costs. For example, planes connectivity for passport control. generate significant operational data that needs to be quickly downloaded, Re-imagining aviation in a 5G world analysed and actioned – even as a “The advent of 5G technology and plane approaches the airport. conditions triggered by the current “Forward looking CSPs could, pandemic presents a compelling using 5G and passive fiber, take bold opportunity to re-imagine the future steps to serve industries such as of aviation,” noted Stuart Birrell, aviation with mobile, secure and agile the former CIO of London Heathrow communications capabilities,” said Airport.

Birrell. “The inherent control and A proof-of-concept Catalyst project efficiency of 5G provides far greater underway at TM Forum is exploring configuration flexibility than fixed how 5G slicing can benefit this industry alternatives used today – in other – from provisioning services and words, the future is flexible”. activation, to settlement, billing and monetisation.

A lot is happening this year: COVID-19; the reduced role of Huawei; the need for a diverse telecoms supply chain; the burning of telecoms masts and anti-5G myth making.

And, we’ll soon be leaving the EU for real, so, all things considered, there is a lot at stake and significant risk for the UK’s progress as a leading digital nation.

©HAKINMHAN

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ortunately, it’s a risk that the UK is mitigating in different ways. In 2018, the Government launched the 5G Testbeds & Trials Programme (5GTT) to foster research and development of 5G innovations across different industry sectors throughout the UK. From the Orkney Isles to the West Midlands, spanning rural connectivity, manufacturing, healthcare and creative industries – it has been a big success.

The latest funding round ‘5G Create’ attracted an exciting number of consortiums to form and bid for funding. It’s evident that the transformative nature 5G is having is deepening and spreading across the business community.

This growth in understanding stems from multiple places. The UK5G Innovation Network plays a convening role with more than 3,500 members, many of whom are making use of UK5G’s online collaboration exchange. It’s extensive advisory board and project participants are a combination of supply side telecoms companies, vendors and consultancies, with demand side leaders joining from various industries and public sector verticals, including National Rail, NHS, BT & Ford.

It’s partners, Cambridge Wireless, KTN (part of Innovate UK) and TM Forum contribute different constituencies and attributes; Cambridge Wireless is particularly strong within the UK technology and engineering community; KTN works with 90,000 industry technology leaders and innovators around the country and across all industrial sectors, making introductions and sharing knowledge about public

WRITTEN BY

Paul Wilson Senior Adviser, UK5G, Chair, Smart Cities World

innovation funding and TM Forum is a reputed global telecoms association with 850 international corporate members focused on collaboration and digital transformation.

For the last three years, TM Forum and its members have focused on creating Open APIs which, in simple terms, are pieces of code that make systems’ interoperability easier. This smooths the transition from monolithic, inflexible and expensive software stacks to agile cloud based, automatically reconfigurable agile microservices, that respond on-demand.

Digital Catapult, a UK Government innovation agency, used the Forum’s Open APIs to create an Internet of Things (IoT) marketplace for smart cities, as part of the SynchroniCity project. It enables the exchange and trade of city-generated IoT data to a diverse group of stakeholders for deployment across multiple cities.

However, concern about this new era of data collection and corporate civic surveillance is growing. Rather than react with a sense of disgruntled disempowerment, organisations in Bristol are being proactive, an example is Bristol Legible City – an initiative that built its own digital map of the city.

It discovered that Google maps was optimised for car users, so it optimised its map for pedestrians and cyclists.

Similarly, Bristol Digital Futures Institute brings social scientists and engineers together to take a holistic socio-technical view of burgeoning digital transformations.

The next five years will be a significant time for the UK. Let’s hope we can navigate the way to becoming a global leader.

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Moving telephony into the cloud can improve control, security and flexibility while reducing cost.

Add cloud telephony to Microsoft Teams to drive business performance Organisations that have adopted Microsoft Teams for internal collaboration should consider using the platform to move their enterprise telephony into the cloud, says communications services provider LoopUp.

O INTERVIEW WITH

Rob Jardine Chief Marketing Officer, LoopUp

Paid for by LoopUp

rganisations can improve external collaboration and communication by using the Microsoft Teams platform as a solution for business telephony.

Cloud-based communications solutions are increasing in popularity as working patterns change, and businesses are demanding cheaper options for inbound and outbound calls and more consistency when hosting remote meetings.

“The trend towards digitisation of the workplace is accelerating and moving communications solutions into the cloud can improve business performance,” says Rob Jardine, chief marketing officer at cloud communications provider, LoopUp. Jardine cites research by global market intelligence company, S&P, which suggests that 47% of all businesses expect to reduce their office footprint as a result of COVID-19. Meanwhile, Microsoft says the total number of daily users of its Teams software increased by more than 70% during lockdown.

Jardine says companies need a flexible and cost-effective business telephony solution as employees continue to work from home for at least part of the week.

Saving money on business communications “Currently, people who do not use a cloud-based solution for calls typically redirect their office line to their mobile or home phone. This increases costs for the employer and is only an answer for inbound calls.

“A cloud-based telephony system enables users to make and receive calls on any compatible device that connects to the internet – for example, a desktop IP-phone if they happen to be in the office, a PC at home or a mobile phone on the go,” says Jardine. “Users have access to the usual business telephony features such as voicemail, directories, call transferring and hunt groups, where a number of people are set up to take incoming calls, without being tethered to a desk.”

According to analysts at research and consulting firm, Cavell Group, the number of cloud communications users in the UK is set to rise from 5.5m in 2020 to 13m by 2025. The company reports that, among the businesses that have already implemented a cloud voice solution, 81% said it had made it easier for staff to communicate and collaborate and 76% said it was now easier for employees to work from any location. 88% reported reduced telecoms costs.

Global solution for seamless international calls A cloud telephony solution can certainly help global organisations. Many large international firms still have a disparate range of PBX (private branch exchange) equipment in their various international offices and have a different carrier serving each country.

“When it comes to telephony, IT teams at multinationals often struggle to provide a consistent solution to users in different countries around the world,” says Jardine. “By moving telephony into the cloud, firms can standardise the user experience across all offices and source everything from one service provider. Legacy on-premises PBX equipment is replaced with cloud-based infrastructure, and local carriers are replaced by a global managed service provider.

This reduces complexity and cost, while improving control, flexibility, compliance and reliability.”

Setting up Teams is simpler with a managed service provider To make and receive external phone calls using Teams, employees need a Microsoft Phone System license (which is often bundled with Microsoft 365) and a connection to the PSTN (public switched telephone network). Microsoft’s own calling plans are a straightforward way for smaller businesses to connect to the PSTN. Larger companies typically choose Direct Routing, which is how managed service providers such as LoopUp provide phone connectivity to Microsoft Teams users. This gives enterprises more flexibility, wider geographic coverage, cheaper phone calls and more support. Cavell Group expect more than 90% of Teams telephony users will connect to the PSTN using Direct Routing from a managed service provider.

“Rolling out cloud telephony across large enterprises can be a complex process because telephony is obviously businesscritical and organisations need to migrate from a mix of legacy solutions,” says Jardine. “Using a managed service provider with deep expertise in Microsoft voice solutions and the global reach to support a multinational, typically means that the transition can happen faster, with less risk and with a lower resource requirement on the IT team.”

LoopUp – a Microsoft Gold partner – provides the telephony connection to Microsoft Teams as a managed service. The LoopUp premium global voice network has been developed over the past 15 years and uses Direct Routing to interconnect in the cloud with Teams. The solution integrates with 13 Tier One regional carriers around the world to optimise call quality, reliability and cost.

Written by: Steve Hemsley Read more at loopup.com

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Accelerating digital inclusion and 5G deployment in the new normal COVID-19 has achieved in weeks what would have taken years for digital adoption. But it has also exposed gaps and has given a newfound sense of urgency to the digital inclusion agenda.

I WRITTEN BY

Isabelle Mauro Head Digital Communications Industry, World Economic Forum

n April, a number of governments joined the joint World Economic Forum, World Bank, ITU GSMA Call for Action, which outlined a number of measures to make affordable and better use of digital technologies and connectivity for citizens, governments and businesses.

These measures have been important stepping stones, but they are not enough to bridge the digital divide in the longer-term. It will take significant capital investment and comprehensive planning, with an injection of government funding, to support the drastic increase in internet usage, as countries move into an increased digital new normal.

To address this, the World Economic Forum recently established the Essential Digital Infrastructure and Services Network (EDISON) initiative, a public-private crosssector community. It developed a strategic playbook on “Accelerating Digital Inclusion in the New Normal”, which highlights the importance of public-private cooperation in addressing the digital inclusion agenda post COVID-19.

COVID-19 has significantly impacted 5G deployment.

In order to accelerate recovery, connectivity will need to be at the core of all other national and regional priorities.

The Playbook’s medium- to long-term strategic measures to accelerate digital development and help achieve the right digital transition for a fast, equitable recovery include:

1. Define and implement national digital strategies holistically across all sectors and disburse unused universal service funds to stimulate digital investment in underserved regions.

2. Earmark a portion of the recovery packages to fund infrastructure investment in underserved areas and the digitalisation of other sectors, such as education, healthcare, and financial services.

3. Facilitate digitalisation of SMEs via end-to-end offerings, as SMEs are key drivers of growth.

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COVID-19 has significantly impacted 5G deployment. While there were only 10 million 5G connections in 24 markets at the start of 2020, COVID-19 has accelerated global recognition by governments of the value of 5G and the advanced connectivity it can bring to healthcare, education, manufacturing and other critical industries, helping to adapt to the new normal while creating economic stimulus.

Developing countries are more open to consider 5G network development a national priority, as 5G networks are likely to cover one-third of the world’s population by 2025 and generate $13.2 trillion of economic value by 2035.

The COVID-19 crisis is a watershed moment for digital infrastructure and services. It is critical that we rapidly tackle the challenge to bring high-quality, universal internet access to all, in order to build inclusive economies and give young people globally access to the wealth of human knowledge so that they can learn, innovate and lead in the future.

©METAMORWORKS

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What makes a successful digital transformation?

Companies are increasingly turning to digital transformation to give them the agility they need to survive – but how do you deliver success?

R INTERVIEW WITH

Richard Taylor Partner, The Birchman Group WRITTEN BY

Amanda Barrell

Paid for by The Birchman Group

ichard Taylor, partner at UK headquartered management and IT consultancy, The Birchman Group, says: “We see very clear evidence that when the business owns the Digital Transformation strategy and leads the change the greatest success is achieved.

It concerns me that still too often digital transformation is considered an IT project and the opportunity to deliver real transformation and agility is missed. IT plays an important role, but it is the business that needs to sponsor, own and drive digital transformation.”

Agility is the hallmark of a sustainable business, and digital transformation is how you get there – but it’s common for companies to fall at the first hurdle of the process.

“If you don’t have agility, you can’t adapt to market conditions or to your competitors and are at risk of not surviving,” he says.

COVID-19 has demonstrated this, he says. Birchman has worked with several consumer-packaged goods companies forced to change their business models overnight when their customers stopped operating during lockdown.

“The ones that were agile adapted to connect directly with the consumers.

Those that weren’t, struggled.”

Successful digital transformation delivered at pace The digital transformation process may be essential, but many organisations fail its execution. To be successful, Taylor says, direction must come from the top and all stakeholders should be onboard.

“Organisations need to be clear on what they want to achieve, from a strategic perspective, and ensure the objectives and goals are communicated, understood and collectively agreed.”

“Digital Transformation delivers agility, but companies also need an agile mindset and governance model to deliver digital transformation,” he says.

“We work with organisations to help them develop their digital transformation strategy, roadmap and implementation approach that results in fast paced change, based on value, in controlled manageable chunks.”

“We delivered a digital transformation with a global FTSE 100 company in under a year this way and after three years their competitors still hadn’t caught up.”

Understanding unique Other common pitfalls include trying to “reinvent the wheel”, and not choosing the right people to lead change.

“You can’t do everything at once.

It is the business that needs to sponsor, own and drive digital transformation.

When we work with organisations, we look at two key dimensions: the value to the organisation from a strategic perspective; and the fit to standard solution capabilities. We build a strategy then create a roadmap of improvements that delivers incremental change and high value,” says Taylor.

That plan considers the best order of projects, but also the scale of each individual piece of the puzzle.

“Organisations often consider themselves to be unique, which is true and false. Some areas are unique and it is vital to invest in building and enhancing competitive advantage. In other areas it is best to utilise an “off the shelf” best practice approach to extract the greatest value, implement quickly and keep total cost of ownership down.”

Taylor’s parting advice is to put the “brightest and most capable people” on the projects.

“Busy organisations want their best people running the business, but releasing them to support change projects will make a significant difference to success rates.” They are, after all, the future leaders of the organisation, he concludes.

To find out more about The Birchman Group contact us by telephone at 0208 754 7574 or via Linkedin linkedin.com/in/ richardmtaylor/ or visit us at birchmangroup.com

To date, digital teams have created more than 150 new or augmented COVID-19 related services to help people navigate their new circumstances. One of these was the Vulnerable People Service; a collaboration between the public and private sector to help those shielding.

Set up over four days, the first food parcels were on people’s doorsteps the following weekend. By early August, more than four million boxes had been sent to those shielding. ~ Alison Pritchard, Director General (Interim), Government Digital Service

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Digital adoption is the key to rebuilding after COVID-19

Over 11 million people in the UK still lack basic digital skills Over 11 million people in the UK still lack basic digital skills according to the Lloyds Bank Consumer Digital Index Survey. The UK needs a world-class skills system that prepares people for jobs in technology and innovation and helps companies to hire people with the skills needed to build back better.

Extending government support for data science and AI conversion courses, while transforming job centres into jobs and skills hubs to help people into digital careers are just two ideas.

Connecting with customers, adopting remote working technologies and exporting online have kept many companies going.

Finance comes first Many businesses face a huge dilemma.

While they know investing in digital solutions is key to future success, they are facing depleted coffers. With limited resources at their fingertips the Government must look at how financial incentives can be used to spur firms to take up readily available technology.

Whether through direct grants or tax relief, it is vital that businesses, and especially SMEs, are supported so they can continue to innovate.

It’s time to upskill on digital Digital skills are a valuable currency.

People are at the heart of any successful digital transformation –their ideas and skills make it work. But the UK digital skills pipeline is straining under pressure. Demand outstrips supply, creating talent gaps negatively impacting innovation. Consequently, a major generational reskilling will be required to plug the gap.

WRITTEN BY

Felicity Burch Director of Digital and Innovation, CBI

Helping business go gigabit As COVID-19 has made abundantly clear, fast and reliable digital connectivity is essential for any successful digital transformation.

Businesses are more reliant than ever upon the UK’s broadband networks.

Connecting with customers, adopting remote working technologies and exporting online have kept many companies going.

The priority now needs to be delivering next generation gigabit networks to every business, no matter the postcode, and updating the planning rules so shovels can get in the ground quicker.

It is a must-have to make digital transformation drive the economic recovery and help UK businesses continue to compete internationally.

©CHAINARONG PRASERTTHAI

COVID-19 has seen many businesses fundamentally change how they operate. Firms are embracing innovation as never before.

C

OVID-19 has seen many businesses fundamentally change how they operate.

Firms are embracing innovation as never before, many innovating to survive. A recent Be the Business survey said businesses actioned three years of innovation plans in just three months improving their agility and resilience.

This has been echoed by the stories we’ve heard from our members. From a firm moving 50% of their resources to the cloud in a matter of days to another investing in tech enabled PPE to improve employee safety.

Innovation adoption is a vital lever for improving productivity and international competitiveness. And, as the UK attempts to get itself back on its feet, there is an opportunity to grasp these benefits with both hands to drive recovery. But supporting businesses to adopt technologies is a long-term effort.

The CBI has outlined four steps government can take to help maintain momentum, embedding innovation adoption to ensure businesses not only survive but thrive, supporting jobs and growth.

Procurement is a major factor A key lesson from the crisis is what close collaboration between business and government can accomplish. Take the ventilator challenge, where industry leaders, universities and the public sector came together to deliver lifesaving equipment to hospitals. When Government articulates a clear goal business will step up to meet it.

The success in this instance should facilitate a sea change to procurement process within Whitehall, with a greater focus placed on value and not simply cost. This, in turn, will help those businesses that have won contracts to adopt technologies that can be used to drive efficiencies in the delivery of public services, ultimately saving money for the taxpayer.

We have waved goodbye to business as usual The response to COVID-19 has shown us both the possibilities of digital transformation while accentuating the gulf between where the UK is now and where it could be. A close relationship between business and Government has never been more crucial to tackle the big challenges we face, whether climate, health or economic. One thing we can say with certainty, is that greater innovation will make tackling them easier.

Read more at businessand industry.co.uk

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COVID-19 and the cloud: digital transformation in the public sector

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The world has changed faster in the last few months than any of us could ever have imagined.

And as part of this, we have seen a massive shift in the way public sector organisations are delivering citizen services.

Cloud enabled innovation One benefit of the cloud is that it enables customers to very quickly develop and roll out new applications, which means teams can experiment and innovate without having to worry about the significant financial risks incurred when using traditional IT with its attendant high capital cost.

For example, the COVID-19 outbreak has been accompanied by an overabundance of information that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.

A new project, led by Imperial College London and enabled by AWS, is responding to this ‘infodemic’ by enabling the healthcare community to quickly make sense of this tidal wave and find better treatments for COVID-19 and other diseases. Using AWS’ machine learning services, the project is able to analyse vast amounts of information in real-time and quickly extract the most important insights, saving the tens of thousands of hours that would traditionally have been required for manual research. Over half a million sources are being analysed to find the best available evidence for better patient treatments at a speed that would not have been possible with conventional approaches.

©KANAWATVECTOR

W

e’ve seen emergency hospitals set up, staff enabled to work from home and critical new services rolled out at high speed. Even the Prime Minister has been running Cabinet meetings via video conferencing.

It’s ironic that social distancing has actually brought us closer together in some aspects. The collective focus and greater agility have seen long-standing walls between teams, divisions and organisations dismantled in a matter of days (and in some cases, overnight) to allow for greater cross-agency collaboration.

COVID-19 has pushed the public sector to embrace technology to better meet citizens’ needs right across the UK.

Transformation to tackle challenges The London borough of Waltham Forest is another example of the digital transformation that has been accelerated by the pandemic.

The borough was using on-premises call centres when COVID-19 hit, and experienced an immediate increase in call volume from citizens. It would have taken weeks for their existing provider to deliver a solution to meet the additional capacity required to meet demand, and they had to act quickly to respond to the needs of their local community.

Working with the borough and AWS Partner, VoiceFoundry, we rolled out Amazon Connect, a cloud-based contact centre that is scalable, simple to deploy, and easy to manage. It took just a few days to get up and running and enabled the council to scale quickly and easily to meet citizen demand.

The Borough was able to operate this service seven days a week – up from five – handling more than 3,000 calls a day.

The new solution has also enabled the council to retrain and reallocate staff quickly to support demand – all while ensuring staff safety by enabling them to work remotely.

Public and private benefits COVID-19 has pushed the public sector to embrace technology to better meet citizens’ needs right across the UK. Research published last week showed that 70% of companies using AWS to sell into the public sector said that their business or operating model would not be possible without cloud platforms. And it’s not just the public sector that is benefiting from this digital transformation – private companies running on the cloud are nearly three times as likely to increase their revenue by 5% or more per year as those that are not. The environment benefits too; for example, moving a company’s IT workload to AWS reduces its carbon footprint by 88%, while in total, UK customers of AWS have saved over 200,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year, the equivalent of planting an extra 400 million trees.

Together, we can create lasting change in this era of digital transformation. All of us in this ecosystem – whether service providers, partners, small businesses or public sector organisations – must help turn this better way of working into the new normal.

WRITTEN BY

Chris Hayman Director, UK Public Sector, Amazon Web Services

Read the report awsimpactreport. publicfirst.co.uk Learn more at aws.amazon.com

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