At TCS we are convinced more than ever that the current era of public service transformation will require new thinking and innovative global solutions, which utilise a flexible, mobile and highly capable workforce. Our experience working with both governments and the private sector globally is that where the challenges are really understood and the solution energetically embraced, transformation gives rise to service improvement and cost savings.
The key question is what does public service reform mean? Is it just the same services but at a cheaper price? If that was the answer we would not have entered into this market. We understand the imperative to reduce cost of public services, but private sector doesn’t have a magic wand to enable it to do things in precisely the same way as they’re currently being done and reduce the price.
Our real interest is in how can we transform those services such that they are lower cost but actually, they’re also better from the perspective of the end user, predominantly the citizen? We are an IT and business process outsourcing company, our aim is to use of technology and process optimisation to transform public services in a way that lowers cost and improves user experience. Typically, we’re seeking to improve accessibility, flexibility and speed of delivery through our services and applying our core skills.
When we partner with government, we look to the government to provide domain expertise of whatever that public service is, by providing us with access to people that really understand how these services run, what the pitfalls are with them currently, how they could potentially be improved. Sometimes there is this belief that the private sector has all the answers in isolation of the public sector, and that is simply not the case. We look for a collaboration whereby the civil service bring intrinsic knowledge of public services, and we apply IT and business process optimisation to improve those services. There is often a need for joint collaboration, as opposed to outsourcing something lock, stock and barrel.
The UK is not unique in needing to transform services and reset the relationship between the state and the citizen. Across the world organisations are adapting and providing citizens with more personalised services, such as new mobile payment systems for Indian farmers or the use of self-service kiosks for probation management in New York. The UK should look globally for the design and delivery of new approaches and import expertise when it does not exist nationally. A key benefit of global delivery is speed – i.e. the ability to scale up and deliver complex projects to tight deadlines.
Within the UK Public Sector, TCS is partnering with central and local government to deliver technology-enabled transformation of: pensions administration services for the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST), casework management for the Child Maintenance Group (CMG), back-office processes for Cardiff City Council, grants administration for the Big Lottery Fund, the myaccount secure single access point for Scottish public services and criminal record and barring checks for the Home Office’s Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).