Executive Summary
techUK, the trade association representing the UK tech industry, is running a campaign to explore how Intelligent Automation (IA) will transform the way that organisations across the public and private sector operate; and to position IA as a critical part of the UK’s digital transformation.
As part of this campaign, techUK members – many of them leaders in the field of Intelligent Automation – have come together to reflect upon their experiences of working with Central Government to automate processes and services; and to explore some of the key barriers that industry regularly comes across when supplying Intelligent Automation solutions to Government Departments.
Industry consensus is that the initial progress and momentum made by the Government in automation has slowed, and that work is still needed to ensure a consistent understanding of automation across the Departments. However, with automation now under the remit of the newly formed Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO), techUK believes that there is a renewed opportunity to drive forward the adoption and scale of Intelligent Automation to improve efficiencies and achieve cashable savings for Government.
This briefing paper will outline industry’s perspective on:
- What Government wants from Intelligent Automation (defining its need).
- Which Government Departments are using Intelligent Automation well and why (outlining examples of good use cases).
- The barriers that industry regularly comes across when supplying Intelligent Automation solutions to Government.
- What techUK can do to help.
Recommendations
What is Intelligent Automation?
The Government definition of automation is the implementation of a broad suite of technologies and approaches deployed in a variety of business settings, including: physical and digital automation in an industrial manufacturing context, automation software such as robotic process automation (RPA) and certain artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Inevitably, it is also a continuous and evolutionary process, rather than a defined end-state. However, it’s important to note that modern Intelligent Automation focuses more on wrap-around approaches that can leverage data integrations – sometimes generating value by this being from multiple systems – and interpolating a re-imagined, more valuable and/or more efficient process flow without disrupting the ultimate system of record outcome.
The need for Intelligent Automation in Government
Once considered a ‘nice to have’, the use of Intelligent Automation to replace the vast amounts of repetitive and time-consuming manual work involved in managing an IT system has become a critical tool for the public sector to manage and keep-pace with high workloads, the added pressure of COVID-19 and limited bandwidth of the workforce.
The need for automation tools across Government can be quite mixed and driven by the specific requirements of a team or Department. This also means there isn’t just going to be a one-need, or a one-solution type approach to automation. Working alongside members, techUK has identified five key drivers for UK Government adoption of Intelligent Automation:
1. COVID-19 and disruption of work priorities
The emphasis on priorities for digital transformation activities has shifted for Government Departments, as demonstrated in this report by Pure Storage. The organisation’s research – conducted in 2020 among IT leaders in Central Government Departments in the UK and across Europe – reveals how COVID-19 could ultimately transform the public sector, with Departments gaining critical lessons from their experiences, including the need to focus on resilience and rethink continuity and regularly review the cloud estate. Indeed, COVID-19 has brought into sharp focus the need for the public sector to be able to operate differently – both for the citizens it serves, and for the people that work within it.
2. Legacy IT
Most digital transformation across Government has the challenge of integrating into the expansive network of legacy infrastructure. Further to this, the unprecedented transition to remote working for both citizens and the Government workforce has left legacy systems grappling with an ever-increasing volume of data to be processed. Automation can, and often is, used to ‘plug the gaps’ with legacy systems; however, members highlighted that, when used intelligently, IA can help to exploit legacy IT, clearing backlogs and helping the infrastructure adapt to new challenges. Indeed, if systems will be difficult to transform in the medium-long term, using the wrap-around approach described in the What is Intelligent Automation? section above will be a more valuable way forward. As part of this, our members see the eventual need for Intelligent Automation technologies to become a standard part of Government architecture, the way we have seen ERP systems in the last three decades, CRM tools in the last two decades and, more recently, Data and Cloud technologies.
3. Workforce changes
COVID-19 has conflated the pre-existing budgetary pressures and rising demand on public services; and there are genuine concerns about employee wellbeing. Intelligent Automation can automate monotonous and time-consuming tasks, freeing the workforce to focus on creative solutions and customer needs.
4. Citizen-centric services
There is greater demand to deliver citizen-centric services across Central Government and solutions tailored to the individual, driven in part by progress made in private sector. The public sector cannot afford to be left behind. Intelligent Automation can help to improve the quality of the data that Departments are working with; standardise and embed good decision-making by using augmented decision-making software; and even help with multi-lingual processing for those Departments that deal with customers who speak languages other than English.
5. Value for the taxpayer
Intelligent Automation is designed to make processes more effective and efficient; therefore, by deploying it, Government Departments have the potential to save costs and drive greater value with existing budgets.
These core drivers are underpinned by sustainable, long-term transformation that makes investment worthwhile and in-line with procurement guidelines.
techUK believes that there is a willingness across the UK Government to use Intelligent Automation, and this is supported by the continuation of the Automation Taskforce in its new home within the CDDO. The technology sector, as leaders and pioneers of Intelligent Automation solutions, is ready and willing to help showcase the value of IA for efficient, sustainable and positive change across Government.
What does good look like?
As a result of the pandemic, more Departments are aware of, and want to benefit from, the capabilities of Intelligent Automation: in particular, the bigger Departments which understand more and more how to exploit those capabilities - and this in itself this helps to drive further adoption. However, it is still the case that some Departments have yet to unlock the value of Intelligent Automation and use it strategically to achieve the benefits for their organisation, employees and consumers.
The supplier community recognises that it is incumbent upon it to demonstrate to the Government how and why it should use Intelligent Automation to make positive changes, and in a low-cost, incremental manner. Deeper engagement and collaboration between Government and industry should, therefore, be undertaken by convening a specific Intelligent Automation forum to help Departments become more empowered and knowledgeable customers; to help suppliers to better understand the challenges that Government needs help to solve; and to formulate a set of guiding principles or best practices for Intelligent Automation projects to encourage its adoption.
Furthermore, there should be clear and easy-to-access tools and/or platform(s) to showcase successfully deployed solutions and Government use cases in order to facilitate education around Intelligent Automation. Throughout techUK’s discussions with suppliers, it has become clear that not everyone knows about the Automation Register, therefore, we would recommend that this is promoted more to encourage its use – both within the supplier community and, importantly, within Government Departments.
The Automation Taskforce has noted the need for a more focused approach, which will help to ensure that when something is proven to be successful, the use cases are collected, documented and shared with other Government Departments so that the latter can see what’s been done well and how common problems such as interoperability can be overcome with these solutions. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has fast-tracked the adoption of several services across Government, so it’s hoped that these examples can be used to keep the momentum going for automation.
Use cases
Employees leading the robot revolution - Department for Education
Staff at the Department for Education (DfE) and Education Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) are adopting Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to make their jobs more rewarding and time increasingly productive. By doing so, they’re investing in the nation’s future.
By the end of this year there could be the equivalent of 200 ‘digital workers’ operating throughout the department and this may rise to 1,000 by 2025. One of these is called Arnold, jokingly referencing Arnold Schwarzenegger and his role as The Terminator. Yet the job he does couldn’t be more important.
'Arnold is able to read the 60,000 emails we receive each month and classify which team needs to handle them before adding the details to our CRM system,' says Sophie Stewart, lead data scientist and RPA lead. 'Previously, these emails were queued in an inbox for two and a half days, which has been reduced to four minutes. Considering the messages might contain crucial information about a child protection issue, the impact this makes is huge. In the future, we plan to develop Arnold further so he can reply to some emails, too.'
Automating Border Protection - The National Crime Agency’s Intelligent Automation Programme
The National Crime Agency’s (NCA) International Crime Bureau (UKICB) provides the UK National Crime Bureau for INTERPOL. The UKICB manages all incoming and outgoing INTERPOL circulations, which are international requests for cooperation allowing law enforcement agencies to share critical crime-related information. Processing INTERPOL circulations is extremely resource-intensive and diverts staff from other core intelligence development casework.
Between 2018 and 2021, the UKICB has used CGI Intelligent Automation (CGI IA) to deploy business process automation to process INTERPOL circulations and manage the case work around them. CGI IA processes INTERPOL data, updates the Police National Computer (PNC), and issues updates to the Warnings Index Control Unit (WICU) and the UK National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO). The automation equates to an annual saving of just under 28,000 hours of manual processing, freeing up the time of more than 20 staff.
This has helped to improve employee morale as less popular administrative tasks were now completed error-free by virtual workers, providing better quality and more frequent reporting for internal and external partners. NCA officers spend more time on intelligence-gathering and development tasks and decision-making than before. Automated reporting provides visibility of processes, identifying bottlenecks and improving the efficient management of the hybrid workforce.
Urgent Test Requests – Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA)
In March 2020, the DVSA announced that driving tests were suspended for up to three months due to the COVID-19 crisis; however, tests would still be available for critical workers. BJSS, using a UiPath and AWS architecture, delivered an automation solution to rapidly review and process over 48,000 urgent test requests from critical workers in days instead of months. This vital engagement has helped the DVSA to get critical workers out on the roads. The project resulted in a DVSA system that has automated the process of reviewing thousands of test requests. It filters out rejections, queues manual intervention requests and has successfully booked thousands of critical worker driving tests automatically. The tool can also automate the rebooking process. Crucially, the backlog of requests were cleared in under ten working days instead of months if the tool wasn’t introduced, freeing up DVSA staff to focus on key activities.
Adding strategic value and transforming Finance and HR operations for Crown Commercial Service
Crown Commercial Service (CCS) wanted to replace its legacy finance and HR applications with a software as a service (SaaS) system that would be easier to maintain and expand in line with changing user requirements and provide real time information with data in a single location. CCS was using separate finance and HR systems that were outdated, inefficient, limited in scope, and difficult to maintain. Ease of use and the ability to automate business processes led to them choosing Workday.
Finance and HR teams at CCS were spending up to three days a month simply reconciling data between their respective systems. It took them a lot of manual work to agree final figures. Establishing headcount and budgets was time-consuming, and they had to deal with expense claims and absence reports submitted manually on paper forms.
Workday helped CCS transform the way its finance and HR specialists operate, replacing paper-based processes with self-service applications for recording absences and claiming expenses. Today, Finance and HR teams can focus on adding strategic value rather than managing transactions. CCS has also improved the quality and speed of decision-making by having a single source of truth for managers and the leadership team.
CCS is just at the beginning of unlocking the functionality of Workday. It has already launched a new onboarding and learning hub for employees and plans to manage recruitment through Workday.
Original use case was published by Workday: Crown Commercial Service Chooses Workday to Transform Finance and HR Systems.
Barriers to Government adoption of Intelligent Automation
A lack of skills
There is a lack of skills and available talent required to deliver Intelligent Automation technologies and, according to Eurostat data and research by Deloitte, this is only going to be exacerbated by demographic trends. Furthermore, this shortage is more pronounced in organisations just beginning their automation journeys; therefore, we must assume the same to be the case for some Departments as it is widely acknowledged that Government still struggles to build and retain skills. Indeed, increasing in-house technical capability is expected to be a key priority for the new CDDO.
A lack of strategic approach
It is hoped that the Automation Blueprint initiative from the Cabinet Office will accelerate strategic consideration of Intelligent Automation, however, there is still a lack of understanding around it among senior leadership in Government and, therefore, it is a struggle to get crucial buy-in for this particular tool. Furthermore, techUK members have highlighted a scepticism within senior leadership around the business value that can be gained from Intelligent Automation due to limited results from previous deployments. This executive-level lack of confidence, and the prevailing belief that Intelligent Automation is a technology implementation rather than an operational transformation, remain key inhibiters to its adoption. And industry believes these two factors have contributed to the pervasively tactical, rather than strategic, approach to Intelligent Automation that has taken place to date. While this state will change over time, the question is: how long will it take?
techUK members have been clear that building a central automation strategy – that includes the Automation Operating Model and a clear intent to bring cultural organisation change to understand automation – is crucial to scaling the adoption of Intelligent Automation in Government, and ministerial buy-in will help with this, as will a move to a strategic rather than tactical approach. The formation of the new Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) offers an excellent opportunity in that it will play a key role in encouraging, and creating the best conditions for, strategic change enabled by the suite of automation technologies; and in ensuring that the potential transformation they offer is not shackled by allowing the public sector to continue IA ‘adoption’ primarily as tactical IT projects.
Automation can be coupled with good Service Design for improved citizen services: indeed, it can often help a service go from being available 9am-5pm when relying on human input to being available 24/7 when fully or partially automated. Therefore, it is also important for Government Service Design teams to learn and understand how automation works and how it can play a powerful part in Government providing better, cheaper services for citizens.
The Departments’ Automation Blueprints, which underpin their ambition, will help with this strategic change and industry is willing to support the Automation Taskforce in consolidating these to create a coherent, integrated and well-scoped programme of activity.
The need for a cultural shift
techUK believes the technology sector has a role to play in dispelling any misconceptions that might hinder deployment. This includes highlighting that automation is about augmenting existing capabilities; and, therefore, reskilling and retraining workforces to do the important ‘thinking work’ alongside automation should be part of a deployment strategy. Industry also recognises that more than a programme of change is required: it is a culture and mindset change – and techUK and its members are here to support Government to navigate this change.
The do-it-yourself-approach does not always work
techUK members expressed concern around previous failures in adoption due to Departments’ desires to build in-house solutions from scratch; which have been compounded by issues such as regular Department staff changes, and a lack of focus on the ultimate value for the citizen. While there are times an in-house solution can be useful, members emphasised that there will be previous deployment use cases from across the tech sector that can be tailored and repurposed quickly in order to get the value faster – and at a fraction of the cost (in terms of upfront spend and manpower). And that these will not require the continued presence of a tech supplier, but rather the ability to build upon the right capabilities – for example, as the charitable organisation Step Change has done – and use suppliers more to understand the art of the possible. As such, a ‘build once, reuse and evolve’ approach across Government departments should be encouraged by key stakeholders and the Automation Taskforce.
Funding
Industry has highlighted the need for more funding to be in place in the next Comprehensive Spending Review in order to really scale automation in Government, however, it is recognised that this technology will be competing with other ICT initiatives for a share of the budget.
Industry appreciates the challenges that its Government customers face, particularly in terms of the limited budget available for change in the face of mission-critical work, so it is willing to work with Government, supporting the opportunity to move towards Intelligent Automation incrementally. However, it is important that Intelligent Automation receives the appropriate expenditure in the next Spending Review in order to help the Departments to drive efficiencies and achieve cashable savings through an end-to-end transformation of service delivery.
