**Does the government's review reflect the real digital challenges your organisation faces?**

A System in Need of Reform_

The UK public sector invests heavily in digital technology—over £26 billion annually—and employs around 100,000 digital and data professionals. Millions rely daily on digital public services from local councils to hospitals and schools. When digital systems work well, as with the NHS app or GOV.UK, they deliver exceptional value. However, such success stories often emerge despite systemic barriers rather than because of them.

A new review, commissioned by the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, paints a mixed picture. While the UK has digital talent and innovation, widespread challenges hold back transformation. Satisfaction with public services has declined, and nearly half of government and NHS services still lack digital pathways.

Key issues include underinvestment in core infrastructure, heavy reliance on outdated legacy systems, fragmented data, and insufficient digital leadership. Cyber risk is high, service outages are common, and critical systems remain vulnerable. At the same time, public sector digital spending is 30% below international benchmarks and skewed toward short-term programmes over long-term resilience.

The report identifies five root causes:

Leadership – Digital is not prioritised or incentivised.
Structure – Fragmented systems limit scale and standardisation.
Measurement – No consistent tracking of service quality, cost, or risk.
Talent – Recruitment and retention of skilled staff lag behind the private sector.
Funding – Legacy systems are underfunded while new initiatives dominate budgets.

Despite these challenges, pockets of innovation persist—such as AI use in police response systems and smart data-sharing in education. However, without systemic reform, digital excellence will remain the exception, not the norm. The report calls for a shift towards a unified, outcomes-focused digital government—backed by strategic leadership, sustainable funding, and empowered digital teams.

**Digital Reform: What would it take for digital to be seen as a core driver of service delivery in your organisation?**

The Mindset Shift_

To respond effectively to the systemic challenges outlined in the digital government review, public sector organisations must go beyond technology upgrades. The real transformation begins with a fundamental shift in mindset—from seeing digital as a support function to embedding it as a core enabler of service delivery, policy implementation, and organisational resilience.

Here’s how organisations can begin to drive this shift:

Make Digital Leadership a Strategic Priority

Digital leaders should sit at the executive table, influencing organisational direction rather than simply reacting to it. This means:

Elevating Chief Digital Officers and CIOs within governance structures.
Recognising digital capability as critical to service and policy success.
Ensuring senior leaders have digital literacy and the training to oversee tech-enabled change.

Foster Collaboration Across Functions

Digital delivery cannot operate in a vacuum. Successful reform requires close collaboration between digital, operational, and policy teams. Organisations should:

Embed multidisciplinary teams in programme design from the outset.
Encourage shared ownership of outcomes, not just outputs.
Break down silos that prevent consistent user experience across services.

Prioritise Outcomes Over Outputs

Shift focus from delivering “projects” to achieving long-term service improvement. That means:

Defining success through user impact, service resilience, and cost-effectiveness.
Applying iterative delivery methods that adapt to learning and change.
Tracking progress with clear, consistent digital performance metrics.

Invest in People, Not Just Products

Sustainable transformation depends on building internal digital capability. Public sector organisations should:

Rebalance reliance on contractors with long-term investment in civil service digital talent.
Create clearer career pathways and more competitive pay frameworks.
Focus on growing technical skills—particularly in data, cloud, and AI—across the workforce.

Reform Funding Models

Funding must reflect modern digital practice—flexible, sustained, and focused on continuous improvement. Steps include:

Shifting investment from capital-heavy, one-off initiatives to operational and iterative models.
Embedding digital costs into the lifecycle of service funding.
Ensuring budget structures support legacy modernisation and not just new projects.

Create and Share Common Platforms

Public sector organisations must move away from bespoke solutions to shared platforms, open standards, and common data models. This unlocks:

Greater interoperability and consistency across services.
Better reuse of solutions and economies of scale.
Easier integration of emerging technologies like AI and automation.

By embedding these principles, public sector organisations can move from fragmented, reactive digital delivery to a coordinated, forward-looking approach—capable of meeting the expectations of users, responding to evolving risks, and delivering public value at scale.

Is your organisation equipped with the right expertise and capacity to lead this digital reform_

How Valuecom Can Help Drive Public Sector Digital Reform_

At Valuecom, we understand the scale and complexity of the UK public sector’s digital challenges—because we’ve worked alongside public bodies to solve them. Our expertise lies in pragmatic, outcomes-focused delivery, helping organisations navigate constraints, legacy technology, and fragmented systems to unlock real value from digital investments.

Here’s how Valuecom can support public sector organisations:

Strategic Digital Delivery
We work closely with internal teams to align digital delivery with policy and operational goals, ensuring that services are not only functional but also user-centred and resilient.
Legacy System Modernisation
Valuecom brings practical experience in assessing and addressing technical debt. We help organisations prioritise and plan for legacy replacement, minimising risk and unlocking long-term savings.
Agile Transformation
Our consultants embed modern delivery practices—Agile, DevOps, and ITIL—into your teams, building capacity and capability from within while ensuring services are adaptable and sustainable.
Cross-Team Collaboration
Many challenges stem from siloed teams. Valuecom acts as a catalyst for cross-functional collaboration, helping policy, operational, and technical leads work together from day one.
Data-Driven Improvement
With public sector organisations struggling to make effective use of fragmented data, Valuecom helps design and implement solutions that enable better interoperability, insight generation, and support for AI-readiness.
Cost-Effective, Scalable Support
We understand budgetary constraints and offer flexible engagement models to augment in-house capabilities without excessive reliance on long-term third-party contractors.

Whether you’re planning a new digital service, struggling with legacy infrastructure, or looking to improve delivery at scale, Valuecom provides the technical expertise, strategic thinking, and delivery discipline to move your organisation forward.

To respond effectively to the systemic challenges outlined in the digital government review, public sector organisations must go beyond technology upgrades. The real transformation begins with a fundamental shift in mindset—from seeing digital as a support function to embedding it as a core enabler of service delivery, policy implementation, and organisational resilience.

Valuecom: The right team and strategy to deliver success

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State Of Digital Government Review