Scotland’s most senior civil servant has called for greater coordination of digital transformation across public services to unlock the benefits to citizens.
JP Marks, permanent secretary to the Scottish Government, said he would like to see more integration of technologies ‘at scale’ across the country to quicken the pace of the digital delivery of public services.
Mr Marks, who has been in post since January 2022, said however that government needs to prove that the services it’s developing online are “really good” in order for people to “walk towards them”.
Mr Marks, who was previously director general, work and health services at the Department for Work and Pensions, was talking about barriers to digital transformation at Digital Scotland on Tuesday.
He said that it was right that there was a ‘voluntarist, democratic’ approach, which reflects the stage of digital maturity the government is at.
But he said he would now like to see that accelerated now that government platforms are starting to prove themselves.
“I think we’ve got the enablers and the platforms to accelerate,” Marks told the audience at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.
“Hopefully we’ve got a period of political stability in Scotland ahead in the next 18 months to drive some of those changes through. That might be about our health boards and Digital Front Door, the application of AI, and some of our councils are doing that on translation services, which is wonderful to see, but also the adoption of some of those common components, identity, payments, case management solutions to accelerate the change.”
He added: “We need those integrations at scale. So if I think about our local government operating model, our health boards, the way government works, we are going to need to find the leaps that will enable that coordination.”
He paid tribute to Denmark, which is leading the way on joined up digital public services. Mr Marks was joined on stage at the venue by Sidsel Skovborg, digital counsellor at the Danish Embassy in London.
Skovborg said the private and public sector have worked together to advance digitalisation in Denmark, which topped the United Nations E-Government Survey this year.
The report noted: “Denmark..has been proactive in advancing its digital government strategy, focusing on creating comprehensive digital portals for citizens, businesses, and health services through platforms like borger.dk, virk.dk, and sundhed.dk, while fostering citizen engagement via initiatives like borgerforslag.dk.”
“The country also incorporates sustainability into public procurement and explores AI, robotics, and 5G infrastructure
to enhance public services and promote green transitions. These efforts underscore Denmark’s commitment to a secure, inclusive, and sustainable digital future.”
One of the important barriers they overcame in Denmark was making digitalisation mandatory.
“Implementing IT is tough, and I think sometimes not everybody knows how complex actually it is. So, you really need to plan this, and we can only do it by joint forces,” said Skovborg. “So, that means common platforms, mandatory digitisation and common national strategies.”
People also trust digital systems in Denmark. “As a country, Danes tend to trust their government very much,” she added. “So there is something that is given from the start, but also we’re very aware of that, that we can’t take that for granted.”
She said any solutions that are developed for citizens need to be easy to use and transparent.
The conference heard about the role of Danish IT company, Netcompany, which is currently working with the Scottish Government on a digital post system, that could replace conventional mail services and act as a backbone for digital health records.
There is currently work underway with NHS Lanarkshire on prototyping a national Digital Front Door service, which aims to become an equivalent to the NHS App in England, albeit with the inclusion of social care as well as NHS health records.
Mr Marks was asked whether he would support the mandating of digital transformation across Scotland’s 14 health boards.
He started by saying there is some encouraging work going on in the NHS Lanarkshire region, with the Centre for Sustainable Delivery, which is looking at the smarter use of data to address problems such as delayed discharge, and better ways to prevent unnecessary admissions.
He said: “My hope….is that if we prove the value and demonstrate the benefits quickly, then we should be able to encourage the whole of the NHS, across different boards, to adopt it.
“But as you say, our culture is currently a kind of, ‘Oh, look, it works well here. Do you fancy giving it a go?,” rather than, you know, it’s a requirement.
“From a sort of value for money perspective, I think I would probably like us to learn from the Denmark model whereby, when we think the componentry, the platforms are mature and we’re confident, we look to the governance of our systems and say, you know, ‘Once for Scotland’ is optimal, but we’re not quite there yet, I’ll be candid.”
He added: “Part of the trick is to build really high-performing services and platforms and then increase the adoption rate at the right time and to look to mandation as a vehicle to get there. But we clearly have…various structures around local democracy, which we must respect. So we need to be thoughtful about taking people on a journey given the point of our trust.
“But your underlying challenge around health and social care and the budget of over £20 billion, if we are going to avoid the escalator demographic change, we have got to really reap the opportunity of digital transformation, and it’s there for the taking. You can see it with imaging. You can see it with digital dermatology. We can see it with Digital Front Door and other enablers. But it’s getting organised, back to that point of our barriers, and getting the investment in to accelerate delivery.”
