A better balance is needed between central, devolved and local government, where local government, public, private and third sector and communities themselves are empowered to deliver levelling up. Local engagement and involvement in decision-making is vital to levelling up but must also happen in a context that’s aligned to national objectives set centrally.
To help kick-start the Levelling up process, the government is making changes to the way it supports economic growth locally across the UK. These include spurring on the regeneration of town centres and high streets, improving transport links and infrastructure and investing in local culture through the Levelling Up Fund, while also giving communities a stronger role in sustaining cherished community assets. Alongside this, it is considering governance structures at a local and regional level in England, including reviewing local enterprise partnerships.
To address long-term inequality challenges, the UK will need to think more broadly and deeply about what interventions will have the biggest impact on the place people live. That means investing in social infrastructure and housing and opening up opportunities through a focus on jobs, education and skills.
The government, must also engage businesses who must step up and play their part in delivering a fair recovery across the UK, with a particular focus on reskilling and upskilling, to ensure people are equipped with the skills they need for future jobs.
As we look beyond the pandemic, it’s critical that central government has plans in place for how to catalyse the economy for fair and sustainable growth, while also enabling it to become more digitalised to meet people’s needs and greener to help the UK meet its challenging carbon reduction targets and deliver Net Zero. Many people have led their lives closer to home during the pandemic and this has seen them reassess their priorities around life and work. We’ve also seen the pace of automation accelerating alongside increased awareness of climate issues.
This combination means that some of the jobs lost to the pandemic are not returning and many of the new jobs will be in the ‘greener’ economy.
The move to cleaner economic growth, through low carbon technologies and the efficient use of resources, is one of the greatest industrial opportunities of our time. By one estimate, the UK’s clean economy could grow at four times the rate of GDP. Whole new industries will be created and existing industries transformed as we move towards a low carbon, more resource-efficient economy.
Environmental Social Governance (ESG) has indicated an investment in sustainable, environmental initiatives that can boost productivity and an investment in people that can provide more equal opportunities across the UK, therefore helping to level up the economy. Communities of employees, citizens, suppliers and other stakeholders are demanding more careful consideration over how government manages its ecosystem and operations and the wider impact it has on the world. ESG is set to become more crucial in everyday service delivery and it is almost a certainty that the government will be influenced more by social value in the months and years ahead.
A minimum of 10% must be given to ESG objectives in each procurement and bidders must be able to demonstrate or verify local and relevant ESG practices and outcomes (and those who cannot face significant disadvantages to winning the contract).
With public sector cloud computing playing a crucial role in governments’ efforts to provide new citizen-centric services, it is no surprise there is a strong desire to move to cloud. This is due to the UK government's cloud first strategy announced in 2013 which has been adopted by all parts of the UK public sector.
As a result, over the last five years, public sector cloud computing and central government G-Cloud spend has been rising and the trend suggests it will continue on this trajectory. In fact, research found that public sector cloud computing adoption has increased by 49% as a direct result of the Covid crisis. Although there are trends in growth, the rate of public sector cloud computing adoption is behind in comparison to G-Cloud spend by the Central Government.
For example, a survey suggests that 85% of public sector organisations have cloud security reservations with 63% yet to adopt a dedicated cloud strategy. As a result, 70%of their infrastructure and 73%of their data remain on-premise.
Different verticals within the public sector are at different stages of their cloud adoption policy, which suggests that there isn’t a clear strategyor policy around the use of cloud technology. For example, central government are mandated to adopt the government cloud first strategybefore considering any other option. NHS organisations on the other and have major concerns about losing control of sensitive patient data andhave been more reluctant to go down this road, which suggests that migrating traditional and sensitive systems from on-premise environments to the cloud is a clear issue.
The impact of AI within business across the UK is predicted to be hugely significant in the coming decade. Universities, big tech and start-ups are already paving the way, seamlessly integrating AI technologies into our everyday lives. The UK government cemented its commitment to AI in the first-of-its-kind 2021 National AI Strategy, which outlined plans to stimulate the development of AI technologies. This National AI Strategy will signal to the world our intention to build the most pro-innovation regulatory environment in the world.
There is no clear plan to replace or modernise legacy systems and data that are critical to service provision but are often unsupportable, vulnerable and a constraint on transformation. Legacy systems, some of which date back to the 1970s, are widespread across government, which relies on them for important services, such as managing the UK's borders and paying the State Pension.
Many of these systems are stable and performing acceptably at reasonable cost, but others are high-risk, unreliable, contain security vulnerabilities or frustrate business transformation. Despite this, departments have a limited understanding of their legacy estate and central government does not have an ongoing process for assessing and understanding what cross-government legacy risk looks like. The Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) is now testing how it can gather information on departmental legacy systems. The CDDO hopes to prioritise where departments most need tot ake remedial action using a risk based model and to roll this out more widely at the start of 2022. This is encouraging and we look forward to seeing the centre and departments take concrete action to begin to address high risk legacy systems this year.
Departments have failed to understand the difference between improving what currently exists and real digital transformation, meaning that they have missed opportunities to move to modern, efficient ways of working. The Cabinet Office concedes that too often operations and services fail to recognise the fundamental inefficiencies of legacy systems and their data and instead build new systems on top of these using the old data. Cultivating better system analysis, data analysis and design skills would help government gain a greater understanding of where to focus its efforts.