Head of IT at Hampshire County Council on adapting employees to the Digital Age

The way we all work is being disrupted by technological change now more than ever before. This poses a challenge for all public sector organisations to ensure that their diverse employees with varied skill sets and digital literacy are able to benefit from new technical capabilities.

Hampshire County Council’s Head of IT, Simon Williams, is deeply aware of this reality. To stay ahead of the propulsion of the new Digital Age, Williams’ IT strategy advances the importance of technological inclusion and a culture of cross-organisational digital literacy and grassroots productivity gains. 

From the office to Office 365

Hampshire’s shift away from a thin, to a fat client desktop seven years ago, sparked a transformation chain reaction for end user compute, Williams told us. 

The County’s rural landscape lacked the connectivity they needed to work on site, and mounting financial pressure meant that returning to a fixed terminal to input case notes was no longer feasible. In response to these constraints, Williams led his first major transformation programme for the County, aiming to make frontline staff more productive through greater mobility.

The Pandemic, realised unforeseen benefits of this transition, liberating Hampshire’s employees from the office and forming the basis of its current hybrid working model, that Williams highlighted has “improved the wellbeing of its workforce, increased productivity and established work-life balance”. 

The wholesale change in the end user compute offer is now the foundation of Williams’ mission to drive the digital literacy of its workforce. 

Purpose-driven technology adoption

Williams highlighted that this change spoke to his broader philosophy that IT function should only perform activities that involve deep technical expertise whilst building the digital confidence and resilience of the rest of Hampshire’s workforce. Currently, Williams’ is achieving this through encouraging self-help and inspiring decentralised uptake of technologies such as Microsoft’s Power Platform and Co-Pilot. 

The flexibility, speed and ease of use of Power Platform has added significant value to Hampshire County Council, from supporting desk booking apps and efficient workflow to business-critical services such as the Council’s Risk Management Framework, Williams told us. “Rather than relying on the IT function to maximise process optimisation, that power is now in the hands of our employees' unique service areas.”

He added that Power Apps in particular have allowed teams to create small apps that meet their unique business needs in a more efficient way and without reliance on the IT function, which would otherwise create inefficiencies. 

“We’ve launched a pilot for Microsoft 365 Co-Pilot which, by acting like a personal assistant for our employees, will augment their most mundane administrative tasks and release the full force of their productive potential for the residents of Hampshire.”

In addition to quick productivity gains, the wider organisation has benefited from a rise in digital literacy as personnel outside of the IT department have been able to safely experiment with new tools, such as GenAI.

As Williams summarises, “Gartner predicts that the real productivity gains of AI aren’t set to arrive until about 2-5 years from now and financial constraints don’t leave room for chasing the latest tech trends for the sake of it – innovation must be purposeful. Just as thirty years ago we spoke about the importance of computer literacy, we should be expecting digital literacy from all employees because we can’t operate in a digital world without it.” 

In adopting these user-friendly GenAI tools, widely dispersed frontline workers are able to learn through action, realise the benefits these technologies bring to their everyday work life and drive Hampshire's overarching operational efficiency. 

Technological enablement through clear communication

“It’s the responsibility of the communicator to be understood,” says Williams. In aiming for the IT function to make technology less opaque for its organisation, Hampshire has sought to provide quality, professional and “listened to” advice across the organisation’s directorates, or as Williams calls it “being a trusted advisor”.

Taking the approach that IT should only offer support to challenges requiring deep, technical expertise, Williams’ empowerment approach has meant redirecting the IT service desk away from ‘How do I’ questions towards solving IT bugs and fixes. 

In the meantime, the IT team works closely with directorates to provide the expert support needed to direct technology towards fulfilling the strategic ambitions of Hampshire's directorates.

The potential for AI in local councils

The ancient wisdom still stands that AI is only as good as its data input. Whilst Williams expressed the clear benefits for the workforce to adopt Microsoft GenAI tools, he remains cautious of unbounded service providers.

For other local authorities, Williams recommends considering the cybersecurity risk around their data both in terms of storage and access. Having a governance framework that reflects the opportunities as well as the risks of AI will help councils tread the fine line between empowerment, governance and control. 

On ChatGPT and other AI tools, Williams reflected that, “The end user will always choose the tool that makes their job easier, but they won’t necessarily have the knowledge or expertise to understand what the risks are associated with a particular tool. Giving an AI tool access to your calendar and inbox that processes data input in a country without GDPR equivalency will get you in a spot of bother.” 

Bringing employees on the digital transformation journey

Establishing a culture of innovation, digital literacy, and responsible technology use is no easy task, but such resilience is necessary in an environment of disruptive technologies and large-scale changes to workplaces.

One way of subverting the idea that such technological disruption necessitates displacement is disseminating secure GenAI technologies across the organisation to create grassroots enablement. This approach is dually effective in freeing up the IT function to focus on maintaining guardrails requiring deep technical expertise and collaborating on top-down strategic developments with directorates.