Scrooge 2021 - Past, Present, Future’ of tech, AI and automation
Scrooge 2021
So… I make no apologies for trying to get the festive period going a little early as, let’s face it, there isn’t much else to look forward to right now…
I've already started on the mince pies, the Baileys has been open since lockdown 1, and Christmas begins now as far as I’m concerned!
And as anybody who works in the tech sector knows only too well, Christmas isn’t Christmas without a few predictions. This time around it’s harder than ever to look into the crystal ball and see what’s in store for us over the coming year and beyond. But I’m going to give it a go anyway.
With everything that’s happened this year, I think the Christmas Carol approach is probably most appropriate, exploring the ‘Past, Present, Future’ of tech, AI and automation.
Let’s call it Scrooge 2021 or Scrooge in Lockdown!
Christmas Past
The year 2000 saw the start of my working life within the Public Sector. In fact, it was the 4th January, the very first working day of the new millennium. When I started on the help desk at (the sadly no more) Sheridan Systems Ltd, I was young, naïve and unaware of pretty much anything to do with the public sector, having just fallen out of university. But those days were different, the current challenges of austerity weren’t even on the horizon and whilst money wasn’t raining down, it was certainly flowing more freely than it has done over recent years.
From a technology perspective, electronic case management systems were still pretty new, faxes were still used, dumb terminals pretty common. Mobile working and electronic files were talked about but had not yet moved beyond concept stage. That first decade saw some really rapid change though, as technology advanced as pace. New systems came on to the market to address new use cases, which meant more data. Councils started going through the first wave of not only procuring but replacing technology and from there came the development of robotics in local government – or screen scrapping as it was called at the time, being introduced to manage integration between systems to complete data migrations. Beyond that, automation was limited to system workflows and heavy duty integrations. With data being collected in a much more structured way, we also saw the embryonic development of analytics.
Christmas Present
Roll forward to the present and what do we see in the world of local government technology?
The climate in which councils are operating has of course shifted dramatically and technology innovation is far beyond what any of us could have imagined in the year 2000. However, adoption of new technologies still lags well behind that in the private sector.
Why is that? A lot of time and money has been spent on business systems that address specific council processes, but there has not been the same level of focus or investment on the non-traditional technologies that would really shift the dial. The missing piece of the jigsaw is the introduction of technologies that go beyond operational efficiency to deliver strategic transformation to redefine how a council is able to function, to deliver services and drive customer experience.
Of course, we need to recognise that austerity, and more recently Covid-19, have understandably meant that councils are focused on short-term fixes and survival, rather than looking at longer-term strategy and organisational digital transformation. Many councils are still fixated on the re-organisation of people-based structures and processes in order to drive change, rather than thinking more broadly about how technology can be deployed to re-define their entire operational model to deliver genuine transformation.
There are however, a small (but growing) number of councils who are adding AI powered technologies into their toolkit, and not just as discreet point solutions. These councils are seeing AI and automation as a springboard for digital transformation and, importantly, to re-think how they resource work to deliver optimal services and outcomes for citizens.
It’s still relatively early days but these councils are exploring how an AI-enabled digital workforce can operate alongside existing staff to streamline operations, drive customer experience and accelerate innovation. They’re also looking at how these intelligent digital workers can improve operational agility and resilience to respond to the level of change and disruption that we have seen this year.
The truth is that if there was anywhere AI powered tools could have a defining impact it is within local government. With councils being squeezed to breaking point, these types of technologies really can make a difference, positively impacting the lives of millions of people around the UK.
Christmas Future
So given the relative (compared to other sectors) baby steps that councils are taking towards AI, what can we say about Christmas Future?
It’s easy to make big, bold predictions but I won’t, as the truth is the next 5-10 years of AI adoption within the public sector is quite easy to predict. The journey has already been largely mapped out within the private sector.
The challenge over recent years has not been in the functionality or suitability of AI technology; it has been in the appetite and capacity of local government bodies to embrace it. Much like In the same way that since the invention of the car, people stopped riding horses into town, this is a gradual change that will happen, and once the change begins, there will be no turning back. It is simply a question of when, where and how councils take their first step on the journey, not ‘if’.
Look at any of the big contact centre industries – Utilities, Telecommunications – that are driving fulfilment through automation and online transactions, minimising human contact to speed up processes.
Councils will definitely take a different approach and a more omni-channel focus by not replacing human workers but rather ensuring that staff apply their time and skills where it is needed most. Some will move a step further, using the data they have to reduce friction through automated, proactive engagement. If a citizen of a certain age has just moved in to an area, what services are they likely to need? How much more efficient would it be to push these services and to signpost solutions rather than wait for a phone call?
Also we can consider how customer experience is managed to make transactions as low impact as possible… Amazon knows more about me that my wife it feels! A council could also know a lot, not just about individual citizens but about buildings, amenities and infrastructure. So why ask for so much information as part of a planning application? Councils already have most of the information they need to process such an application; they just need the resource and AI-driven automation to find the relevant data and interpret it against a set of rules.
Similarly, imagine an everyday situation such as somebody reporting a pot hole. Imagine if he or she could just text a picture of the pot hole to the council, and then the data that sits in that image – the location, the size and depth of the pot hole – is combined with smart city data about usage of the road to make an automated decision to prioritise and schedule the repair.
Beyond such purely transaction-based services, the really exciting thing in the future will be how AI starts to positively impact on people’s lives. Using the data they already hold, Councils will better understand citizens behaviours and preferences, and be able to proactively engage with them on this basis. There are plenty of analytical tools available to help develop really comprehensive predictive models to better understand causation and how intervention can proactively support citizens. The integration of AI and automation can support councils by identifying and gathering intelligence, making information flow freely around the organisation even where there are disparate, legacy IT systems. Intelligent automation can manage all of the threads that have previously relied on people manually feeding data from one system to another – typically the type of tasks that councils simply don’t have the resource to do properly.
So my Christmas future prediction is simple. In the coming years, councils will become more efficient as a result of AI and automation, mainly because they have to. Nothing breeds innovation and change like necessity. The technology that councils need to survive and thrive in the future already exists and councils have the skills, passion and drive to magnify the impact of AI and automation.
Mindsets are changing, and we’re seeing councils embracing AI and automation as a way to futureproof services in the most challenging of circumstances.
