Technology isn't always the hard part. What we heard at DigiGov and HETT

Attending the events back-to-back meant I heard different sides of many of the same conversations.

There’s no shortage of ambition. At both events, people were looking at how technology could improve services, help teams work differently and solve some very real challenges.

But much of what I heard was about what it takes to turn that ambition into delivery.

DigiGov: capacity was slowing teams down

At DigiGov, I spoke to delivery teams where gaps in capacity or specialist skills were slowing them down. One team needed test leads and had been trying to recruit for two years without success. They were now looking at other ways to bring that expertise into the team.

It's not an isolated problem. The Government's Blueprint for Modern Digital Government identifies skills shortages as one of the barriers to digital reform and talks about making better use of external suppliers where specialist capability is needed.

We see the same thing with some of our existing public sector clients. Sometimes the challenge isn't knowing what needs to be done - it's having the right people available to keep it moving.

HETT: building confidence in digital health

At HETT, I heard more about confidence in the technology being introduced. I spoke to NHS teams buying and deploying products, as well as companies developing and supplying them with digital health technology.

I had versions of the same conversation with a CSO and a CCIO at two different NHS trusts. They wanted to understand exactly what they were buying and have confidence in the technology before introducing it into their organisations.

Suppliers were looking at the same question from the other side: what do we need to demonstrate to give NHS buyers that confidence?

That need for evidence is already built into NHS procurement. The Digital Technology Assessment Criteria (DTAC) provides a baseline for assessing digital technologies across clinical safety, data protection, technical security, interoperability, usability and accessibility.

Getting from ambition to delivery

Technology understandably gets a lot of attention at events like DigiGov and HETT. But many of the conversations I had weren't really about the technology itself.

They were about the practicalities of making it work - having the right people available, knowing what you're buying and having enough evidence to move forward with confidence.

Perhaps that's the thing that stayed with me most from both events. The ambition is there. The challenge is creating the conditions to turn it into delivery.