What the post-Brexit landscape will mean for the public sector will play out in a variety of ways in the coming weeks and months, but we’re already hearing of some interesting changes via our local and central government community.
Our conversations with CIOs and technology firms suggest that software development (DevOps) activities are starting to return to UK shores in a meaningful way.
Historically that development would take place in places like India, Portugal, Poland or the Ukraine, but the new trend is seeing them move it back to the UK or the data and platforms being kept in UK clouds with developers coming in remotely.
You’re probably more familiar with the concept of reshoring in the manufacturing sector, where companies bring physical production back to their own shores to simplify supply chains and unlock social and environmental benefits.
In the world of software developers,that reshoring yields benefits like easier communication with developers and the chance to develop more collaborative processes. And certainly one of the immediate post-Brexit drivers of the trend is simplicity - software companies want to avoid dealing with more complex taxation, legislative and administrative issues.
So why does this matter to digital leaders in the public sector? If software is being developed closer to home, we could see more geographically and culturally relevant solutions and relationships emerge.
Whereas government CIOs may have previously looked to the usual international tech partners, there are now more opportunities to work with UK software developers.
At GovX Digital we’ve already explored the idea of the Government's growing role as a start-up accelerator, supporting and investing in UK-based GovTech companies. And it’s clear that a more collaborative ecosystem should benefit both sides of the buyer-vendor relationship.
For tech firms operating or looking to enter the UK public sector market, there is a commercial opportunity to develop more targeted approaches as CIOs start to see them as the norm.
The question of cultural and legislative fit is worth considering on a broader level in the post-European public sector. International learning and partnerships benefit from foundations built on cultural and legislative similarities, which is why the UK has historically looked to places like Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
We’ll likely see more of this in public sector transformation - not through any Commonwealth-driven nostalgia, but because there is more shared ground than with our former European partners through the development of similar legal and public service models in health, local government, education and central government.
Overall these are interesting early signals of where things might go in public sector transformation. We’d urge public sector leaders to constantly evaluate and reassess partnerships and keep their minds open to new possibilities in this fast-moving space.
David Wilde
