Global Study Highlights Ongoing Digital Transformation Challenges in the Public Sector

“The global public sector is coming through one of the toughest challenges it has ever faced, but in some ways it has demonstrated what is possible in terms of digital transformation,” said Mark Gibbison, Global Director Public Sector, Unit4. “However, organizations face an even tougher task in the years ahead to maintain essential public services and continue to invest in innovation to deliver significant improvements. It will require a mindset shift to embrace the change needed to modernize public services and a willingness to be more agile, accepting that disruption will ultimately lead to far better value for citizens.”

Reality check for digital transformation strategies

The State of the Digital Nation study indicates there are significant hurdles to overcome for digital transformation to be successful, which should serve as a reality check for organizations as they plan their strategies. 41% globally say large improvements are needed in data compatibility in their organizations and 16% say wholesale changes are needed. A further 38% globally say data is manually entered by someone from paper to software systems and 43% say data is manually exported from one system and imported to another. Additionally, the vast majority of respondents (86%) believe their staff don’t have the right skills or training for transformation of back-office systems, which will further impede delivery.

There are also concerns that senior management are over-confident in their assessment of the delivery of digital transformation. 47% of top-level management and 44% of high-level management believe transformation will be delivered on time, which compares to only 5% of junior-level management who agree with this statement. Similarly, 51% of top-level management and 48% of high-level management believe transformation will be delivered within budget, compared to only 5% of junior-level management.

The way forward      

The survey indicates where public sector organizations are focusing to improve processes and drive efficiencies in back-office systems. The top three priorities are cloud migration (50%), data management tools (49%), and real-time reporting tools (47%), while artificial intelligence is the lowest priority (36%).

Looking at the maturity of public sector organizations more closely, the study breaks out the indicators of the out-performers and under-performers, who occupy either end of the performance spectrum. Out-performers:

• Only take 1.5 years to fully roll-out digital transformation in their organizations
• The smallest percentage (25%) looking to achieve cost savings by cutting citizen and community services
• Only 18% making mandatory or voluntary redundancies
• They can also recruit from a wider geographic area (37%)

Under-performers:

• Are most likely to complain about red tape/regulation to justify spending
• Will take 2.8 years (compared to 2.4 years on average globally) to fully roll-out digital transformation
• 39% will achieve cost savings by cutting citizen and community services and implementing mandatory or voluntary redundancies
• They have the highest number of recruiters but cannot find the right people, and 30% are hiring staff who do not have the right skills

Additional Resources

• A copy of the full report is available to download here.

Survey Methodology

Vanson Bourne surveyed 600 public sector decision makers across Australia, Belgium, Canada, Sweden, the UK, and the USA. Respondents were chosen from central government, local government, healthcare, the emergency services, and non-departmental public bodies, and from a range of roles including HR decision makers, IT decision makers, and finance decision makers. 

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About Unit4

Unit4's next-generation enterprise solutions power many of the world's most people-centric mid-market organizations. Our state-of-the-art cloud platform, ERPx, brings together the capabilities of Financials, Procurement, Project Management, HR and FP&A onto a unified cloud platform that shares real-time information and is designed with a powerful, people-centric approach, so employees can benefit from better insight and become more effective and increasingly engaged. It supports rapid and continuous change while delivering individualized fit for customers at scale, delivering the right tools to unify the processes across their organization, and connect their people. Unit4 serves more than 6,000 customers globally including, Bravida, Havas, Migros Aare, Americares, Save the Children International, Action against Hunger, Metro Vancouver, Forest Research, Southampton City Council, Selkirk College, FTI Consulting, and Surrey County Council.

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