‘Massive opportunity’ for UK firms as digital services could save public 75,000 years
Digitising the UK’s government services could save Brits a collective 75,000 years of lost time annually and represents a “massive opportunity” for firms, new data has revealed.
Two thirds – 66 per cent – of respondents want to see fully digitised government public services, with 85 per cent wanting to see this within the next two years, a survey has found.
Data gathered by technology company Nortal, which delivered 40 per cent of the Estonian government’s digitisation, found Brits spent on average 12 hours engaging with government public services in the last year – which equates to 75,000-years worth of time lost annually.
The findings emerged in the wake of suggestions arising earlier this year that the firm had an alleged unfair advantage over public procurement in Estonia due to its close connections to Estonia 200 – the Baltic state’s liberal party and a junior partner in government.
CEO Priit Alamäe – one of the party founders – reportedly told an Estonian TV network in February: “Corruption is a very strong word. It essentially means a criminal offence. I would be cautious in letting words like that fly around, as if used inappropriately, it can ruin lives.”
Nortal, which is currently expanding in the UK and South America also found the public want government services to match firms such as Amazon, Netflix or Uber for quality – with the top app-based features being time-saving – on 38 per cent – and ease of use, on 33 per cent.
John Cheal, UK public sector lead at Nortal, who joined in March, told City PM it was a “pleasant surprise” to find so much support for the move to digitising the UK government.
As consumers “we are quite happy to set up an account and give some basic information to some fairly anonymous organisations in exchange for a good service,” he said.
“In government terms what that says is fundamentally, quality services are key. The better the service, the less there is a trust issue – we’ve seen that in Estonia.”
He also stressed that the move towards digitising government “represents a massive opportunity” for the UK’s tech sector.
Cheal added: “It shows that there’s more work to be done in this area, and it is one of the areas that will help in a long way towards the productivity challenges that the UK has.
“When you consider the workforce challenges that we have and other things, this is probably one of the only big levers that we have as a country to really ramp up productivity.
“The government can’t do it on its own and needs these partners to do that… I think [it is] a big opportunity for us and for other people.”
Running the government’s digital public services in Estonia, Cheal said, costs “less than £150m a year” and he stressed: “They’re running the whole government for a fraction of the budget of what one of our departments is spending on technology.”
However, not all Brits are confident in the government to deliver top-quality public services online. 31 per cent say they are not confident in this happening in the near future.
While almost half of Brits – 47 per cent – think government agencies would not be able to achieve the same level of digitalisation as companies in the private sector, with three in 10 respondents saying they are more likely to share data with a company than government.
Cheal added: “In an election year, improving the productivity of UK plc. will be a focus for the main parties.
“It’s clear that a simple way to give the country back 75,000 years worth of annual wasted hours – is to move faster in getting to a future with high-quality digital services at the core.”