Faced with rising demand and shrinking budgets, public sector leaders must rethink service delivery from the ground up. Kurt Frary, Head of IT/CTO at Norfolk County Council and Socitm president, sets out a blueprint for digitally reimagined, human-centred services.
People like me in public sector organisations are grappling with a growing challenge: how to deliver services with continually increasing budget pressures?
This pressure is compounded by increasing demand for vital support like health, social care and special education needs and disabilities.
Our landscape is too often characterised by disconnected service experiences, due to: silo-based working; traditional organisational structures; challenges around information sharing; and skills shortages – making it harder for us to improve outcomes for our communities.
Best intentions
The complexity of managing large-scale change means that without proper stakeholder involvement and consultation, even well-intentioned service redesigns can fail to deliver the impact we hope for.
There can also be a significant lack of detailed, localised data. Making it difficult to efficiently flag, assess or allocate resources to target interventions where they are most needed.
For service users, this often translates into confusion, with services that: are difficult to find or even know they’re available; are unclear in purpose; require prior knowledge; challenging to access; and lead to dead ends.
Too often creating barriers to citizens getting the outcomes they seek.
While the push for automation and AI is strong, there’s a critical concern about maintaining the crucial human element when making decisions about people’s lives. Particularly in sensitive areas like social care, where empathetic interaction is essential.
This can all create a perilous situation where services risk not benefiting from new technologies and becoming more efficient, not adapting, less effective, and less responsive to the very communities they serve.
What’s not working?
When we design in these structures, citizens experience a disjointed journey that doesn’t account for their holistic needs.
Without comprehensive, integrated data our decisions can be reactive rather than proactive. Sometimes trapping us in a “cycle of short term fixes’.
This perpetual reactive state, combined with a struggle to adapt to evolving needs, means that public trust and community wellbeing can suffer.
Moreover, if new technologies are implemented without a fundamental redesign based on data and user needs, they risk merely automating existing inefficiencies rather than truly transforming service delivery.
The potential erosion of the human touch, particularly in social care, threatens the very essence of person-centred support, risking a colder, less empathetic experience for vulnerable citizens.
To overcome these pressing challenges and transform public service delivery, a dual, interconnected approach is essential: strategic digital reimagining coupled with adherence to foundational principles of good service co-design.
The strategic solution involves reimagining public services beyond existing organisational, structural, and cultural constraints, to data-led, and co-designed to improve outcomes for people and places.
How are we improving?
Best practice transformation is built on the following.
1. Breaking down silos and fostering collaboration
We must break down barriers caused by silo-based working, organisational structures, and funding gaps. Actively seeking new perspectives and sharing experiences across networks.
This includes collaborating and sharing assets across organisations, joining up service delivery strategies, pooling budgets, and jointly commissioning digital, data and technology.
Case studies highlight successful multi-agency collaborations like Dundee City Council’s Local Fairness Initiative to reduce inequalities and Dorset Council’s home care optimisation programme.
2. Adopting ‘Simplify – Standardise – Share’
Enabling ‘anytime, anywhere, any device’ access and increasing efficiency and productivity.
3. Leveraging digital, data, and AI
Advanced technologies, particularly AI, are transforming what we do and how - by enhancing efficiency, improving decision-making, and providing better citizen experiences.
Lichfield District Council’s Data to Impact project explores how localised data can address social challenges and inform policymaking.
4. Innovating to empower citizens and communities
This involves shifting ownership and use of information and technology towards the service user, co-design of services with the actual people who will be using them, building social and digital inclusion, and engaging service users, SMEs, and the technology sector in service design and delivery.
Norfolk County Council’s Tech Skills for Life programme shows how organisations can engage with service users another way, drawing on existing partnerships and contracts to make a real difference to people’s lives.
5. Developing ‘Connected Places’
A key Socitm concept to create conditions for people and communities to prosper by consolidating, collaborating, and sharing technologies and data beyond traditional borders, regardless of location.
6. Leadership, culture, and skills development
Successful transformation requires leadership that encourages innovation, cultural change, and investment in skills and competencies, fostering self-sufficiency with a focus on equality, diversity, and inclusivity.
More to think about and build in to your service redesign
Complementing strategy, Lou Downe’s “15 Principles of Good Service Design” can provide a practical ‘how to’. Ensuring that these digitally reimagined services are effective, user-friendly, and deliver genuine value.
User-centric
Services must “Be easy to find”, “Clearly explain their purpose”, “Set a user’s expectations”, and crucially, “Enable each user to complete the outcome they set out to do”.
This ensures citizens aren’t left frustrated or unable to complete tasks.
Simplicity and efficiency
Services should “Work in a way that is familiar”, “Require no prior knowledge to use”, and “Require the minimum possible steps to complete”.
This aligns directly with the strategic goal to simplify and automate.
Consistency and clarity
Services should “Be consistent throughout”, “Have no dead ends”, and “Clearly explain why a decision has been made”, ensuring a smooth and transparent user journey.
Organisational agnosticism
A service must “Be agnostic of organisational structures”, meaning it should be designed around the user’s journey, not internal departmental divisions. This directly addresses the pain of silo-based working.
Inclusive and adaptable
Services must “Be usable by everyone, equally”, promoting social and digital inclusion, a key strategic aim. They must also “Quickly respond to change” to meet evolving community needs, reflecting the dynamic environment.
Maintaining the human element
Critically, services must “Make it easy to get human assistance”.
This principle directly addresses the risk of dehumanising services with technology, ensuring that while digital solutions enhance efficiency, empathetic human support remains readily available, particularly where personal interaction is vital, such as in social care.
Advice for digital leaders to follow:
Basic: Encourage and facilitate multi-agency collaborations to reduce inequalities and improve holistic service delivery.
Good: Harness AI and technologies to support data insights, setting new standards in public services and helping the organisation to understand the potential of technology and place-based digital change to reimagine public services in ways that are responsible, ethical and secure.
Advanced: Be adept at telling ‘the stories’. While budgets define constraints, leadership defines possibilities in ‘connected places’. Invest strategically in place-based governance and innovation, prioritise resources for long-term resilience and develop and leverage technology and data-driven strategies to enhance supply-chain opportunities, resource allocation, service accessibility, social value, public trust and community wellbeing.
Where can we get to with all this?
By embracing this strategic transformation, underpinned by disciplined and user-centric service co-design, we can not only meet increasing demands within budget constraints but also fundamentally shift the dial towards prevention rather than simply responding to symptoms.
This approach leads to improved resource allocation, enhanced service accessibility, and overall community wellbeing, ultimately delivering more value to citizens.
