Digital Government meets Public Sector Culture – a modern industrial revolution

Go to any public sector event this summer and before long the conversation will move to discussing Artificial Intelligence. It seems the prospect of a public sector that draws information from all areas of government both excites and scares us in equal measure.

On the plus side AI, combined with data from across government, offers the prospect of a single line of sight that ensures people are best served by the state. However, others see the risks of data sharing, the move towards a ‘big brother’ state and erosion of personal freedom.

Whether you love AI or hate it, there is little doubt that it has now become the most recent step in our very rapid transition from Science Fiction to Science Fact.  Agentic AI is already capable of delivering a host of transactional tasks more effectively than people, while Generative AI can effectively synergise knowledge more quickly and, increasingly, more effectively than people in creative or professional roles.

Large data pools combining information from different parts of the public realm would allow us to understand much more completely the overall needs of different groups and individuals across the UK. This is an essential step in us being able to provide better, more targeted and more timely services. However, there is a potential barrier to us using AI to greatest effect across the public sector. This is our willingness or otherwise to share data or join up services.

Where are we headed?

The aspiration for the future delivery of services and integration of data can be found in the Government’s blueprint for modern digital government published in January 2025. This provides a case for joined up public services and the priorities for creating the conditions where this can be achieved.

This makes a lot of sense, but if we set off with this ambition, we need to know our starting point. And this is not a technology question, it’s a human one. Because it’s not technology that changes the world, it’s people. And people change because they want to. While there are undoubtedly some very valuable opportunities available by joining up services and improving our data infrastructure, there is little evidence that the public sector is ready, willing or able to make this happen, either structurally or culturally. If, as Peter Drucker observed, ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’, I’ll have my blueprint with coffee and a croissant.

This article considers the readiness of public administration and UK society, to make the changes needed for us to achieve ‘modern digital government’.

A look back at UK public administration 

The first industrial revolution moved the UK from a mainly agrarian and handcrafted society to a machine led one. Our current public administration also developed into its current form from this period with the offices of Home and Foreign Secretary being established in 1782. The model has since evolved into our current public administration. It is, at its most fundamental level, many self-autonomous groups each mandated to deliver different aspects of the machinery of government. It is held together through our democratic structures that ensures that it delivers to the will of the electorate and determines spending levels and priorities. And it is huge. Today, around 5.94 million people work in the public sector.

It all sounds straight forward, but when you look at the way the whole thing works in practice, it would make any ‘straight through processing’ specialist need a bit of a lie down. Each part of the public sector develops gloriously independent ways of working. There is of course a lot of working between departments and agencies, but the prime objective is always the delivery of their own agenda. We usually enter conversations about shared methods with ‘their way of working would not work here’ and ‘others don’t get the complexities of what we do’. This protects our services and resources (including data and technology) with some vigour.

So, the challenge for modern digital government is not a technological one, but a human one. It’s not that our people are broken, they just don’t work in the logical, straightforward and consistent ways that we have come to expect from our technology structured processes. Expecting people to change ways of working practices in the same way that technology does is like filling up your diesel car with a full tank of super-unleaded.

Fuelling the human systems with high octane 'modern digital' solutions 

Robert Dilts is an American author and consultant well known in the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Dilts identified six ‘logical levels’ that individuals and groups consider when interpreting and responding to the experiences the world sends their way. Using these logical levels can help us understand the process we humans use to decide how to respond to any new proposal or experience we encounter. It is widely used in social sciences, leadership coaching and team development, both as a diagnostic tool and as a way of developing pathways for change.

Dilts’ model is shown here. The top level of ‘Vision and Purpose’ has been drawn from the blueprint for modern digital government. It is the answer to the question ‘where are we going and why?’

To see how those working in, working with or receiving services from the public sector (i.e. the ‘whole system’) may respond, to the proposition that we integrate services and share data, we start at the bottom and then work upwards.

Environment Level 

There is a lot of truth in the phrase ‘we are all a product of our environment’. The first logical level makes decisions about this. It helps us clarify ‘how will those people around me be affected by this change’? and ‘what is the likely response from those around me’? These questions will be informed by culture.

Culture can be defined as ‘the way we agree things need to be done around here’. Culture has two important attributes:

1. It is the way that people develop and maintain social cohesion. We form into groups for a reason, but we stay because we identify with the group and what it stands for. Cultures are enduring and protective of the group.

2. They are strongest where there is a cause that excludes others. There is a fundamental human desire to identify with and be part of something that defines your place (tribe, family, club etc). Of necessity, this means that it excludes others. We come together for social reasons and for protection, but the power of a shared membership is palpable on any given Saturday on match day. Departments in the public sector have serve this purpose.

How will culture affect the way in which we will respond to joined up data and integrated services? Letting go of control and sovereignty of data may be a tough ask for some. Happily, there is a way of bringing different groups together and this is to introduce a common enemy or problem. Manchester City and Arsenal fans may be bitter rivals in the premiership but will stand shoulder to shoulder in support of England at the World Cup. Similar capacity to change was consistently seen in the face of the ‘existential threat’ created by Covid-19 in 2020.

Behaviour and Skills/Capabilities Level 

Once we have considered how the environment will affect our approach to change, the next logical level looks at what we will do (behaviour) and how we will do it through our skills and capabilities.

 Public administration within the UK has complex governance arrangements, well-established activities designed to ensure that government and administrative proposals are well thought through, subject to effective scrutiny and properly funded. These are behaviours that form the foundation for collective government. The public sector is skilled in working in this way. It works well as a set of behaviours because it is one thing that almost all areas of the public estate agree upon as good practice. While there is a growing call by many to act fast, learn fast and improve, these behaviours are not within UK public sector DNA. Agile process does not deliver radical change. 

Conferences I have attended over the past month have covered the initiation of, and small scale adoption of AI and Microsoft Co-Pilot within teams. This approach is local or departmental. Early results have identified relatively small and incremental benefits in employee time savings, with AI taking the leg work out of some routine activities, with people then checking the results of AI. Is this not like buying a JCB Excavator and having people with shovels fill it? It is early days, but it might be considered that we are not really living the vision of joined up services and integrated data.

Using the logical levels model, it is likely that current behaviours in support of AI and digital integration are driven by the level below (environment), rather than an absence of skill and capability to do different. The model defines the adoption of skills and capabilities to be dependent upon our decision on ‘what is it OK for me to do in this environment’? At June’s Government Transformation Summit one speaker called on private sector partners to challenge her department’s view of how things needed to be done, frustrated with the private sectors reluctance to do this. It might be that this supplier had decided that in this environment it was not okay to challenge the leadership.

Values/Beliefs and Identity Levels

The first three levels of Dilts’ model have looked at what happens ‘externally’ when faced with a call to change. It gives us room for reflection about when looking at how the public sector might approach digital integration.

The final two logical levels provide a more personal and individual perspective. It reflects what we see as the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ thing to do in the adoption of joined up services and integrated data. It ultimately determines our decision about what our contribution will be to bringing this change about. Listening to leaders in public sector and AI, I have seen most of them clearly identify with their role in the development of effective public sector services that deliver digital services. This is a satisfyingly well aligned to the digital blueprint. Their skills, capabilities, behaviour and experience of the working context are well aligned.

Beyond public sector leadership, the picture is not so clear. Localism, commitment to current ways of working and changing have the potential for a significant proportion of people in the system to conclude that the right thing to do is at best nothing or at worst delay or distract. This is not a criticism, it is a logical response to their interpretation of the change proposed. But the good news is that there are three straightforward steps that can turn this around. What is even better news is that it doesn’t need the whole scale redesign of the public realm, huge additional investment or a decade to deliver.

Three steps to joined up digital services and integrated data 

Step 1: Create a shared vision of what digital public sector will mean for people

Start with a genuine open conversation about what we expect our public services to be capable of and what we are prepared to invest. This includes discussing the creation of trust and safeguards for information gathering and use, the potential to redefine ownership and authority for to information and what personal information should be available to deliver the best results across the public sector.

Step 2: Invest in developing national solutions around citizen needs

Prioritise the rapid integration of existing data and quickly translating this into new case models for specific citizen activities. This needs to be a centrally managed genuinely transformative activity. Culturally, this will need to be managed.

Step 3: Create an existential threat

And this is the most important step. People change for one of two reasons. Either because they are driven by adversity, or they are pulled towards change by the prospect of something better. For those who, at the values and beliefs logical level, are supportive of integrated data and shared services, the blueprint vision pulls strongly.

For those who are not in this space, the government should consider ways in which it can reduce the adversity being felt by different parts of the public service. Earlier, I explained how an ‘existential threat’ or shared adversary will bring groups together. Funding restrictions are a common challenge to all government departments, and the government can use this common challenge in creating a shared approach. By increasing funding to those areas who have shared data and joined up services, it is possible to incentive participation. It offers the dual benefits of reducing their overheads and equipping them with additional revenue to improve public services – a genuine virtuous circle!

In summary 

The UK public sector is, at its foundations, a complex human system. Yet, in developing its future in a digital world our focus is too often on the adoption of technologies without understanding how human systems need to be engaged ahead of technology adoption. As a sector and as a society we now expect change and are more ready than ever to think the unthinkable - but we need to acknowledge the problem before formulating a solution.