How to Start Your New IT Journey

Government needs a way to think holistically about IT, not letting solutions fall into separate silos

Technology has connected government to citizens in meaningful ways. With an ability to reach people through a variety of social channels and aggregate more information than ever before, agencies are using data as a means to identify new ways to improve service delivery for citizens.

Take for instance the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) in the United Kingdom. The DVLA must maintain registers of drivers and vehicles in Great Britain. The agency helps to improve road safety, reduce vehicle related crime, support environmental initiatives and limit vehicle tax evasion.

To meet their mission, the agency collects troves of data and produces over 120 million documents per year. Each year the agency issues over 8 million licenses and 20 million vehicle registration certificates. The agency holds over 44 million driver records, and 36 million licensed vehicle records. With this much data – the agency must be able to analyze the data in a meaningful way to improve services and become more efficient to process a high volume of necessary services.

The key for improvement in the DVLA has been the automation of services. Using HP Exstream, a multichannel customer communication management (CCM) solution which allows agencies to customize high-volume statements and bills that also serves as a document management solution, the DVLA has been able to become more efficient in their service delivery. They now save over £200,000 and collecting £6.5 billion in vehicle excise duties per year. The automation services deployed by DVLA linked big data and document management, helping to create an integrated solution.

DVLA has seen many benefits from adopting new technology. But we can’t think about technology in terms of pocketed solutions. We need to think about integration, just like we saw at the DVLA.

That’s why I really enjoyed reading this recent guide by HP. In the HP Viewpoint paper, “Connecting in new ways: understanding how the New Style of IT affects the public sector,” HP does a fantastic job of showing the need to converge solutions and think about IT’s impact across multiple solutions and for the entire agency.

“A number of key challenges and trends in the public sector are affected by an emerging style of computing,” said the report. “This New Style of IT reflects the growing focus on areas commonly referred to as cloud, mobility, security, social networking, and big data. These trends are converging, changing the way users interact with information and communities, and fundamentally affecting their lives.”

The report identifies an important point: that as technology has changed the way we engage and work together, government’s delivery of IT should do the same. HP’s New Style of IT is helping agencies to define their IT roadmap. Where can you being your New IT journey?

Here are a few questions to explore:

1. What are some of the challenges your agency faces to acquire new solutions?
2. What are the best practices needed to deploy new technology?
3. What kind of capabilities do we currently have? Where are our solution gaps?
4. Have we measured the effectiveness of our IT solutions?
5. What kind of services will we need to provide in the next 5 years? Do we have the necessary capabilities to do so?
6. What is the vision of our agency for technology? What problems are we trying to solve through smart IT investments?

These questions are just the start of your path to adopt the New Style of IT. Through smart technology investment, you will be able to start to tackle your most pressing challenges.

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