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A look back
Over four decades, public sector work shifts from rigid hierarchies and paper processes to hybrid, collaborative, digitally enabled operating models, with emerging technologies; such as AI and local government reorganisation accelerating change.
Ways of working:
From paper and hierarchy to hybrid and AI
40 years across five decades
Hierarchies and paper
• Hierarchy, office-based and silos
• Paper sign-offs
• IT as back-office support
• LGR: Metropolitan councils abolished, powers passed down to boroughs
⚠ Challenge: risk-averse culture, slow innovation (“safe, established solutions”)
Email changes pace
• PCs and email accelerate communication
• Websites mostly “online brochures”
• Partnership working and joined-up government
• LGR: Review leads to more unitary councils and Wales moves fully to unitary authorities
⚠ Challenge: silos remain, IT still separate from frontline services, governance blocks cross-cutting innovation.
E-government goes live
• Public services online and e-forms
• Customer service and IT teams join up
• Multi-disciplinary project teams starting to emerge
• LGR: Stronger leadership, cabinet-style governance and elected mayors
⚠ Challenge: fragmented tech from department-by-department procurement, entrenched structures slow progress.
Agile and cloud
• New management methods (agile, user-centred design, open collaboration)
• New tech (cloud, mobile, social media) enable collaboration
• Digital leadership grows
• LGR: Localism Act expands council powers, public health returns to councils and devolution and combined authorities focused on regional growth.
⚠ Challenge: early in the decade, technology adoption outpaces organisational change, pace varies across organisations.
Hybrid, AI and reorganisation
• Covid-19 forces remote work
• Hybrid working becomes normal
• GenAI enters daily tasks
• LGR: Shift to larger unitary councils to simplify structures, improve efficiency and respond to financial pressures.
⚠ Challenge: local government reorganisation requiring harmonising services, integrating systems, redesigning operating models while keeping services running.
So what?
• Tools help, but culture decides speed.
• Collaboration beats silos for complex demand.
• Skills and leadership make change stick.
• Digital, Data and Technology must be considered together as a single, integrated capability
What changes next
• DDaT becomes a strategic partner.
• Projects shift to outcomes-focused and place-based models
• Platforms and shared data enable place-based work.
• A shift to a multidisciplinary approach: different organisations working together around the needs of their communities.
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A leap forward
Local public services face sustained pressure to deliver better outcomes within tighter financial and workforce constraints. Digital, data and technology (DDaT) are now fundamental to how services are designed, delivered and experienced, not simply enablers of efficiency.
For Chief Digital and Information Officers (CDIOs), this presents a critical challenge.
Purpose
Socitm has created a series of guides to support public sector CDIOs and corporate leadership teams understand how different Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) operating models work in practice, and how to choose the right mix based on local context, capability and ambition. It provides a shared language for CDIOs and corporate leaders to make deliberate, informed decisions about how DDaT should be organised to deliver reliable services today and better outcomes tomorrow.
This work draws on established industry research and practical experience from across local government and the NHS, adapted to reflect the realities of public sector organisarions, including legacy technology, financial constraints and place-based delivery.
There is no single right DDaT operating model. The appropriate approach depends on organisational strategy, capability maturity, service complexity and risk appetite. Most organisations must operate ambidextrously, balancing stability in core systems with innovation and change.
Effective operating models therefore support both efficiency and transformation, often through a deliberate mix of approaches.
Three DDaT operating models are evident:
- Process or project model prioritise control, compliance and reliability.
- Enabling model strengthens alignment between DDaT and services through shared accountability for outcomes.
- Product or value model integrate multidisciplinary teams around services or value streams to support continuous improvement and user-centred delivery.
In practice, organisations typically require a combination of these models, with active management of the interfaces between them.
The future of local public services is increasingly place-based and multi-organisational. Effective DDaT operating models must work across system, place and community levels, combining shared platforms and standards with strong local ownership and delivery. Success depends on balancing top-down enablement with bottom-up engagement, underpinned by strong relationships and clear roles.
Operating models and leadership styles are inseparable. Different approaches demand different leadership behaviours, from directive leadership in stability-critical environments, through collaborative leadership in enabling models, to outcomes-focused, servant leadership in product-led approaches.
Most organisations require adaptive leadership, applying the right style in the right context.
Message for CDIOs
The challenge for today’s CDIOs is not simply to modernise technology, but to help shape how the organisation delivers outcomes. This means working with executive peers to deliberately design and evolve DDaT operating models that align strategy, funding, governance, people and culture.
The most effective CDIOs recognise there is no single right model or leadership style and instead apply the right approach at the right time to balance stability and transformation in service of better outcomes for people, communities and places.
Explore the series of guides to understand the operating model options available, the leadership choices they require, and how to apply them in practice.
