Public Technology Live 2022
After two years of lockdowns, working in spare rooms and far too many virtual meetings I took some of the CURSHAW Team on our first conference - and I’m glad we went.
Unsure of how the day would pan out, it’s fair to say that the Public Technology Live 2022 was the perfect return to the conference circuit. The venue was nice, food and drink was good and the people were great. More importantly, the topics, speakers and stalls were just right:
Informative: sharing the latest thinking and products / services,
Open: no restrictions in terms of being able to ask the silly questions, and
Community: a sense of “let's solve pubic service problems together”
I wanted to share my notes principly with the DDaT commercial population (and anyone else that has an interest).
More digital public services
The opening keynote was from Tom Read of GDS, who gave an overview of the organisation's next phase of making services easier to find and simpler to use as well as helping other government departments go digital. It's great to see the GDS Team continue to make public services better for all users.
This was followed by a sports-themed session on Uncovering the Hidden Data Economy by Michael Connaughton of Oracle. I found this very insightful, especially as Michael talked about the economy of data, diving into types of data, where to store it, how to protect it and a bunch more things. Definitely worth exploring more (look out for the LinkedIn request Michael, we’ve got to chat).
Digital transformation (now the pandemic is over)
This was the bit I was most looking forward to as I believe the pandemic has accelerated the digital agenda of organisations (both public and private) and I have seen this with some of our clients outside of the UK, and with those in developing nations.
The general consensus was that the pandemic was tough and people like Mark Gray from the Crown Prosecution Service and Simon Body from UK Parliament (and their teams), have worked hard to keep the lights on (whatever it took). Now, there must be a period of settling and renegotiating new contracts (i.e. those for services that perhaps were not planned for pre-pandemic but now we’ve all come to love and need). Whilst we rightfully always applaud front line workers (health, grocery, waste, education, etc.), we must also thank those who work in the second line public services (courts, passports, public payments).
However, public services must continue to transform to be fit for all users and digital is a prime enabler of this. So, the short answer is that digital transformation is continuing and at a quicker pace than ever.
Because of this cyber security has become a bigger thing and everyone must be aware of the risks, vulnerabilities and costs associated. More than ever, the time is right for industry innovation and the use of quality 3rd party products and services. Doing commercial (all 8 steps) well, that supports compliance, achievement of social value for money, and enabling quality delivery, is critical. But getting the balance right is hard. I spoke to people who know commercial functions that have struggled with this - often focusing on the wrong thing: price. (Here’s a tip - focus on the team doing the delivery
Track-in
We dropped into a series of Tracks - Transformation, Infrastructure, Innovation, Outcomes, Interoperability - which I thought were really useful and I didn’t feel were salesy. There were some really good suppliers there and I would recommend an open (fair and transparent) chat with some of them.
Conclusion
This was a great event for technology and cyber experts, suppliers and leaders. For me, there was not enough focus on how to play-in market providers (i.e. compliant contracting) and how to ensure providers deliver to the agreed standards (quality, time and cost) but also how the market and the public sector can really operate as quality multidisciplinary teams - but this will always be my moan.
