Jump to section
How should I use Digital Trends in my organisation?
Socitm’s Digital Trends analysis is researched and published to assist practitioners in public service organisations to understand and anticipate how they should be prioritising and investing in technology and digital change. It seeks to provide a broad outlook against which an individual organisation can compare itself, which can be both reassuring and challenging.
In broad terms, there is a number of practical ways in which leaders should consider using Socitm’s Digital Trends analysis:
Basic
Read and understand the report, considering the extent to which you understand and have applied the technology trends in your own IT strategy and priorities within your organisation. It is a good way to understand what others are doing and to ensure that you are keeping abreast of the main technology and digital-enabled changes impacting the public sector. This will give you greater credibility in your interactions within the organisation.
Good
Digital leaders should consider how well aligned their strategic groundwork is in anticipation of emerging digital trends. Use the trends analysis to embed good practice in planned strategic programmes, underpinned by practical realism. This would include, for example, policy development and risk analysis, especially in harnessing artificial intelligence, data analytics and adoption of other new technologies. It is a good opportunity to reassess “how well are we really doing?”
Advanced
Some public bodies will inevitably be more advanced than others in their digital ambition and application. They should consider which areas they wish to prioritise for innovation and use the digital trends report to assess case studies, references, risks and opportunities against their own plans. These are also organisations that should consider contributing their own experiences to Socitm’s future research, helping the followers in the sector to learn from their experience.
Digital leaders should seek to align Digital Trends with their local, place-based social, economic, environmental and political priorities, as highlighted below:
The nature, scale and number of public services being provided by an organisation. This will inevitably have a fundamental impact on technology uptake and digital plans (a small district council will be very different from a large government department).
The digital and technology maturity of an organisation, which will determine which new technologies will be adopted, appetite for risk, and competency in implementation and digital change leadership.
The role and function of an individual leader - each CTO, CIO or director of a service will have a different interpretation of how Socitm's digital trend analyses can be helpful to them in their role. It will also depend on their own experience and expertise, and the expectations that the organisation places upon them in terms of innovation and pace of change.
The demographics and geography of an area being served - countries vary, rural communities may have different needs from city counterparts, and community cultures will also in part determine the appetite for technology adoption. There is a strong relevance here to Socitm's work on 'Connected Places'.
Why is the Socitm outlook unique?
Every year there is a flurry of published predictions and forward-looking analyses from pundits and suppliers alike. Most of these are written for (and by) the private sector – suppliers and consultancies. Many are focused on specific technology developments and inevitably offer a narrow perspective. As with all predictions they are often an informative read, with useful and insightful content, but it can be tricky to work out how they should be used in practice. For a variety of reasons, they need to be treated with caution in terms of their reliability – a bit of healthy scepticism is helpful!
Socitm’s Public Sector Digital Trends provides a critical perspective that is rooted in the context of local public services. Its focus on delivering better outcomes for people, communities and places is unique and provides a practical basis for understanding the impact of the digital and technology trends that we present.
Where are mistakes in predictions often made?
Some of the risks in trying to assess both the priority and impact of digital and technology trends that we have found include:
- Over-optimism – Expectations about the impact of technology change are often unrealistically optimistic, with adoption typically slower than predicted. A good example would be driverless cars, predicted by many in around 2017 to become a reality by 2020. Technology often takes time to adopt, because of concerns over reliability, true business value realisation, and the absence of a bedrock of policy, regulation, compliance and risk mitigation.
- Narrowness of perspective – Many predictions come from a specific viewpoint and can miss the wider context. Examples include the many IT predictions from suppliers who are experts on technology, but under-estimate the complexity and context of adoption in the public sector. They either assume wrongly that the public sector and private sectors are the same (or should be), or they are too narrowly focused on the specific technology they know, with a degree of understandable over-enthusiasm. ‘Cloud’ was a notable example of this in the early days.
- Bias – There is often deliberate and sometimes unintentional bias in predictions that seek to influence behaviours and shape markets. These vested interests are typically driven by money, encouraging us to all be early adopters of new hardware, systems and tools. They will often target ‘end-users’ rather than more sceptical IT professionals. Examples abound, such as internal pressure from departmental managers who have seen or read about a new technology solution from a preferred supplier that is predicted to transform, drive efficiency and modernise the business.
- External events – It does not take much to blow predictions off-course. Pandemics, economic downturns, wars or an unexpected public reaction to risks of new technology can all have a dramatic impact, changing priorities, slowing down or speeding up IT adoption and demand (as we saw with Covid) and creating new incentives for digital transformation programmes. Cyber risk is particularly volatile and difficult to predict until an incident happens. That can have a dramatic impact on attitudes to technology and appetite for risk.
These are the reasons why Socitm’s Digital Trends uses the term ‘trends’ rather than ‘predictions’. Our trends research is grounded in realism, critical analysis and practical application, drawing on evidence from practitioners, not just experts and pundits.
Can I trust Socitm’s Digital Trends?
Socitm’s Digital Trends analyses are more cautious, less prone to bias, and more aligned to a public sector context and practical use than many other reports. After all they are written and scrutinised by, and for, public sector practitioners.
But this does not mean that they should be taken as an accurate anticipation of priorities for individual public service organisations, or indeed for the sector as a whole. As with any forward-looking analyses, there are things we will get wrong.
Last year we undertook to review how accurately we had foreseen the future in the previous five years, with specific assessments of what we got ‘right’ and ‘what we got wrong’.
Whilst in general our assessments have proved to be accurate, the impact of global economics and other events driven by external forces, were, perhaps excusably, not foreseen. A particular example was the growth of collaborative, partnership working harnessing data and technologies during the Covid pandemic.
Also, the public sector is hugely diverse, and inevitably what applies to one organisation will not necessarily always apply to others. We try to make this clear, but some digital trends and technology adoption plans will be slower to come to fruition than the leaders in the sector that are often those most reported.
These are all crucial factors for leaders in public service organisations wanting to use our trends analysis: ‘take them with a pinch of salt and use your own judgement’.
Conclusions
Socitm’s Digital Trends report is designed as an effective way to help individual organisations to compare themselves across the spectrum of innovation and advanced technology adoption. It offers practical guidance and reassurance about the reality of new technologies and the changes associated with digital change in the public sector.
Contacts and references it contains can be valuable for Socitm members to interact and learn from others. It offers opportunities to follow up on the many case studies and examples that are showcased in our analysis and at Socitm conferences and events.
Our research does not replace commonsense; it is advisable to be distrustful as well as optimistic about new technologies and digital predictions. Learning from others will show that you are not alone the challenges associated with new technology and digital adoption. It may well reassure you that being sceptical about some suppliers’ promises is well-placed and, perhaps contrary to popular opinion, is not being unduly risk averse.
The most important message is that little is actually new; digital and technology application today are not unlike 10 years ago, even if the technologies themselves have evolved. Often the risks, ‘hype cycle’ and basic foundations to successful adoption are the same.
Getting the basics right is always key to success in digital and technology developments, especially in complex organisations such as public services on which the public depend. These ‘basics’ include:
- Effective resource allocation, with clear prioritising (i.e. not trying to do everything at the same time).
- Good business case planning and assurance, with benefits realisation accountability clearly identified.
- Policy foundations and digital principles being adhered to create consistency, with wider organisational commitment to change (otherwise all you have is an IT project).
- Effective supplier management and skills modelling, balancing a mix of bought-in and in-house resources.
- Risk analyses and risk acceptance, along with appropriate compliance checks.
- Governance and leadership from the top, with organisational commitment to change.
- A concern for ‘people and places’ first, technology and ‘digital systems’ second.