Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery

240 Pages·2·1.792 MB·English

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Andrew Greenway
Ben Terrett
Mike Bracken
Tom Loosemore

Digital Transformation at Scale
PERSPECTIVES ON BUSINESS
Series editor: Professor Diane Coyle
Why You Dread Work: What’s Going Wrong in Your Workplace
and How to Fix It — Helen Holmes
Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery
(Second Edition) — Andrew Greenway, Ben Terrett,
Mike Bracken and Tom Loosemore
Digital Transformation at Scale
Why the Strategy Is Delivery
Second Edition
Andrew Greenway
Ben Terrett
Mike Bracken
Tom Loosemore
London Publishing Partnership
Copyright © 2021 Andrew Greenway, Ben Terrett,
Mike Bracken and Tom Loosemore
Published by London Publishing Partnership
www.londonpublishingpartnership.co.uk
Published in association with
Enlightenment Economics
www.enlightenmenteconomics.com
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 978-1-913019-39-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-913019-40-2 (iPDF)
ISBN: 978-1-913019-41-9 (epub)
First edition published by
London Publishing Partnership in 2018
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
This book has been composed in Candara
Copy-edited and typeset by
T&T Productions Ltd, London
www.tandtproductions.com
Contents
Foreword to the first edition vii
Contents
Preface to the second edition ix
Prologue xi
Chapter 1
Testing times 3
Chapter 2
Why change? 21
Chapter 3
Before you begin 31
Chapter 4
Where to start 45
Chapter 5
The first team 55
Chapter 6
Preparing the ground 77
Chapter 7
Building credibility 93
Chapter 8
Winning the arguments 107
Chapter 9
Reverting to type 123
Chapter 10
Running the numbers 133
ConTenTs
Chapter 11
Consistent, not uniform 145
Chapter 12
setting the standard 163
Chapter 13
Finding leaders 179
Chapter 14
What comes next 189
Chapter 15
successful successions 201
epilogue 213
Acknowledgements 215
About the authors 217
endnotes 219
vi
Foreword to the first edition
Foreword to the
Francis: if plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, you
first edition
should be feeling very flattered.’
This email dropped into my inbox in early 2015. It was from
Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s prime minister at the time of writ-
ing but then the communications minister. It referred to his
recent establishment of the Digital Transformation Office, Aus-
tralia’s equivalent of Britain’s Government Digital Service (GDS),
and explicitly modelled on what we had created in the UK. This
followed President Obama’s creation of a US Digital Service,
copied from the same template.
In the lead up to the 2010 general election, I was leading
the Conservative Party’s work in opposition on preparation for
government. Britain faced a growing fiscal crisis with a budget
deficit of over 11% of GDP. At the same time, the UK had become
a byword round the world for costly government IT car crashes.
There had to be a better way.
I wanted to ensure that the UK could be the most digital gov-
ernment in the world. That didn’t mean that it was enough to
be able to download a form from the web, print it, fill it in by
hand and return it by post. It meant the state offering services
built around the needs of the user. I commissioned Martha Lane
Fox to make recommendations on how we should proceed: to
make government services that could be done online, be done
properly online – digital by default. The rest is history. A single
web domain for the British government, GOV.UK, replaced hun-
dreds of separate websites. Scores of government transactions
became digital by default. People who wouldn’t have dreamed
FoReWoRd To The FiRsT ediTion
of working in government signed up for the ride, proud to
become public servants. In 2016 the UN ranked the UK first in
the world for digital government.
Along the way, we learned about what you need to do to
make difficult disruptive change happen in government. Some of
it would seem obvious to anyone experienced in turning around
businesses that have lost their way. Cumulatively, our efficiency
programme saved over £50 billion in five years, mostly from the
running costs of government. None of it was easy, and there is
much more to do.
I am very proud of what the UK started. I hope this book
inspires others to do the same.
Francis Maude
The Rt Hon. the Lord Maude of Horsham
March 2018
viii