The Public Sector Client was looking to embrace the ‘Digital Agenda’ and had, over the preceding several months, a number of unsuccessful attempts via a range of projects, which were aimed at automating and transforming internal and customer interface manual processes, to enable:

Citizens to consume these services at will

Channel shift

Increase staff efficiency

Provide Intelligence enabling data driven business decisions

Deeper staff engagement

Migrating away from manual paper based processes

The previous failed attempts had also put a significant strain on the relationship between the Client and the Joint Venture IT outsourced team.

I was given a three month assignment initially to turn the situation around, to rebuild credibility with the Client, to lift and turn around the existing projects and to drive Client transformation.

This was subsequently extended to support benefits realisation.

Reviewed existing JV vendor approach in detail, spent a considerable time with the Client (across all levels of engagement) to understand their frustrations and aspirations and developed a plan of action which was approved by both the CEO of the JV and Transformation Programme Director within the Client base – this was then flushed out across all layers of Governance for discussion and approval.

The above activity, having been fully approved, then led to Client funds being released to support a full Digital Programme, in short, the activity was focussed around:

Pulling all digital projects under the one Digital umbrella programme

Recruiting a programme team (skills, attitude, approach etc,) and also building a PMO to deliver

Designing a new process (via Value Stream Mapping exercises) to automate with a ‘target state’ to achieve

Architecting a new mobile infrastructure in support (replacing an aging BB environment) which involved Cloud, Agile Development, real time ERP interfaces

Procuring and managing the right vendors in support and ultimately

Delivering a full mobile environment (Infrastructure, DevOps/release management, agile development, devices and a mobile application) in support of the Client aspirations.

My initial assignment was extended and the role lifted onto the Executive Leadership Team (the only Interim on the board).

An aging Blackberry infrastructure replaced successfully.

Fully engaged target audience.

Cloud based service delivery.

A Mobile application which provided real time task allocation to staff members.

Real time synchronisation with back office ERP enabling the public to gain visibility of task completion.

A reduction of Bulk Waste backlog of 6 months down to a few weeks and staff downloading the next assignment automatically (with inbuilt intelligence vs location) vs traveling back to base for their next paper based advice note.

Business intelligence into a process which was wholly manual prior to this.

increase in staff efficiency (bulk waste backlog was reduced from 6 months to several weeks) following implementation.

As a result of the benefits being realised much faster than anticipated, this part of the Digital programme was awarded best in class at the Public Sector IT awards (Holyrood Connect) this year (2018)