What does 2023 hold for the Public Sector?

Tech Challenges and Opportunities on the Horizon for 2023

2022 - A year of extremes

2022 was a year of extreme complexity. Continuing post-pandemic and Brexit fallout, geo-political issues, cost of living rises, inflationary pressures, and supply chain shortages have accompanied growing cybersecurity and data security threats. Ransomware set records again, while staff retention became even more challenging. As we look forward to the start of a new year, the future inevitably feels closer. So what trends are on the horizon for 2023 and what issues will the public sector be grappling with next year?

?Platform and application modernisation

In the coming year, moving suitable workloads and applications to the cloud and undergoing digital transformation will continue to be mission-critical for organisations seeking to stay agile and competitive. As organisations adopt more hybrid working practices, environment modernisation will continue to be a priority. A key challenge for many is dealing with legacy platforms and applications and their upgrading or replacement.

Outsourcing services

Staff attrition will continue to be challenging due to hybrid and remote working opportunities. These allow employees to work for organisations that are not local to where they live. While this gives employees more choices, it means the public sector must work harder to recruit and retain staff as they are now in competition with more employers. Additionally, unprecedented cost-of-living rises are forcing employees to demand higher wages, which often can’t be met by the public sector. These challenges are already prompting organisations to outsource more services to third parties as they struggle to retain staff.

Renewed focus on what will deliver the best outcomes

Technology adoption will inevitably slow as the pent-up demand caused by the pandemic abates and austerity measures start to bite. Under budget constraints, organisations will be looking to implement only essential projects that deliver a clear return on investment and value for money.

Zero Trust Approach to Cyber Security

Cyber and information security will remain a priority, with organisations looking to adopt a zero-trust approach to system and data security. This isn’t easy and will inevitably require help from third parties. In particular, the public sector must ensure that they are running supported systems and software to minimise system and data security breaches. They will also need good threat intelligence, monitoring, and alert detection solutions, including effective endpoint device security, to counter the intensive cyber-attack threat landscape.

?Getting more from your data ?

For many organisations, the year ahead will be about getting more insight from the data they hold, to improve their decision-making capabilities. Many organisations still have large amounts of valuable data locked in inaccessible siloed locations. New Microsoft technologies and services in Azure can help by providing solutions that can quickly and easily extract, transform, load, and publish data, providing new business intelligence insights to allow for better decision-making. These technologies include but are not limited to, SQL in Azure, Azure Data Factory, Azure Databricks, Azure Data Lake, Azure Synapse, and Power BI. These technologies can also enhance existing DevOps and DataOps practices, something many organisations are keen to undertake. Those that have already made that journey will be looking to implement AI capabilities, including predictive analytics and cognitive services.

?Sharing systems and services

Here at Northdoor, throughout 2022, we have been successfully providing bespoke and innovative data analytics and business intelligence consultancy to the NHS. One example is Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust (MTW) which wanted to modernise its business intelligence (BI) reporting capability. The key objectives of this project were to improve time to insight; standardise and automate report generation; allow for BI self-service, and to improve data security. In addition, the Trust needed to share this new analytics BI platform with local NHS partner organisations to reduce costs. MTW commissioned Northdoor to design and implement a shared Microsoft Power BI P1 Premium environment and to design and develop a range of near-real-time dynamic reports and dashboards. These allow the MTW BI team to deliver faster, more accurate insights to support the management of hospital services. They also provide assurance around the quality and safety of patient services, ultimately resulting in a better patient experience. Through a shorter time to insight, clinicians, administrative staff, and senior managers can understand changing demand patterns faster than before, helping them enhance patient services.

This is just one example where multiple organisations utilising an enterprise-level shared service delivers significant benefits while reducing the overall service cost. This type of solution will be key to the NHS and wider public sector during 2023 when the focus will be on cost reduction whilst maintaining high standards of service delivery.

Richard Hartill is Public Sector Client Manager at Northdoor plc.

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