Dynamics Matters Podcast Ep 81: How small changes bring big impact to the Public Sector

With special guest Faith La Grange, Government Senior Director, Microsoft 

✔ Why small changes can lead to big transformation

✔ Giving front-line staff the tools to do their job

✔ Why repeatability is key to closing the skills gap

Transcript

Welcome to episode 81 of the HSO Dynamics matters podcast.

Your regular sonic dive into the world of Microsoft technology related matters and much more besides.

And I’m your host, Michael Lonnon.

I recorded this episode with Microsoft government senior director Faith La Grange, just before Christmas, which I’m now delighted to bring you as we discussed the impact of the cost-of-living crisis, and how public sector organisations can use technology to reduce its impact.

So, grab a brew, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

Michael Lonnon
Let's talk about 2023 then, so lots happening at the moment, lots happening in public sector, what do you think is going be the key things? We know cost of living crisis is coming up more and more often but what do you think and what are you seeing is going to be the main topics and themes for 2023 in public sector?

Faith La Grange
Cost of living crisis is huge and of course, it affects everyone as individuals, and it affects certain groups and certain people in society more than it than it affects other people and that's massive, and how public sector supports and responds to that. It also affects public sector itself as well in terms of inflation, so in real terms, they're going to have less money than they would have through the budgetary review and they are having to think about how they're going to drive things as efficiently as they can, whilst going through another period, where public services are required more than ever, and that is off the back of COVID. So, we've already had a number of years, where there was additional big support that's had knock on effects, and then cost of living crisis and the general economic circumstances are going to be really impactful.

Michael Lonnon
It's mad, isn't it, it's one after the other after the other, it's really difficult to see how
local authorities, for example, are going to be able to manage and to have the same level of services with the crunch happening. From your perspective, how do you think they might be able to, for example, as highlighted, manage with less budget, manage when things are slightly inefficient? How do you think they can do that next year?

Faith La Grange
If you're thinking about the opportunity, I sometimes think tough times necessitate change, don't they? You can't carry on doing everything that you were doing in the way you were doing it with less resources and when things are increasingly difficult, so I do think there's going to be a continued drive, to look at transformation to be able to answer those things. Because the reality is, is it's not like public sector hasn't been in cost saving mode for a long time. So, there are no easy cuts to make if you need to keep up public services. There has to be an opportunity to drive transformation and technology is absolutely part of that opportunity to see how digital transformation can transform the services that are delivered to citizens. I guess if I think about it, if we think about the efficiency side, Microsoft, we've got a whole campaign around how you continue to do more with the resources that you've got or by reducing resources and that is all about how customers maximise the value they're getting from their investments in our technology. We are supporting them to look at how they ensure they are running their systems efficiently and that they're well architected, that they are driving the best use, and that they are using every single part of what our customers purchase from us. Also how they can start to use things like automation to drive additional efficiency, and maximise what their own people can do, and what they can deliver by taking away some of those processes that just take up time for people and they don't help people contribute. When you think of the job of the social worker, they didn't go into that job to process forms, they went into that job to make a difference to individuals, so if you can take away some of that back-office work through automation, you can drive a lot of efficiency.

Michael Lonnon
It's a great message. Enabling staff to deliver value rather than run rate stuff, which isn't doing that. Do you think that most public sector organisations understand or have tapped into the value of Microsoft technology, or do you think there's more that they could do?

Faith La Grange
We've got a fantastic customer base and certainly when we look at the modern workplace side, when we look at the use of Office, and Microsoft 365, it's fairly ubiquitous across public sector. And I think then that becomes a responsibility of us to ensure those customers that are purchasing are getting the best use out of everything they're purchasing. We spend a lot of time with public sector customers and with the government at a central level, trying to ensure that that happens. There's a lot of additional services, we talk about our platform, not point solutions that we put in so the power of the broad Microsoft platform, I think there is absolutely an opportunity and we work with fantastic partners like yourselves, to really help us to help our customers to build on the platforms they purchase from us and the things that they already get from us and make them even more valuable and make them impactful.

Michael Lonnon
We run a lot of training sessions, dashboard in a day around Power BI, I know that’s only one particular solution, but we see a lot of public sector organisations or people from public sector organisations coming to these courses, because they are starting to understand well, actually, they've got a lot of the Microsoft technology, they need to create efficiencies to enable staff to deliver more value, they just don't quite know how to get there so they come to the session trying to learn and understand. From your perspective, what are the best examples of public sector organisations using technology to make a difference to the people they're supporting?

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Faith La Grange
There are so many different examples. If we think about the local authority space, we did some work with Aberdeen City Council around using dynamics for social care and that was fantastic example of how they used one of our solutions to change the way they have focused everybody involved in social care, because social care isn't just the local authority. It's the police, it's the NHS, it's all of the private organisations that might be involved in supporting individuals, and be able to information share in a different way, a much more dynamic way and a way that sets them up to start to look at where they might be able to predict the points of need in the future, because that really is the holy grail, I think in terms of thinking about how you make public sector services as efficient as possible is, can you move from responding and reacting to an urgent situation shift left into kind of intervention and early intervention to actually shift even further left to advances as we move through machine learning and artificial intelligence so can you predict where you need to put your resources so that those resources go in the right place and you're not scatter gunning them.

Michael Lonnon
Moving from reactive to proactive and understanding the needs of residents and people as for example, the cost-of-living crisis has people struggling to pay their bills, can you see what's happening outside and, use technology to understand demographics a lot better.
You talked about the connection between the different organisations from public sector, the health services, and police services with the local authorities, do you think that in itself is a route to improving efficiencies and getting more value out to people do you think that's a way that they could look at it?

Faith La Grange
You've got to be careful with data sharing and people get concerned about having data shared but the reality is we have lots of conversation about data ethics at the moment as well with public sector is that if you can share data, and allow that data to be to be viewed by different organisations at the same time spotting patterns, and again, that's where machine learning can assist in spotting patterns we might not see as individuals, that's the place you can start to make a big difference because having data siloed and only used for the purpose it was collected means you never really get the power out of making those services information led, and you'll move to being proactive, unless you can make those services information led.

Michael Lonnon
Where’s the value in the partner as part of like HSO in making the link between public sector organisations and Microsoft? What particular role are they filling? Just to help the audience understand the link between the vendor Microsoft, the partner HSO, and the organisation making use of the Microsoft technology.

Faith La Grange
Skills, it comes down to skills. Our partners are highly skilled organisations that have great track record in Microsoft solutions, making them repeatable. Microsoft provides the platforms, we've got great people who go and speak to our customers and activate this but only working with partners, can we ever take it to the next level, where you are making it specific to the customer's requirement in terms of the services you have to deliver, or the business outcomes you are trying to achieve. The other thing is that, particularly for public-sector, public-sector talk a lot about wanting to do it once and then make it repeatable, not individually doing it, and doing it a different way each time. That's where partners come at it brilliantly because you've done it before, and you know what works. So, you can take that blueprint, and put it into another customer and go, we've seen that this works it’s got great repeatability. So, for our customers, in terms of skills, it's hard, we're all struggling to hire people with the right skills and technology is changing at such a pace that customers cannot hire the levels they need. But partners provide fantastic skills to support that.

Michael Lonnon
I'm writing a piece about how creating the right digital foundation provides the platform on which to build the things you need. You mentioned that to build up the things that solve particular use cases that come up, essentially, it creates agility. So as new crisis’s come in local authorities, for example are much better able to create the solutions to then solve those particular problems. How important is getting that digital foundation as a starting point?

Faith La Grange
it's everything, really. All of these things we've talked about; the opportunity to go from being reactive to proactive, the opportunity to drive efficiency with automation, using AI and machine learning, you cannot do any of that on ageing legacy infrastructure, lots, and lots of siloed data, lots and lots of paper data still, all of that stuff. Absolutely, it's about building the foundation, so when we're talking to customers, were conscious of the priorities for government as an industry and the things they need to deliver to citizens and we're conscious of the amazing opportunities for digital transformation, but we always start at the basics in terms of, ‘if you don't have these things in place, these are the things that you need to get in place’. So, it's a journey, really, it's a roadmap that starts from get the basics in place, get your digital foundation in place, and then you can start to build on it

Summary
As Faith highlighted, tough times necessitate change.

That can mean large transformational change – to really shift an organisation away from historically driven processes - but it doesn’t have to.

It can be as simple as introducing small changes, chat bots, for example, to lighten the load of frontline staff so they can spend more time providing the services, care, and support people need. Because, as with the example Faith gives, people don’t become social workers to process forms, they become social workers to make a positive difference to people’s lives.

Thanks for listening, until next time, take care of yourselves.

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