There are further areas to explore in developing organisations’ in-house digital capabilities, writes Alan Banks, managing director of Netbuilder
There is a widely held view in the public sector that it needs to build up in-house digital skills – necessary to cope with the advances of technology and to save on the continuing costs of consultancy support.
A recent research project by UKAuthority and Netbuilder – leading to the publication of a white paper – investigated the wide range of issues that have held back the effort to increase the capability and identified the possibilities for making progress.
There are ideas around these, but also a need for clarity on what steps are most likely to bring positive results. Public sector organisations need to learn more and there are further questions to ask about the detail of what should be done next.
One of these is on how to ensure there is a successful knowledge transfer process when a technology supplier or consultancy comes onto an organisation to pass on skills. Organisations cannot keep paying consultants to return to pass on skills to fresh groups of employees. The process has to ensure that people within the public sector body not only understand how to use a system, but how it works, its place within the context of service and how to pass on that knowledge to others.
This might be achieved through elements of the procurement process, ensuring that knowledge transfer is clearly specified within contracts, possibly with a reusable template for terms and conditions. If so, what are the details, how can organisations ensure compliance and what are the key approaches in managing relationships with suppliers?
These come with ensuring that their own staff are well equipped to learn from others, with sufficient time and techniques to focus on a system and how it fits within the wider digital landscape. It is worth asking which ones have shown how it can work and move towards an internal transfer of the skills.
Promising characteristics
There is also a big question about how to identify employees who do not yet have the specific skills but show the right personal characteristics to acquire and apply them to the organisation’s needs. Many people may be in other jobs but have the experience and mindset to move into significant digital roles, move in a new direction and make valuable contributions to their employers.
There is scope to ask questions about what they have achieved and said about their careers, the perspectives of their managers and even any relevant activities outside of the workplace. It might be an inexact approach relying heavily on intuition and human empathy, but there is scope for organisations to develop this skill internally and learn from each other about how to develop new talents among their people.
Then comes a big, difficult question about overcoming the public sector’s disadvantage against the private sector around pay. It is a longstanding complaint that it cannot match big commercial operations in terms of salaries and bonuses, and while it can attract some people by appealing to a desire to work for the public good it has to find ways of providing more monetary rewards.
Discussions for the white paper raised the possibility of shaping pay structures in different ways – possibly placing a premium on strong combinations of technical and managerial skills – to encourage recruitment and retention. Again, much would rely on the detail, and it is worth exploring how the characteristics could be assessed and reflected in pay scales and career pathways.
Need for flexibility
There is also a question around ensuring that people acquire flexible skills, going beyond the knowledge of a specific software package or element of digital infrastructure. They need to understand how technology and data are evolving and relate to the provision of services.
This gets into more in-depth issues in skills development, stretching into new learning techniques and a curiosity about the broad field of public services. There may be pioneers who are strengthening their understanding and are able to share it around the sector – again responding to the urge to work for the public good.
Much of this involves treading onto new ground and comes with a lot of complexities and some awkward issues to address. But there must be people in the public sector with relevant experiences and lessons to share, and there is a need identify these to bring them together to boost the effort.
There is a strong case that this will be the next step in building the in-house digital skills capability in public services.
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