Using hard data as a starting point, we explore the changing world of hybrid work. Guided by our own experiences of neurodivergence and disability, we debate how a more collaborative and accessible approach can drive efficiency across the public sector. In most cases we find that it can be done using technology that governments already possess.  

As a former policy advisor with hands-on experience of shaping equality legislation, these issues are all very close to my heart. 

Aligning leaders and teams to make hybrid work, work

The first episode of the Public Sector Podcast Series, season four, is The Future of Work – Facing the Hybrid Challenge. In it, Microsoft’s Henry Rex, industry advisor, and Rakhi Sachdeva, modern workplace specialist, discuss findings from the latest Work Trends Index report. The numbers reveal a significant disconnect between managers and teams around attitudes to remote working. 87 percent of remote employees reported feeling confident in their productivity at work, while only 12 percent of managers felt the same way about the performance of their remote teams.  

Managers can benefit from investing more trust in their teams and using soft skills to ensure that everyone gets access to the vision and culture of the organisation, which is key to productivity. Helping staff learn new skills ‘on the go’ improves both retention and productivity. We also discuss how a more flexible approach to work can empower individuals who have differing needs to be more effective. Building trust between management and staff enables everyone to align around the public service mission; as Henry Rex points out, people often join an organisation for the money, but stay there for the culture.

Neurodivergence and the innovation challenge

In episode two, Innovate Together, Microsoft account technology strategist, Andrew Boxall, talks about managing change in government and how it can enable staff to embrace more productive and collaborative ways of working. Along the way we discuss our shared experiences of being neurodiverse in the workplace, which provides insights into the challenges of data-driven innovation. 

Addressing bias and differing learning styles enables public servants to collaborate better across organisations. The Innovate Together initiative, supported by Microsoft, aims to accelerate innovation and best practice sharing across the public sector. Trailblazers like Norfolk County Council provide an inspirational example of how advanced techniques such as robotic process automation can drive efficiency.  

Success depends on leaders who set an example and have the initiative to share their learnings. All our guests agreed that making better use of existing tools is a great way to achieve incremental efficiency gains in government, and start building confidence. 

Extending accessibility and inclusion to drive productivity 

In episode three, Accessibility, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion, I speak to Maria Grazia Zedda, senior EDI manager at HS2, who is severely deaf. Maria Grazia speaks movingly about overcoming the challenges of disability and hardship when she arrived in London as a young woman. London is also where she found support on her career path and discovered her vocation, improving accessibility in the workplace for everyone. These uplifting experiences are captured in her first novel which is to be published in her native Italy. 

Maria Grazia welcomes the adoption of new technologies that enhance accessibility and inclusion, such as minicoms and auto-captions (Live Captions in Microsoft Teams), the use of which was accelerated by remote working. The momentum now needs to be maintained so that inclusion becomes a fundamental principle of the workplace and the built environment. 

Explore episodes from our previous series 

Our previous three podcast series provide fascinating insights into how efficiency in the public sector could be improved with fresh thinking.  

Public Sector Podcast Series – Season One

In Public Sector Podcast Series – Season 1, guests discuss how citizen services can be enhanced using new digital technologies. Further episodes explore the challenges of managing security across government in a digital world, and overcoming the barriers to legacy estate reduction. Hindsight is also explored as a means of understanding past mistakes and improving government performance in the future.

Public Sector Podcast Series – Season Two

Public Sector Podcast Series – Season 2 builds on these themes, looking at how citizen identity in government can be managed simply and securely. The challenges of hybrid work, and the uses of geospatial data science in the context of the government’s levelling-up agenda, are also up for discussion. A highlight from series two is the episode that draws lessons from the Environment Agency’s experience of digital transformation. Cross-government data sharing also comes under scrutiny.

Public Sector Podcast Series – Season Three

Public Sector Podcast Series – Season 3 digs deeper into data sharing and how citizens engage with government. We assess the government’s Green agenda and the challenge of data literacy in driving innovation across the public sector. And what, we ask, do young people think about entering public service? We devote an episode to figuring out the changing face of apprenticeship in a hybrid world.

Find out more

Successful trial of the Microsoft and Socitm Change Agent programme

Our innovation – Norfolk County Council

Microsoft 365 Collaboration Blueprint for UK Government – Microsoft Industry Blogs – United Kingdom

How the public sector can streamline operations and innovate with intelligent automation – Microsoft Industry Blogs – United Kingdom

About the author

Aaron has worked at Microsoft as an industry advisor for central government for the last four years. Before that he spent twenty-five years in the public sector across a number of departments, in both central and local government, leading on technology policy and strategy. Most notably, he worked on the creation of the Equality Acts (2006 and 2010), the Public Sector Equality Duty and the translation of the EU Accessibility Regulations over to the UK. Outside of his day job, Aaron lectures on accessibility, inclusion and neurodiversity at local institutions and across the wider tech sector.

The post How to make government more effective in a hybrid world: podcast series appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

At Microsoft, we support Central Government organisations to enable employees to automate their workflows and business processes. We focus on everyone from civil servants on the frontline to technology experts. Our platform brings together Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Digital Process Automation (DPA) into a single cloud-based solution. As a result, it has recently been named a leader in the 2021 Forrester Wave for Robotic Process Automation.

The public sector needs to respond to new challenges such as increasing digital services to citizens and giving civil servants more resources on the frontline. Meanwhile, organisations face a skills shortage and increased demands to be more responsive. This is a great opportunity to look at RPA. But how can we ensure it delivers what you need?

Streamline operations with intelligent automation

RPA turns manual tasks into automated workflows by recording and playing back human-driven interaction with systems that don’t support API-based automation. What this means is you can automate processes and exchange data with legacy, on-premise software. What happens when you combine RPA with AI and digital process automation (automated workflows across cloud services)? You get an end-to-end solution. One that creates reusable workflows or processes you can use throughout the organisation on a secure platform. This reduces the time it takes to complete tasks and reduces paper-based processes. Additionally, it frees up employees to focus on strategic work or spend more time with citizens.

Microsoft Power Platform is an intuitive, extensible platform of low-code tools. It empowers all users to collaborate and build transformational solutions.

It has seamless integration to Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Azure and more than 400 native connectors. This means users can break up data silos, surface insights and create flexibility in business processes. You can build all these solutions in-house. As a result, you’re reducing your IT spend while giving yourself more capabilities.

For instance, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) is responsible for monitoring the quality of care providers across England. To reduce manual paper processes, they built a low-code app with Power Apps for inspectors to use during site visits. They can complete reports quickly and easily onsite. In the meantime, that data flows back to connect to other inputs, such as online reviews, and social media. As a result, this delivers a more holistic view of care providers to CQC.

Gain new insights and reduce silos with intelligent automation

One of the benefits from having intelligent automation is the insights you can gain from it. As a result, you will be able to provide better services to citizens, improve employee wellbeing, and create new innovations.

To help decide which tasks to automate, we have introduced Process Advisor, a new process mining capability in Power Automate. It helps organisations better understand how their employees work. Process maps show the steps, repetitions, and provide out of the box analytics. Using these insights, organisations can decide which tasks to automate breaking down the barriers that might make it difficult for an organisation to identify where they might benefit the most from automation.

For example, Colchester Borough Council uses Microsoft to help deliver their services to 192,500 residents. They have used insights collected via Power BI to uncover areas of their Borough that need extra resources or information. With the help of Power Apps and Power Automate, staff can access, update, and share case and service information. They can do this securely via desktop and mobile devices in real-time.

Keeping your data safe

The public sector often deals with sensitive personal information. This means it’s important you ensure your technology is secure and compliant. Power Platform is built on Microsoft security standards. This includes the strong security and compliance features of Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Azure Active Directory. Azure benefits from multi-layered security with integrated controls in hardware and firmware. Admins can monitor usage and business impact across the entire tenant. This helps securely deploy and support a low/no code platform. Power Platform monitoring tools help you gain full visibility of what employees are building. At the same time you have visibility over the use of these apps and flows. This is a key difference from other IT development projects. Traditionally, IT teams can struggle to gain a full understanding of usage and data access.

Additionally, there are many targeted security and governance capabilities. These enable environment and tenant-wide data exfiltration governance as well as fine-grained data loss prevention rules and support.

Empowering the public sector with intelligent automation

According to a Forrester Total Economic Impact of Power Automate, using an intelligent automation solution in the cloud can deliver a three-year return on investment of 199 percent. In order to face unprecedented challenges and changes that the UK is facing, we built an Intelligent Automation Blueprint to stimulate thought and provide ideas for central government.

The public sector needs to identify the opportunities for automation, as well as the technology to deliver it. Power Automate is helping reduce repetitive, manual, time-consuming tasks so civil servants can focus on strategic work. Ultimately, this is helping deliver better services to citizens.

Power Automate can deliver quick wins. But it should be considered a core part of a long-term strategy to ensure your organisation is well equipped to become digitally transformed.

Find out more

A blueprint for intelligent automation

Learn how to meet challenges with Power Platform

About the author

Andy has worked in delivering IT and Business solutions to Public Sector for the last 26 years. He has a passion for business improvement. Andy currently leads a team in Microsoft which provides cloud services to Central Government and Public Safety/National Security customers.

The post How the public sector can streamline operations and innovate with intelligent automation appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

This blog is the first in a series where we will shine a light on some of these ‘different things’. We’ll take a virtual tour up and down the UK to explore stories of new ways of working, partnerships and of course the role which data, AI and digital are playing in this field. Change is happening, not only in service transformation, (because you’d be right to expect that) but also in how digital is paving the way for consumers of care to make our own choices about the sort of care which really matters to us – after all, this will be all of us one day. So where will we be stopping off?

With many services currently experiencing more ‘front doors’ than citizens can cope with, there are some substantial changes in the way which organisations are thinking about how services of the future will be accessed by those seeking help. An increasing number of authorities are looking to AI-driven virtual assistant services (aka bots) to support people in helping themselves by, for example, using this technology to suggest appropriate assistive technology which can help people in the home. Newcastle City Council’s Adult Social Care Equipment bot is one of the first of its kind, with similar technology popping up elsewhere in the country.

Others are bringing the power of AI and blockchain to help people source the care they want close to their own homes, and in doing so are beginning to address the issue of care ‘blackspots’ which leave many people without any care at all. Using the Tribe Project’s platform, individuals in pilot sites in Dorset Council and Shropshire Council can choose how to spend their care budget on support delivered from carers in their local area, people they trust to support them at the time and in the way they most need help.

North of the border in Dumfries and Galloway, exploring and deepening partnerships between the sector, the IT industry and academia have given rise to a new breed of assistive technology which goes beyond detecting falls to actually predicting the likelihood of them happening – Loreburn Housing, supported by ARMED technology managed to eradicate falls during tests. This is a genuine step forward in using technology to enable early intervention in order to prevent (or delay) the otherwise seemingly inevitable journey into increasingly costly care pathways.

A little further south,  Manchester City Council, together with health partners forming the Manchester Care Organisation are looking to evolve their integrated health and care approach through a data platform to manage and respond to real time needs from people whilst they are still in the community. Putting a focus on supporting people wherever possible to stay in their homes supported by family and friends, the integrated team is looking to make its combined data work for the benefit of the whole system and for the people of Manchester delivering a person centred, data driven ‘whole system’ approach. This is a truly different way of delivering health and care and should be of interest to Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships and Integrated Care Systems up and down the country.

We hope that you will find this series of blogs useful and that you will enjoy reading this UKAuthority whitepaper which showcases some other examples of innovation in health and care.

If you would like more information, please comment below to get in touch or reach out to your Microsoft Account Manager.

Find out more

Download the whitepaper: Smart and Connected Health and Social Care

Discover how to transform patient outcomes with AI 

About the author

Helena is Microsoft UK’s Local and Regional Government Industry Lead. She is passionate about the positive impact which technology, sensitively applied, can have on communities and cities of the future. Technology embedded in the fabric and infrastructure of our lives should help improve our day to day experiences, but it must do so in a way which helps us build a strong sense of community with those around us, encouraging a shared sense of ownership about our immediate environment, and on those further afield. Helena’s remit at Microsoft involves looking at how technology can help transform public services, particularly integrated health and social care, and leading on Microsoft’s smart cities programme in the UK. During her ten years at Microsoft, Helena has worked in various public sector focused roles, working with a mixture of start ups and major commercial organisations serving the public sector and with local government customers in the UK on their digital transformation activities. Prior to Microsoft, Helena managed a number of large change programmes and is well versed in the importance of the people side of change and transformation. 

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