Next generation digital strategy
Chief Digital Advisor to the Government,
Stephen Brennan talks to Owen McQuade about how Irish citizens and SMEs are entering a new digital world that is transforming their lives and businesses and how government is meeting the digital challenge.
Stephen Brennan has an interesting role travelling the length and breadth of Ireland investigating how citizens, small businesses and communities are engaging with government in the fast emerging digital world. “How we do things day-to-day is fundamentally changing because of the digital devices we now carry with us,” observes the chief digital advisor.
This change is having a major impact on how governments are engaging with citizens. “Government is facing an avalanche of change.”
Being a trained physicist Brennan unpicks each of the strands of this digital change in society: “How we communicate and connect with each other, how we discover things of interest, how we produce content and how we figure out how to do things.” A simple example he gives is on the weekly journey with his family to their home in Cavan. Stopping for coffee is no longer a chance occurrence: “My teenage kids in the back of the car select the best reviewed place for coffee. We then drive directly to the coffee shop and if the experience is good we will in turn leave a good review.”
Brennan is quick to add that it is not just young people who are pioneering this new digital world. There is a significant demographic group over 50 that is becoming more and more digitally active. He recalls a recent train journey with almost everyone in the carriage using their phone to do something, across all age groups. In addition, more and more people are making a living that is separate from their day job with more than one in ten citizens earning a separate income online.
“The rate of change is accelerating if anything. The next billion online consumers will never experience the Internet on a computer. They will only ever experience it on a mobile device,”
he observes.
There are two aspects to this mobile digital world: the digital device and the connectivity that empowers that device to connect users and content. Mobile Internet is changing the way all of us find, trust, engage and consume services,” explains Brennan.
Much is made of young people’s preference for all things digital but Brennan has a wider perspective: “One thing we have learned from engaging older people throughout Ireland in terms of digital literacy is just how capable people are, supported by their family, friends and neighbours.” This is reinforced by another personal example of how his elderly mother has ventured into the digital world, with her new smart phone and tablet. Initially she didn’t use either until it was realised it was more a dexterity issue rather than lack of understanding. The purchase of a simple stylus has enabled his mother to use both devices and “the world has opened up for her.” He highlights a similar experience with the farming community. A farming organisation has developed mobile phone apps with very large tiles to facilitate easy access to various elements of the service in all conditions.
This digital revolution that is unfolding has huge challenges for government, and at a very profound level: “Engagement with citizens is now more of a conversation and our customers expect more and more of us.” He believes that digital will significantly shift the way government interacts with its citizens.
SMEs
A key part of the Chief Digital Advisor’s role is to advise government in how to engage digitally with small businesses and to develop a digital capability within these small companies. Again Brennan illustrates the issue with a personal example. He was sitting on his tractor in Cavan one Saturday afternoon when it broke down. By googling “tractor parts Cavan” he was able to locate four pages of results and found only one company in Cavan. With most of the results in neighbouring counties he was struck that several local companies were not trading online. Talking to many SMEs who don’t trade online Brennan found that they don’t see the online customers they are missing out on. This led to the development of the Trading Online Voucher Scheme to help get small businesses connecting with customers via digital channels. The scheme provides a small grant of up to €2,500 to help with setup costs plus access to very important training, “it is more about building capability and giving the businesses some inspiration and impetus to get online.” The scheme has helped over 2,000 small Irish companies transform themselves by trading online to date. Brennan sees this trend accelerating as connectivity improves and the sophistication of users increases right across the country.
Next generation digital strategy
At the moment Brennan and his colleagues are looking across government to gauge the readiness and appetite to take the next step with the National Digital Strategy. The first strategy was published in 2013 and rather than trying to take an overall broad-brush approach it selected “slices” and made progress on those. “That proved to be the correct approach back then and those initiatives have been very successful. The question now is, are we ready to take the next step, with an over-arching vision and look at how a digital strategy would encompass all aspects of government services rather than slices. That is the choice we are considering now,” he explains.
Brennan observes that unlike many countries a ‘digital first’ approach is not yet the default for all government services.
He explains that there are four ‘Cs’ that drive his thinking around any digital strategy: connectivity, content, capability and community. Elements of connectivity within a national strategy includes the National Broadband Plan that is seeking to create quality connectivity nationally. Content is the types of services provided by government and the private sector. Capability is the ability of users to be able to use the services and to be able to discover and produce content and community is how citizens connect and influence each other. “Collectively citizens and government can inform and create types of services that are customised for their location or neighbourhood.”
The next digital strategy will need to take a different approach as more and more citizens and organisations choose digital channels. “For many of us in the public sector to date, digital has been about efficiency and driving down costs. I would like to see that rebalanced and to focus on transformation and innovation. Creating a dialogue with our users could really drive forward digital government services to a whole new level,” he says.
Brennan sees the move from information giving to focusing on transactions with customers: “For government a lot of the focus goes on the provision of services and their accessibility and ease of use etc. That’s important but more and more of our citizens have preferences for engagement with intelligent government services that are connected together and minimise the administrative input required in order to maximise the utility of the services for the citizen,” he continues.
Like many observers of technology trends he notes rising citizen expectations. “Citizens are getting more and more expert and they now expect to be part of the conversations around the design and deployment of the services. For those delivering services to the citizen, the world has changed, changed utterly,” he concludes.
Profile: Stephen Brennan
Dr Stephen Brennan is Chief Digital Advisor to the Irish Government. He is the author of Ireland’s National Digital Strategy. Dublin born he studied physics at Trinity College Dublin where he became a lecturer. He left to work in a start-up software company Iona Technologies. That experience acted as a “springboard” to his involvement with the Digital Hub and led to “a passion in the application of digital technology and data analytics to drive innovation and solve big challenges.”
Stephen is a member of the Irish Governments retail forum and the EU commission member states board on digital entrepreneurship.
