The operational support profession (ODP), the public face of the public service, must keep pace with advances in technology and artificial intelligence (AI) that are impacting skills, a report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has found.
IN Smarter delivery of public services In the report, the PAC noted that while the ODP has created a skills framework that outlines the skills needed by employees at different stages of their careers, the capabilities and experiences required by its members are changing and will require skills related to other professions, especially digital ones.
“Automation of simple demand types means employees can spend their time communicating with customers with more complex needs or with customers who cannot access digital services,” the report authors said.
The evidence presented in the PAC shows that the public service must understand how technology can change interactions with citizens. Responding to the committee's question about the need for operational capacity in public service delivery, Peter Schofield, permanent secretary at the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), said: “At its core, it's about service delivery. “Part of it is about making sure we have people who are able to think about how to provide the best customer service possible, and part of it is about how we innovate and how we use technology differently”.
Schofield used the online child support portal as an example of how technology is helping to improve services. “People can get the easiest access to information about their application or case online. This frees up our people to deal with more complex situations,” he said.
When asked about creating an operating environment to improve operations, Schofield said: “At a really difficult time we had to during the pandemic in 2020there was a huge amount of innovation and creativity… at every level within the DWP to find ways to change and improve processes and automate… achieving this goal was absolutely phenomenal. It didn’t require me or DWP management to come up with ideas – those ideas were shared across the organization.”
Another witness statement in the PAC report suggests that there may be a need to overhaul services to make better use of new technologies that are now available.
In his written statement to the PAC, Mark Thompson, Professor of Digital Economics at the University of Exeter Business School, said: “The prevailing ‘digital skills’ culture, which, while focusing on creating and/or acquiring technology, glosses over or actively ignores the growing need to rethink business and operating models of public services – to ask questions about what we think we're building for the future.”
Thompson warned that there is currently virtually no business education on technology business or operating models and their implications for UK public services, and very few have the capacity to provide such education.
He also noted that modern organizations using digital technologies and artificial intelligence are modular and can specify clearly defined operating models that show where it is appropriate to innovate and spend money, and where such innovation/spending is inappropriate and undesirable. Where innovation is out of place, he says, “Capabilities are typically standardized, distributed, and consumed as services over the Internet.”
Technological decline after lockdown
The problem facing the government is that it appears to have lost the momentum to bring about significant transformational change, which can be enhanced through the smart use of technological innovation.
Ahead of the publication of the PAC report, David Barber, director of the UCL Center for Artificial Intelligence and eminent scientist at UiPath, spoke to Computer Weekly about the ability of UK businesses and government departments to make the most of new technological innovations such as artificial intelligence, adding: “There are some fairly simple processes in government that are probably ripe for automation, and UK [government] We should think more about this.”
He believes that artificial intelligence has reached a stage where most citizen requests can probably be handled by automated systems.
UiPath participated in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Initiative at DWP Digitalthe Department for Work and Pensions' service delivery arm, which began in 2017 and saw the creation of the Intelligent Automation Garage to scale up automation projects. These included the DWP's response to the Covid-19 pandemic, focusing on new Universal Credit requirements. Automation has made it easier to apply for a Budget Advance for financial support before your first Universal Credit payment is due.
The momentum to redesign government processes during the pandemic appears to have died down, and while the Labor government appears to have pinned its hopes on AI to improve government efficiency, it also has to deal with the AI legacy left by the previous Tory government.
Barber said during Covid there was “an urgent need to deal with the pandemic” but he felt the former Tory government had failed to subsequently capitalize on the automation momentum, adding: “I feel the previous administration wasn't particularly convinced about AI.”
As an example, he noted that the AI Summit at Bletchley Park, held in November 2023, focused on “apocalyptic scenarios for the development of artificial intelligence” rather than the real opportunities it offers to business and government services.