The Mobile Broadband Group

Labour Party’s Digital Government Review

Input from the Mobile Broadband Group

12th June 2014

Labour Party’s Digital Government Review

Input from the Mobile Broadband Group

The Mobile Broadband Group (MBG) is the group through which the UK’s mobile network operators (EE, Telefonica UK [O2], Three and Vodafone) work on a broad range of public policy and regulatory issues. As such, we welcome the opportunity to contribute to the Labour Party’s Digital Government Review.

Introduction

A confluence of circumstances in recent years has presented the UK’s government with a ‘once in a generation’, opportunity to transform the delivery and efficiency of public services through greater use of technology, particularly mobile technology:

  1. Significant, ongoing investment in mobile infrastructure by the UK’s network operators
  1. Rapid adoption of smart phones, tablets and the mobile Internet by the UK public
  1. Decisions by policy makers to reduce public deficits and debt, while trying at the same time meeting public expectations of better public services

These events provide an exceptionally fertile context within which to effect change in ‘Digital Government’.

There are already good examples of the successful implementations of mobile solutions, delivering efficiency gains and improved services and that the public sector is thinking seriously about how to make further improvements.

Nevertheless, there are still significant barriers to further adoption that need addressing if the full potential for transformation, particular as a means of extending participation for hard to reach communities and groups, are to be realised:

  1. Governments’ poor record for delivering IT projects on time and on budget
  1. Skill shortages
  1. Attitudes to flexible working
  1. Mobile optimisation
  1. Concerns about security

Recommendations

  1. Capture best practice to improve performance on IT projects

It is apparent from the focus on digital government around the world that there are successful projects being established. For example, in the UK, the majority of tax returns and car tax renewals are now done online. It seems to be the case, though, that there are insufficient resources being devoted to capturing, evaluating and disseminating information about these positive outcomes.

The government should devote more resources to capturing this vital information, with a view to improving outcomes from IT procurement projects. A future Government should note that digital Government can also be extended piecemeal, through the gradual rollout of code, apps and extension of service, it does not have to depend on big bang rollouts which often are costly and do not work as anticipated. There is much that Government can learn from how leading digital business and communication companies roll out digital services.

  1. Develop the digital skills base

The Government must continue to place emphasis on developing the UK’s digital skill base, where there remains a shortage of appropriate skills. It can leverage the education, public and private sector to deliver more education and training.

We would hope that a future Labour government would take forward the work of Go ON, and others, in looking at how to stimulate both the supply side and demand side of online use. As Go ON has shown, the average online household saves over £400 a year as compared to a house hold that is not online.

There must also be continued efforts to get everyone on-line (although, it is worth noting from Ofcom’s recent survey that the proportion of over 65s now online has risen 9 percentage points to 42% in 2013/14, largely driven by greater use of tablets)[1].

Digital by default should continue to be a prime driver of the uptake of digitised services, however sufficient resource to enable users to be taught how to access digital services, must be built into the rollout of new digital services if they are to be effective and not alienate or exclude more vulnerable members of society.

  1. More emphasis on productivity growth in the public sector and more flexible working practices

The private sector has strong commercial incentives to be more productive. With the public sector accounting for a significant proportion of GDP, there is much to be gained from the public sector being more productive too.

In order to accelerate improvements, the public sector will have to attract a strong cadre of digitally skilled employees to act as catalysts to change. In addition to financial incentives, this cohort will demand a flexible, mobile work-style that is less hierarchical than today’s public sector.

There is growing evidence that a more flexible workforce can be more productive, particularly among younger members of the workforce, who want to work on the move.

Digital Government must about both serving the public better and working more cost effectively and productively.

  1. Mobile optimisation

The public sector must take advantage of ever improving mobile networks, devices and applications to work more productively and make services available to the public on the basis of ‘anytime, anywhere’. All public facing service web-sites should be mobile optimised.

Currently few Public service or Governmental sites are optimised for mobile, particularly those which generate the most traffic (such as Job Centre Plus, the NHS). There are significant productivity and other time and cost saving advantages from enabling users to access services on the move or through a mobile device, where that is the users only or primary means of accessing digital services. Moreover if the Government wants to encourage digitisation of other services, it must demonstrate leadership, and this includes in optimising mobile access to digital services.

  1. Security concerns

The public wants to be confident that our persons and our national infrastructure is protected from attack. At the same time, people do not want to be subjected to unwarranted surveillance. The Government will have to work towards the goal of providing this assurance.

Background

  1. Ongoing investment in mobile infrastructure

Since the launch of mobile cellular services in the UK in 1985, the UK’s mobile operators have invested £billions in network coverage and capacity, at times accounting for around 3% of all fixed capital investment in the UK in a given year. This investment has greatly enhanced the productivity and competitiveness of the UK economy. As of 2013, Ofcom has reported that second (2G) and third generation (3G) mobile coverage is as follows:

Mobile coverage in the UK[2]
2G* / 3G*
Premises / 94.1% / 79.7%
Geographic / 62.4% / 21.0%
Roads - A&B / 77.0% / 35.0%
Motorway / 99.0% / 76.0%

*signal from all operators

The mobile operators’ current focus is on the build-out of fourth generation (4G) mobile coverage.

In a report commissioned by EE, carried out by Capital Economics (CE) and published in April 2012[3], CE estimated that the mobile operators will spend around £5.5 billion on upgrading networks to 4G. The public announcements already made by the operators about future investment plans would appear to validate this number. As Ofcom points out in its 2013 Infrastructure Report:

“Under the terms of its licence, O2 is required to roll out 4G indoor coverage to 98% of the UK population by 2017 and at least 95% in each individual nation. We expect that other mobile operators will seek to match O2’s indoor coverage commitment, meaning the large majority of consumers will be able to access 4G services in their home. Vodafone has said it intends to achieve similar levels of coverage by 2015 and EE has declared that it will achieve 98% premises coverage by the end of 2014. Three has plans to cover 98% of population by end of 2015.”

Capital Economics states that ‘mobile operators will have the potential to provide internet connectivity on a par with fibre optic broadband’ and that, while the benefits will take some time to feed through, ‘the eventual boost from 4G to national GDP will be in the order of ½ a percent’.

It is of course very important that the Government aspires to ensure that the public sector will benefit from this critical infrastructure investment in mobility as much the private sector will.

  1. Rapid adoption of smart phones, tablets and mobile infrastructure

It is very widely known that adoption of mobile is now almost universal, with around 82 million subscriptions in the UK. The Ofcom Infrastructure Report 2013 describes the situation thus:

“Use of mobile services is widespread among consumers; consumer research in Q1 2013 found that 94% of UK adults used a mobile phone and 53% of UK adults accessed internet services on their mobile phone.

Furthermore, 15% of homes are mobile-only for telephony. There has been increasing take up of smartphones; smartphone sales made up almost three-quarters (74%) of handset sales in Q1 2013, when 51% of all UK adults owned a smartphone.

Among mobile internet users take-up is even higher, with 96% of users owning a smartphone. Household take-up of tablet computers (such as an Apple iPad or Google Nexus) has undergone an even sharper rise, more than doubling over the past year, rising from 11% in Q1 2012, to 24% in Q1 2013.”

Increasingly members of the public expect to be able to access goods and services through a mobile Internet portal or App. This is perhaps well illustrated by the growth in the numbers of people now accessing Facebook from a mobile, accounting for 556m active daily users, 73% of the total.

Similarly, on e-Bay, for the year ending December 2012, its mobile commerce volume totalled $13 billion in 2012, up more than 120 percent from the prior year while mobile payment volume for PayPal totalled $14 billion, up more than 250 percent from the prior year.

Similar trends are emerging in mobile banking and other branches of e-commerce. People are becoming ever more used to, and thus expectant of, mobile internet on the move.

This has been brought about through a combination of more powerful devices and more extensive and powerful mobile networks. Through the use of mobile optimised web-sites and Apps, providers have also been able to make the provision of services on mobile more intuitive and accessible.

When designing public services for delivery on mobile, providers must always take a fresh look at how the user experience can be optimised on a smart phone or tablet.

  1. Deficit reduction following the global financial crisis

The necessity for those nations that suffered from the financial crisis to reduce deficits and national debt provides the exceptional context for driving through transformational change in public services delivery, reducing costs and improving effectiveness, in the face of a naturally cautious and risk-averse procurement environment in the public sector.

It should be noted, also, that the IT sector in general and the mobile sector in particular is a key growth segment and contributes considerably to the exchequer.

Since 2000, the mobile operators have paid £25bn in spectrum auction fees, in addition to approximately £50m in annual licence fees (which are proposed to rise considerably).

The industry employs 35,000 people directly and supports a further 21,000 in the supply chain and generates over £4billion of gross value added[4].

The mobile industry is not only a growth industry in its own right and but is also growth generating for other sectors in the economy.

Economic policy that enables the sector to flourish will thus have beneficial knock-on effects in the wider economy, with a concomitant beneficial effect on exchequer receipts.

Mobile Government in practice

Many – perhaps most – Governments around the world are looking at

a)How to engage with their citizenry better by providing mobile access to public services

b)How to make the public sector workforce more productive and services more cost effective by introducing a mobile ‘workstyle’

Only a few examples are set out here for illustration. In assessing possibilities and priorities for ‘mobilisation’, it is important to note:

  • The private sector is increasingly offering a mobile workstyle (including Bring Your Own Device – BYOD). Not only can this be more productive, employees often prefer it. If the public sector is going to compete in the labour market and attract the calibre and skills that they require, the public sector will have to do the same.
  • Cost savings from ‘mobilisation’ can occur across a broad range of costs such as substitution of desktop hardware, reduction in office space and other facilities, reduction in carbon footprint (power use)
  • Productivity gains can be derived from more data capture on the front line, reducing data input error, duplication and bureaucracy (e.g. social worker case loads)
  • Public/private partnerships are another source of innovation and investment (for example the GSM Association’s project on Identity Assurance has the potential to facilitate a number of public services to be delivered more efficiently and securely[5].)

Some examples of mobile government in practice

  • Reducing ‘did not attends’ (DNA) in the NHS. Text messaging is now employed in some NHS Trusts to send appointment reminders, with a view to reducing the number of those missing appointments and the consequent waste of time and resources. (e.g. In Portsmouth NHS Trust the reduction in DNA has created 2,281 additional first appointments, 8,310 follow up & 10,657 overall which is 2.5% of the overall outpatient appointments in one year)[6]
  • California Department of Rehabilitation – 25 mobile applications deployed to 2,000 field officers monitoring clients on parole, saving $10million over 3 years.[7]
  • Co-ordinating efforts to get young people into employment and/or training

Reading Borough Council has developed an App to assit young people navigate the 190 schemes available to them to assist them finding training and employment. With assistance from a mobile operator, and getting young people involved in the project, RBC were able to develop a service that the client base really valued and used, through the technology platform of choice. RBC has seen the value of using technology as a driver for process change. Similar approaches will be applied in other segments, such as adult social care.

  • Worker empowerment at South London and Maudsley NHS foundation Trust (SLaM)

SLaM has been able to use technology to improve patient recovery rates and general wellbeing, while at the same time reducing pressure on hospital capacity.

SLaM has extended informed patient treatment out into the community, with easy to use mobile technology, with secure end to end delivery. Their investment in technology has removed the need for many care providers to have an office base, by capturing patient data once, during on of 58,000 home visits. Physical estate has been reduced by 30% while upping the quality of care.

  • Data gathering for Network Rail

Network Rail is building up a complete and accurate asset register for its entire infrastructure and equipping its staff with the skills and technology to record and maintain that information. Up to 13,000 track workers are being equipped with [ruggedized] iphones or ipads with access to tutorials, manuals and guides. Track side workers are also using the camera to take GPS location stamped photos and share them with engineering colleagues for efficient and timely decision making. A connected workforce is more productive. The mobile equipment is seen as becoming indispensable, as crucial as ‘hard hats and hi-viz jackets.’

It is apparent from the focus on digital government around the world that there are successful projects being established. It seems to be the case, though, that there are insufficient resources being devoted to capturing, evaluating and disseminating information about these positive outcomes.

Overcoming barriers

On a positive note, the UK is deemed to rank 7th of 140 countries in terms of its agility and readiness to adopt technology to enhance the productivity of its industries[8]. There is also a generally positive attitude and appetite for more flexible working practices, particularly among younger workers.

Nevertheless, there remain some important barriers to innovation and to developing a more mobile and productive workforce:

-Concerns among managers about working away from the office, out of sight (and also concerns among employees about always being contactable)

-Concerns about data security on mobile device

-Cost of equipping workforce

-Shortage of appropriate skills in the workforce (it is estimated that the economy is likely to require as a minimum 745,000 additional workers with digital skills in the next 5 years[9]

None of these problems are insuperable. In many cases it is a misconception that the cost of equipping the mobile workforce is prohibitive. Investment payback can be cash flow positive in a very short time, particularly when employees self-supply the mobile hardware (BYOD), and significant savings can be made on hardware, office facilities and travel. Forward thinking organisations are developing modern social contracts with their workforce, which allows them to be more flexible and responsive, without being ‘always on’. The same goes for security on remote devices, with secure VPNs and private Cloud services. In many ways, devices can be more secure than paper being taken out of the workplace, in that they can be remotely wiped and disabled (e.g. a social worker’s case notes).

There is undoubtedly a shortage of appropriate digital skills in the workplace. Government, the private sector and the education sector must work together to remedy this issue. A productive and skilful workforce will be a source of comparative advantage for the UK, as will the efficient and effective delivery of public services.

The Call for evidence seeks specific views on the following questions, in respect to a culture change and skills refresh at all layers of Government:

  1. How would you define the culture of Digital Government? What skills do the employees, organisation, and partners of a Digital Government require? How do those skill requirements vary across the public sector?

The public sector appears to be taking Digital Government extremely seriously. The Digital Government strategy, headed by the Cabinet Office and involving all government departments is a major undertaking.

When considering the ‘future of work’, though, a broad consensus exists on a number of developing trends. The future workforce will:

- Draw talent from an increasingly globalised labour pool

-Be less hierarchical and organisations flatter

- More flexible (both organisationally and geographically)