Digital transformation is about much more than technology – it is about fundamentally rethinking the relationship between service providers and their customers.
Around the world, commercial organisations are using digital technologies to improve customer interactions. Customers are also citizens, and their expectations are universal. As a result, public sector agencies find themselves under pressure to offer similar experiences.
Transformation in the public sector can benefit individuals or entire communities, enabling data-driven decision-making and the creation of personalised services that match specific needs. It speeds up service delivery while often reducing its cost.
For agencies, transformation also makes services more efficient. It frees up precious human resources from mundane and repetitive tasks, allowing customer service staff to take the time necessary to understand citizens’ needs and resolve complex issues. Automating administrative processes can release skilled staff to focus on higher-value tasks such as face-to-face engagement.
These changes improve staff satisfaction and boost retention rates, and happier staff are one of the keys to delivering better experiences for users.
But while the need for transformation in the public sector is pressing, making it happen can prove challenging, thanks to the challenges of budget, skills, and the resistance that can come when changing entrenched processes.
A fresh approach is needed to digital transformation in the public sector that overcomes these challenges while quickly delivering exceptional outcomes for citizens.
A human-centred approach
The specialist human-centric digital transformation services company MTX was founded with the purpose of using digital technology to improve the lives of citizens around the world, and has created a digital transformation methodology that delivers the best possible outcomes for citizens and staff alike.
MTX’s approach to digital transformation begins by understanding the real needs of citizens. It uses human-centred design principles that consider what a person is trying to do, and then designs a service that will help them achieve their desired outcome quickly and easily.
This differs from transformation programs that are driven by agency-centric needs, such as reducing costs or satisfying other internal requirements. It means that efforts are more efficiently focused and deliver real outcomes that meet both the needs of citizens and the agency.
For example, if the agency’s goal is to create a new service that makes data more accessible to citizens, the traditional approach would be to start by building a data analytics platform, with consideration of how a person would use the platform left to the end of the design process. Taking this approach can create hard-to-use services that do not meet people’s needs and face a high risk of rejection. MTX’s approach however starts with thinking about user accessibility before tackling the data platform.
This citizen-centric, outcomes-focussed approach has seen MTX become a trusted digital transformation partner for public sector agencies across North America, and increasingly here in Australia supported by its rapidly growing local team. By considering the needs of citizens first, MTX can design solutions that make these needs the priority and then find ways to deliver them in ways that also meet the strategic and operational requirements of the agency.
Mapping a vision for outcomes
MTX’s process of engagement helps agencies define and articulate their vision in a way that builds engagement from key stakeholders, including the staff who will deliver the new services and the citizens who will use them. By helping agencies to define their purpose and objectives, MTX ensures transformation is more than just a project but becomes a path to service delivery that puts citizen outcomes at the heart of the change.
Global reach and experience combined with local expertise enables MTX to call on skilled staff from across its global network to develop and deploy the latest in cloud, digital, and data technology. MTX identifies gaps in the agency’s processes, systems, and skillsets, and works to fill them, leaving behind a stronger capability to respond to ongoing change. Thanks to MTX’s commitment to knowledge sharing and capturing learnings, it can deliver transformation quickly, with a high degree of technical competency, and with reduced costs and risk when compared to typical delivery programs.
The costs and benefits of all options and stages in the transformation process are also defined upfront, enabling the creation of timelines and milestones that ensure work stays on track and delivers expected value. This means MTX can bring accountability and discipline that prioritises outcomes against defined success criteria, while also demonstrating incremental success throughout the project’s timeline.
This approach helps define purpose and objectives, identifies and fills gaps in processes, systems, and skillsets, and clarifies the costs and benefits to inform the business case. All aspects of the project plan are made visible, ensuring transparency and providing guidelines that can be used to assess the myriad decisions that arise. This ensures projects meet the needs of citizens while staying in lockstep with the overall strategy of the agency.
A hybrid approach for discipline and delivery
Another advantage of MTX’s extensive history of engagement with public sector agencies is its understanding of best practice development and delivery methods.
Many commercial transformation projects rely on the agile development methodology, which sets aside traditional requirements gathering exercises, documentation, and large-scale projects in favour of short development cycles whose outcomes are continuously tested and measured. While agile can deliver rapid results, it is not always suited to public sector projects, as it is harder to track progress against goals, outputs can be fragmented, and projects might continue indefinitely. Agile methods also tend to produce limited documentation and can play havoc with resource planning.
A key element of MTX’s approach is the use of a hybrid project development methodology. Projects are scoped against milestones that resemble those of traditional projects but are delivered using agile practices such as short-term development ‘sprints’ with ongoing testing and feedback.
This approach ensures spending of public money remains on track and the project is properly, while still delivering ongoing benefits for users.
This approach has proven helpful for delivering digital transformation for public sector agencies that need to achieve visible leaps forward in service quality quickly, while work continues on larger structural changes in the background.
By putting the needs of citizens first and promoting transparency and knowledge sharing, MTX empowers public sector agencies to deliver the best possible outcomes. And through its collaborative vision mapping and hybrid agile methodologies, MTX can deploy solutions rapidly and in a way that demonstrates milestone-based success.
This is how MTX has helped public sector clients quickly design and deliver low-risk digital transformations that create better experiences with high adoption rates.
The result is a virtuous circle, where the learnings from each project ensure the success of future projects, and where the outcome is always a better service for the citizen.
Find out more about MTX Group and how their team continue to support a human-centric approach to digital transformation and enable better outcomes for Australian government agencies and citizens. Contact MTX: info.apac@mtxb2b.com
