**The public sector post-pandemic**
COVID has created new challenges for public sector bodies, and accelerated many which previously existed.
Most obviously, every government department and public sector body has been asked to abruptly pivot to majority or complete remote working.
This is an enormous task: many organizations lack the infrastructure required to allow their staff to work from home. Accessing vital information outside of the office is difficult where it isn’t downright impossible. And when it is possible, few organizations have the cybersecurity capabilities necessary to cope with the hugely increased attack surface a remote workforce represents.
And with COVID making traditional face-to-face interactions and on-premise data solutions impossible, they’re being made to face these challenges with one hand tied behind their backs.
And most importantly, many are now unable to connect remote workers to the citizens who require their services in a logical and predictable way.
But the worries of the past three months don’t exist in a vacuum. COVID arrived against the backdrop of shifting demographics, tightening public purses, and a sea change in the expectations of the average person when it comes to service provision and delivery.
And these challenges are unlikely to be temporary. Now that we’ve all been working from home for several months, it’s likely that many people will be reluctant to return to the office full time. Especially before effective treatments have been developed.
The future of work is already here. And to maintain and advance service provision, organizations will have to pivot rapidly to technology platforms that make this new working style practical, efficient, resilient, and scalable.
Although relevant worldwide, this will be particularly true in the UK and the US, where recent studies reveal a considerable gap in digital transformation progress compared to continental European countries in the private sector. And with the public sector in the UK generally lagging far behind both domestic private sector and the international average in the public sector, there’s considerable catching up to do.
