The Digital First Approach

In this episode, we delve into the concept of the "digital first" approach that has been widely adopted in our increasingly digital world. We explore what this approach signifies for individuals, communities, and businesses and what we can do to ensure people can keep up with the transition. 

Mark is a Professor of Digital Economy at the University of Exeter Business School and part of DIGIT Lab, an EPSRC Next Stage Digital Economy Research Centre. He is closely associated with the push for the adoption of open standards and digital platforms in the public sector.  He chairs a variety of digital conferences, and his work has appeared in Government Information Quarterly, Public Administration, Journal of Public Administration, Research and Theory, The MJ, Government Computing, The Guardian, Financial Times, The Economist and more.
 
In 2022, Mark was also Strategy Director at Methods Group, specialising in the digital transformation of public services, and a main Board Member at TechUK, blending the roles of academic, practitioner, and policy commentator.  In 2010-2012, Mark was IT Futures Advisor to George Osborne, a pro bono Cabinet Office role that involved policymaking around open standards and data across the UK government.  He has keynoted Departmental Away days for the Home Office, DFE, DEFRA, DWP, GDS, MHCLG, and many senior audiences (e.g. General Staff, British Army, Cabinet Office round tables).

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Transcript

0:06

Hello and welcome to today's episode of Social Footprint. My name's Jasneet and we're joined with Professor Mark Thompson to discuss the digital first approach. So hi Mark! It's great to have you here today virtually. Hi Jasneet, thank you very much it’s a great honour to be on. Thank you. Perfect. So just to start with, just a little bit about yourself would be great. Yeah, sure. So, gosh, I think I probably had sort of two or three careers. So I'm a professor in Digital Economy at the University of Exeter Business School. So that's one of the things I do and I publish. I wrote a book called, co-written a book, called Digitising Government a few years ago and publish on a like a range of aspects of digital and digital economy, including public services. The second thing I did was I co-owned and ran a group called Methods Group, and we were a three wheel organisation data science company, digital transformation company, Microsoft Organisation, that provided a range of professional services to public sector that was sold last year. So I have a bit more free time on my hands these days. And the third thing I've done over the years is a few kind of pro bono policy roles. So did a couple of quality stints in the Cabinet Office and I was invited to join Scottish Government and I used to sit on the board of Tech UK, the UK Technology Trade Association, for a number of years and various things like that. I chaired the National Digital Conference and so those sorts of three things really, so academic, practitioner and from time to time kind of policy wonk and trying to kind of blend, blend all three of them and the only way I’ve really survived is to kind of play everyone off against everyone else. So no one knows what I'm actually doing at any one time. Wow, so yeah it sounds like your knowledge is really kind of all encompassing within kind of across sectors, I should say. But yeah, definitely across sectors. So I mean, you know, the digital first approach, you know, we're living in the first postmodern society that we're in, you know, really digitising everything that we do. It's, you know, informing a lot in terms of our work life, social life, entertainment. I mean, for you what is the digital first approach in terms of defining it, then? Right. So I think this is an absolutely crucial question to start off with because most organisations, I'm afraid, mistake digitalising or transforming digital first. With just digitising. So digitising the easy thing is just shoving your stuff online, right? You know, taking your existing processes and services and just making them automated and a bit more efficient without really thinking about redesigning them and digital first or digitalising, or transformation, all three of them are sort of interchangeable in that sense, is actually about saying, you know what, how can we use new and emerging digital technologies to really rethink the entire service again around our customers? And regardless of public, private or third sector, wherever you are, it's really, unless you're properly challenging yourself and rethinking those services around your customers, all you're really doing, I'm afraid, is automating. You're just, you're just digitising. And the problem, I think, is that many organisations kind of pretends to be transforming and digitalising and doing digital first. And actually, what they're really doing is just automating because it's a bit easier. Yeah. So for me, some of the kind of some of the ways to spot if you're actually digitalising some of the clues, if you like. It's fast. So, we interact with customers very fast, right? So, you know, digitalising is all of course, about sharing data using the Internet and modern digital technology to pivot and organise ourselves very quickly around user and customer needs. So it's going to be mobile first. Yeah, it's not going to be laptop or desktop based. It's going to be handy kind of interaction on people's mobiles. It's going to react very fast to what customers are saying about us. Often in real time, it's going to be configuring services at the convenience of our customers rather than, if you like, the traditional sort of bureaucratic silos that often organisations are historically organised around. And that can be really, really difficult, right? I mean, it is very, very difficult for organisations that grew up that people, processes and technologies in these kinds of silos. You can see why they're in silos because they grew up before the Internet arrived. Before that, shared plumbing enabled us to join up. And so, of course, you get this historical inertia where people are used to working in silos and often they don't really want to share data and they don't really want to change around customers. So there is, I think, an element of challenge about, you know, digital first. You know, it doesn't come easily because to get there, to re, to kind of if you like, to kind of shiver and reconfigure around our customers, we've really got to challenge a lot of the ways that traditional, often quite cozy and comfortable ways of doing things that we've built up over the years. And that's why it's often such a challenge to achieve. That’s really interesting. I like actually the historical inertia you mentioned there and how yeah, we see obviously as the next stage of kind of the evolutionary process of maybe doing business and things but we forget that there are infrastructures already in place. Like you said, which maybe have to be, you know, redeveloped or, you know, just to still suit the audience that they’re there for. So that's really. Yeah, really interesting. Oh, absolutely. Oh, sorry. Don’t worry at all, no please go ahead. So I was just going to just mention the example and I think it's you know, you're talking about history. And of course, history is all being made now still in the middle of history. And things were evolving very, very quickly. You know, the example of housing and social housing, because if you think about it, digitalisation and digital first has transformed, you know, famously everything from the newspapers. They used to be sort of broadsheets and that was sort of for the advertising and recruitment and all sorts of stuff all the way through to retail or travel or, you know, why would we think that it wouldn't transform, ultimately, the way that housing is provided in the UK as well, and eventually it probably will. So you know, if you look at the kind of, I think it's something like 1800 Social Housing organisations, again, quite a lot of those you might consider are silos, right. Because, you know, often they might have separate marketing departments and sort of back office. You know, customer service, finance and quite a lot of those functions. If you were... If you had no... You know, if it was no holds barred and there was no cost to doing what you wanted to do, you might just be able to run quite a lot of that in a kind of digital first way. From a kind of digital platform, actually, and possibly were you to do that... That would free up a whole lot of people and energy and precious budget to actually spend on customers rather than that back end infrastructure. So, I think one of the interesting observations about digital first is of course, it's a kind of there are two sides to it. Number one is, of course, configuring again around our customers and with those benefits that we talked about a bit earlier. But that's often impossible to do unless you're also consolidating and sharing data across some of those back end silos as well. Both within, let's say, social housing organisations. But you could you could apply that to any sector, but also between them as well. Right. So we can now share data to standardise, you know, a lot of activities that that our customers don't really care too much about in the back office. They don't ask too many questions about, you know, what CRM we’re running or, you know, any more than you ask too many questions about. Probably in a car, if you're buying a new car, who made the, you know... I often say who made the wire that connects the speedometer with the engine. Doesn't really matter, does it? And increasingly, I believe we could share these, consume these things like Netflix. So I think there's two dimensions to digital first. Again, one is joining up around the customer, but I think we also really need to tackle that, joining up and challenging of some of those legacy silos and join that on shared data there as well. And I'm really pleased. I think it looks as if there are some wonderful green shoots of attempts across the sector to come together in consortia and start to share some of that data, which would be really, really amazing if that starts to happen. Yeah, no, definitely sounds, you know, promising kind of from that end part of your sentence there. I mean, in terms of the kind of the dual faceted challenge then, that you mentioned. How, looking at it from maybe like more of a social lens then, how does kind of the digital first approach really impact maybe kind of end users and customers at the end of the tech? So that's also a great question. I think there are... There's a good side and a bad side to this, right? And as I get older and, you know, I've been doing this stuff for over 30 years now one way or the other. I get more sort of soft political, small p, political about it, because I think digital interactions are beginning to shape the world that we exist in. And, you know, even before AI and now obviously, of course, everyone is talking about AI and the way in which embedded algorithms start to affect life chances without us even realising whether we get a bank loan, whether we even get preselected for a job interview. You know, probably the way we’re assessed to social housing, right? And a lot of these are kind of unaccountable. Okay. So I think there are the good sides, right? There's the speed, there’s the convenience there’s.. Hey, there's I no longer need to remember phone numbers. Why? Because they're on my phone, right? I could just sort of you know, tap who I want to call and I can call them. Those things are very, very convenient and be able to make banking transactions from the phone, for heaven's sakes. And those things are wonderful and almost too easy sometimes, I think, to sort of order things online and have them be there later in the day if you think about the environment and what that's doing. And so I think the speed, ease, convenience, all of those things are undoubtedly wonderful. I do think there's a negative side to citizens and to customers of digital first as well. So I think it's... and I think it's an interesting paradox. You might agree that on the one hand, we're always getting bombarded by organisations with questionnaires, right? You can order anything, you can buy the slightest thing. And you have to fill in a question. How do we do? How are we? So, organisations are very, very keen to use digital to kind of hear about our digital experience. However, you try ordering something and then that doesn't work or trying to complain about it outside the way that they want to interact with you. And I think sometimes I think, you know, this... I think we're bombarded with on organisational terms what they want to hear from us when we want to contact a lot of digital first organisations. That's very difficult, isn't it? Actually, speaking to a person is increasingly difficult. To give you an example, yesterday we had a power outage at home and the infrastructure company. I needed to get hold of somebody to tell me about it. I didn't have the Wi-Fi was down and my reception wasn't very good and I was put through about 20 minutes of trying to talk to a robot because obviously they wanted to filter me and no one wanted to speak to me. That was... That left me feeling very, very powerless. I'm sure the organisation in implementing this had a digital consultant saying, you know with digital first, we're going to use computers to kind of triage this situation and hold the customer at bay until we really need to devote precious, expensive resources, human resources, to talk to them. So I think this is... I think we need to be much more vigilant. I think sometimes we're a little bit complacent in society about letting these things wash over us, right? The notion that somebody out there will make sure that we're regulated properly, to make sure there's proper data regulation, proper AI regulation. But also, of course, that communication with organisations is accountable. And two way and I think, you know, the signals are, we just discussed a couple of examples that it's not. It’s going the other way. So I do think, you know, there's a huge amount to grasp onto that’s incredibly empowering about digital first, for customers. But I think if we're going to have the kind of digital first society and public services that we all want, I think individual citizens need to be prepared to get involved in some of those struggles a little bit more because I think the moment we're probably a little bit passive in that regard. Okay. Yeah, I guess that inclusion, that engagement, that yeah involvement of citizens is really crucial. I mean, you know, off the top of my head, there's about, I think, 13 million people who struggle to actually engage with digital devices. They don't have the digital capabilities. And so obviously a digital first approach for them is something that they can't engage with. And it might mean that there isn't enough investment in their more traditional communication methods or other multi, you know, channels as such. So what would you say then? You know, based on the challenges that you've just kind of elaborated on, what would you say businesses and organisations can do then to help kind of bridge the digital divide, get people to engage with, you know, the digital first approach without kind of sacrificing kind of efficiency for customers as well. That's a great question. I think I almost answer it a different way. I'm not sure that we should all be, we should be gently encouraged maybe to go digital first. But there's been a phrase around certainly public services for 10, 15 years now, which is which is the digitally unwilling or unable, you know. So unable is one cohort of people, but maybe some people are just unwilling to engage digitally. And the question is to what extent? Because of course, from an organisational perspective, the more digitally they can engage with each of us, the more cheaply that can happen and the more... The easier it is to collect structured data about those engagements. So organisations are obviously very keen to follow us down digital first approaches, not only for our own benefit, but there's a clear financial benefit to organisations in doing that. So the question is how much nudging and encouragement do organisations need from regulatory bodies and even sort of legal frameworks to make adequate provision for the, not only the unable, but the digitally unwilling as well? And I think, to be honest, those questions haven't really been solved, certainly not to my satisfaction, which is why, of course, you know, people are increasingly getting shut out. I mean, I think it's not just age, but let's just look at age. I have a I have an 84 year old father and I have become in some ways, he wouldn't mind me saying this, some ways a kind of digital carer for him. So he's increasingly unable to access his bank account without, you know, passwords and two-factor authentication. And you know, there's iris scans or voice recognition or, you know, there are kind of key chains in his digital footprint that regularly get muddled up and lock him out of his, you know, whether it's his computer or his Google account or, and of course, who is it that has to sort them all out? It's you know, it's yours truly. And often it's not, and of course, quite rightly often these bodies won't talk to me, they’ll only talk to him. But he lives, you know, an hour and a half away. So this can be very, very difficult. You know, in the UK today it's actually very difficult, increasingly difficult to use, for example, a public utility like the railways without booking and paying for that on your phone. So I do think that, you know, I think there are only sort of glib solutions to this. Personally, again, would like to continue my theme of kind of small p, political engagement. I think all of us need to advocate for greater regulatory and potential legal frameworks which encourage, shall we say, in inverted commas, organisations sure to seek efficiencies some from nudging us down the digital first approach, but also say that, look, if for whatever reason there are cohorts of people who are unwilling or unable, then actually maybe some of that cross-subsidy needs to go to support those face to face interactions. And I think that's there's no shying away from it, really. I mean, you know, we could all be offered incentives, slightly cheaper goods and services if we interact digitally. But again, that is a way that organisations often do encourage us as consumers to interact with them digitally. I don't necessarily support that. Right. I would actually prefer to see an environment where we get those cross-subsidy from the digital channel to the online channel for those who would prefer it. So I guess there's no you know, there's no straight answer to this one. It depends where you sit. It depends politically, with a little p, I guess where you sit on this. You know, should it be up to organisations effectively to cash in on the benefits, the undoubted economic benefits or forcing us all down digital routes even if we're unwilling? Or should there be some kind of, you know, restraining framework that forces some sort of cross-subsidy? And personally, I would believe in the latter. It is something I think we all need to get involved in. Yeah, that's a really nice statement as well that for us to all get involved in and engaged in. I mean, you've touched on it already a bit, obviously, with the face to face kind of channels that the, you know, organisations should have as well. And then I was just, you know, it would be interesting to hear maybe an expansion on that. So maybe how businesses can kind of reconcile adopting a digital first approach and having that as an option, or digital channels as an option but also reconciling it with kind of that human interactiveness as well. How might an organisation approach kind of that? So I think there's a macro and micro perspective to this because of course, the macro perspective, and I alluded to it a little bit earlier, is this need to join up, okay in organisations. In fact, you know, that's a micro as well. So for example, you know, we need to be neutral in our organisation in terms of our customer service records, whether or not the interaction we have with a customer happens to be of a digital channel or a face to face channel. So without kind of proper, you know, data schemas and kind of the ability to share and consolidate data effectively, that becomes difficult to write. And the two become very, very hard the online and the offline channels to reconcile organisationally. So, so that's, that's hard. However, there is a kind of silver lining to this because as I said, ultimately I believe that we are with progressive digitalisation, I think the pressure on us to consolidate and start to share many, many of those back end services which are currently duplicated from one Social Housing organisation to another right across the sector. I believe those pressures will only increase. And when people start sharing a lot of those back end services, what it's gonna do, wonderfully, is release colossal amounts of funding, potentially billions of funding to spend on more face to face people, to interact with customers, because that's ultimately really what customers want. You know, and I know some people get terribly excited about I don’t know, for example, you know, Japan, I think there's tremendous investment in robots so robot companions for elderly people. And there are there are lots of those and I was stunned by some of what's out there. And we've got great big sort of, I think a very sort of large kind of cuddly faces and big appealing eyes and sort of, you know, but they are fundamentally robot machines made out of plastic, you know, and when I reach the age where I might like a companion, would I actually prefer a robot? You know it's, to quote Douglas Adams, a plastic pal who's fun to be with or a real human being. And again, these are choices that we face. So I do believe with progressive consolidation of that back end, which currently is perfectly possible, we could ringfence billions, eventually, to spend on human beings, to interact with anybody that wants it. And so the notion that just because we can with digital, we should all the time, I think is mistaken. So again, it's about the kind of society and the kind of services that we want to live in, in 5, 10, 25 years and getting involved in demanding those things now. So you know, if, you know, I think a lot of people, a lot of customers of social housing are people who often have quite complex needs, they don't always, but often they do and often in need of, you know, an empathetic interface with organisations which are able to join up, you know the dots, listen empathetically. Often the listening is part of the, you know, part of the experience. And again, you know, digital channels don't really deliver on that, do they? That kind of soft glue of society coming together around particular issues. So yeah. You know what's going on. I kind of loathe to, you know, to give prescriptions about how organisations can put more human beings in the frontline. Ultimately, it comes down, I'm afraid, I think, to financials. And it comes down to, you know, cleaning and consolidating data so the two channels can share. But really, until we start to share, to take advantage of the enormous opportunity to share things about back end and drive cost to the front, which is very much part of all digital transformation initiatives, unless we really seize that, I think we're going to be hampered in our in our success. I mean, one of the big takeaways from that was the Japanese robots. I hate to say it, but that sounds really fascinating. And it actually kind of points towards maybe the evolution, the further revolution, the next step maybe of digital first the approach. So, you know, from your perspective, I mean, might it go a step too far? I mean, from my own kind of just knowledge and research you know, there's been a term of digital prison as well whereby I think it's a shop or a supermarket in London. In order to gain access, you have to scan your phone because it's again, it’s a deterrence of theft. But again, it means that people who want, you know, basic groceries have to have a digital device and they have to know how to scan their phone. So might it be that, you know, services do then entrap people within a digital prison. So I think in some ways that's already happened. So think about the right to be forgotten on search engines like Google, for example. So, you know, there's a sense, I think, that people self-police now because let's say a video of yourself on a stag night or something kind of goes viral and you’re drunk and you’re being an idiot you know and you apply for a job ten years later that catches up with you and people go, I won’t have you. Or let's say you’re... You go into overdraft a bit too much and that affects your credit rating, which means you can't get a mortgage in ten years time. So I think there is a sense now that people do self-regulate because they are aware of the digital footprint, which often they don't have much control over. So I think that is absolutely kind of happening now. And I think that it's you know, we need to start talking about potentially some sort of use of universal basic income. You know, there are, an example I often pick is there are, I understand, there are 10 million professional lorry drivers in the United States, for example. Now, each of those has you know, many of them have families, dependents of one kind or another. So as and when, for example, self-driving cars come of age and they will eventually, you know, that's just that little tiny sector of professional lorry drivers. So you've got millions and millions and millions of people who do pretty much anything you can attach an algorithm to. Those jobs are likely to become threat progressively. So, you know, as a society, we really want to think about, again, the society you want to live in because we all want more human interaction. And ultimately, I believe, in society, we undervalue many of those caring jobs. So Teachers, Carers, you know, Social Workers, all of those sorts of caring professions are undervalued and underpaid and are in constant demand. We want more and more of those. So at least maybe the good news is that with progressive digitalisation and digital first initiatives across the piece, actually, maybe we will start to you know, there are lots of jobs to go to, but they are caring jobs. But to do that, we have to learn as a society to start valuing them a bit better. And eventually we will have to, you know, we’re stumbling along now and I think a post 20th century order still now about until we start to kind of value some of those. And you know, quite a lot of the more the more process and transactional oriented jobs are likely to go until we start to value those more human facing caring professions. You know, I think we're going to have a problem. So ultimately, I think I'm hoping we could end up with a digital first world where instead of forcing us down forms of digital interaction that we’re unwilling and able, as we've discussed a bit earlier, instead of making us pay for face to face contact as a kind of premium. But that's, you know, that hopefully people would have an ability to interact digitally if they so choose and reap all those benefits of convenience, speed and being oriented around the user. And of course, mobile first, mobile friendly, all of those undoubted benefits. But I'm hoping that there'll be enough of a kind of shift towards valuing face to face interactions, bolstered hopefully by kind of maybe legal frameworks, certainly regulatory frameworks which kind of provide that leadership for organisations to help us to build the kind of digital future that I think some of us want, rather than a more dystopian future, which is perhaps more economically driven. No that's a, it's nice to hear, like you said, the kind of digital utopia, you know, more positive version there. So, you know, maybe to turn that into a reality, I mean, do you know of any kind of maybe political policy kind of with a capital P there that is kind of underway or in existence at the moment that might inform this kind of digital first adoption, but in a more positive way. So I'm struggling to be positive here about about levels I think of leadership that we have had from the government lately in this area. I have to say, I don't think we've had a tremendous amount. I think Government Digital Service, GDS, have achieved some great things over the years. They have certainly started building, you know, digital first services or components of services that organisations can take in and use and reuse, which is great. However, at that kind of strategic level that we've been discussing a little bit in terms of what society we want to live in, what is the role of government in kind of not only policing but also incentivising the private sector as well as public services to build that for us. I think there has been not enough debate at all. I don't think there's been enough debates among society either, which is why I think discussions like this are kind of very helpful maybe. And, you know, there might be one or two people scratching their heads and go yeah you know what? You know, I read the papers every day and I kind of, you know, I talk about how public services can be better or how, I don't know, you know, debate the defense budgets at the moment or in all of these issues. But do we really kind of think about, you know, where are the lines of demarcation in terms of the digital future that we're building at the moment? And I would say they're probably not particularly well drawn out. I’d recommend I think the Tony Blair Institute regularly comes up with quite sensible proposals and ideas about digital first and public services. So they're worth checking out. And some of their reports, I think their reports are free, widely, widely available. So I would kind of go there as a as an initial stop. But I'm hoping I'm just hoping that you know, whoever it is that wins the next election, maybe it's the kind of time for a bit of a clean start. And looking a little bit more at this. I'm hoping also that, of course, for example, I’m chairing the Public Sector Innovation Conference next month, next month in March. And there we're looking in London at, for a whole day, at AI and the public sector and kind of use cases of AI across public services, both for good and bad and what we can learn. And I'm hoping as AI starts to kind of in a kind of capillary like way start moving towards, moving across our public services, that more people become aware of, of the ways in which some of this is starting to get baked into, as we mentioned a bit earlier, the services themselves, the ways that we don't always understand. And that's you know, both an opportunity, of course it's an opportunity to generate huge efficiencies. The idea that the state knows who you are and the issue that you’ve got and the issue you want to talk to them about, even when you pick up the phone, that's great. That's I for you. That's very convenient that that's more digital first that yeah, that's really good. But the notion again, I think it's been a recurrent theme throughout this conversation that there is potentially a, not exactly a dark side that sounds too dramatic, but a negative side to some of this that may start to kind of, you know, get in place. Unless we agitate. I think that's very much there as well. Thank you, Mark. I mean, that's a great place as well to maybe wrap up today's discussion. But it's no, it's been really fascinating to talk to you about, you know, all things digital first, you know, the pros and cons of it, the you know, the challenges as well as ways that, you know, business can alleviate those challenges. So, yeah, but thank you so much for joining us on Social Footprint. Thanks very much Jasneet, it's been a honour. Thank you.