This year Xplicity was participating in the Smart Country Convention (SCC) for the second year in a row. What major progress in digitization could be visible? Also, what were the struggles on the way to achieving the goals set? What strategies were considered as reasonable ones?
General impression
Last year we were participating in the SCC event held on-site. However, global circumstances have drastically impacted all business and life aspects. As a result, this year the event was held online, and some challenges were inevitable. Nevertheless, many topics were very important, up-to date and revealed what a huge progress Germany made in digitalization field during 1 year. Or should I say several months in fact?
So, how does the overall situation look today? What are the obstacles that public sector and Government is facing on the way to making daily processes more convenient for citizens?
Challenges
Data safety and trust.
One of the major challenges often mentioned by speakers was “double standards”. Citizens are willing to share their personal data with social media (such as name, surname, contact phone and/or email) but become very concerned when they have to provide the same information to the local authorities. People have doubts, that this data will be kept safely, they have many related questions, and it takes time to prepare answers for them and gain trust.
Open source.
Some government representatives were sharing their insights about the necessity to have an open source for the Government. According to them, that would be a convenient way of data exchange for the public institutions, cost efficient solution for documentation management, time savvy and flexible system.
Simple example: I was talking to a person, who bought a new car at the very beginning of a quarantine in Germany. It took a month (!) to register that car and get a plate number. Mainly because most processes were happening offline, going from one person to another physically.
Qualified stuff.
Many governmental and public institutions face a lack of both: sufficient enough IT talent pool and specialists who are highly skilled applying digital tools for efficient performance of bureaucratic procedures. The global pandemic acted as a catalyzer for digitalization and revealed what structures and areas are crucially lacking reinforcement. As a result, some institutions established a new role – Principle of Digitalization. These employees are supposed to analize the needs, advice on IT structure development and find the best ways how to implement digital transformation.
Solutions
Despite the fact that a vision and main sore points are obvious, there is no unequivocal answer as to what would best way to achieve the goals set. Nevertheless, some general guidelines were suggested by event speakers.
- Ensuring transparency. Some panelists have suggested that in order to create trust in local authorities, people should be able to know “…which data is transported through which corridors.” In addition, showing practical use and benefits would increase people’s willingness to share their data with the government.
- Reviewing digital infrastructure. During discussions it was noticed that it would possibly be useful to connect data from “different worlds” together. For example, one access to some certain industry, energy, logistics, retail, etc. data. Some of these processes could be implemented via e-government / e-banking.
- Talent pool. For sure, education has a really important role to play here. One of suggested ideas was digital schools network, that children living on a farm could study remotely. Creating convenient digital infrastructure and motivating children to experience IT advantages sounds like a investment for the future. But what to do now? As recent experience shows, even couple of months can have a huge impact on shaping economy and business strategy. Even though universities are constantly accepting more and more students and expanding their IT study programs, sometimes solutions are required here and now.
So, in that case I see outsourcing as a very reasonable solution. And experience in SCC event has shown that Germany is interested in Lithuania’s talent pool. As well as the good digital practises that we are applying.
Conclusion
To conclude, despite the fact that all world is experiencing a challenging period now, all challenges have another side – they lead to improving certain skills and structures. Who knows how long would it have taken Germany to achieve the digital progress, that has been made in a few months, under different circumstances? And speaking of the shortage in IT talent pool – outsourcing some development to Lithuania would be useful for both parties (in terms of qualified workforce able to implement urgent digital solutions and economic reasons).