The government is determined to improve public services by making them easier to use and more joined up, so that the citizen experience becomes seamless and simple. Greater collaboration using common platforms and shared resources can save money, share best practice and prevent departments building different versions of the same service.
What is stopping this joined-up approach?
Departments are unaware that expertise and capacity exists elsewhere; and may not trust other organisations to deliver a better service. Collaborative dialogue across departments is necessary to raise awareness of existing proven capability, and to quickly identify and develop these partnership opportunities. Joining up citizen journeys across departmental boundaries opens up significant opportunities for the re-use of existing services, greater automation, and self-service which can all actually enhance the citizen experience and significantly reduce the costs of delivery.
There are already strong examples where one government organisation has taken on another’s business processes to successfully deliver efficiencies and an improved customer experience. When, for example, the Ministry of Justice asked National Savings and Investments (NS&I) to oversee the account management processes of the Court Funds Office – which were paper-based and inefficient – NS&I modernised the payment system, reduced costs and increased customer service and satisfaction. Elsewhere, back office processing such as HR and Procurement has been successfully consolidated onto single platforms and operations, for example NHS Shared Business Services.
Organised with the support of NS&I, this round table will bring together civil servants and their peers in the wider public sector to discuss key issues and raise awareness around how closer departmental collaboration can enable more joined-up service delivery for citizens.
Topics will include:
- How can departments better share and understand these potential shared capabilities?
- What are the potential benefits of one department delivering for another?
- What have the critical factors been for these arrangements to work successfully?
- How can we overcome departmental barriers to deliver services built around citizens?
- What are the benefits and risks of more joined up public services?
- How can technology enable the acceleration of this increased collaboration?
- Where are the key risks in developing and adopting this model, and what lessons have been learned from organisations’ difficulties in doing so?
To find out more about this round table please contact Daisy Crisp on events@dods.co.uk.