How remote work enables the public sector to lead innovation

Just as the need to reduce government spending led to the introduction of GOV.UK – which, nowadays, is the predominant channel through which British citizens interact with the government - adjusting to COVID-19 has created efficiencies that make a return to the previous status-quo impossible.

Remote work has presented employees with advantages they won’t be relinquishing easily. Private companies can develop their bonus plans and contracts to restore their office footprint - but this is obviously not an option for the public sector, which typically must be mindful of individual staff requirements or risk losing them entirely.

It’s easy to see the public sector’s need to ride the tide and transform their internal processes – and while some organisations are opting for short-term ‘quick fixes’ instead, many more are finding that upgrading wholesale leads to a whole spectrum of benefits. Nowadays, public organisations following a hybrid model are becoming more attractive employers, for obvious reasons – but also benefit from tighter data security, greater efficiency, improved sustainability, and increased budgetary agility.

Maximising value

How is this possible? Well, while private companies must prioritise improving their net profit, the public sector must deliver maximum value with the budget they’re given – and must work in tandem with government priorities such as creating savings, generating social value, and bolstering data security. UK Procurement is key to driving this, since providers must keep in line with certain criteria in order to be approved by certain public frameworks.

The natural result of this is that it’s becoming more fashionable for public companies to make one deal that maximises on savings, social value, and data security, rather than getting into bed with many different ‘single solution’ providers.

As such, public organisations are now finding that supporting remote work means transforming their processes to incorporate the Cloud – and aligning with a managed service provider for their Cloud solutions creates far more benefits than managing it in-house.

For instance, by investing in off-premises data storage, communication systems, and print servers, organisations reduce their output of buildings energy and carbon emissions right from the outset – as well as reducing staff reliance on transport. Once on the Cloud, security is then managed entirely by the Cloud provider, which is much more effective since security is a central focus of their business. This means less of a drain on internal IT teams, since, with data security now outsourced, they are now free to reallocate their time and skillsets to other strategic business tasks.

Furthermore, managed workplace services follow an OpEx billing model, rather than CapEx – meaning that public organisations are free to be more agile with their technology budget, since they no longer need to be lumped with the same aging assets until their next round of funding.