Organizations undergo digital transformation for a variety of reasons, including maximizing insights derived from data, streamlining operations, and adjusting workflows for hybrid work.

There’s no doubting the benefits. But there are potential traps along the road that businesses must also avoid, not least in the form of cyber security risks. 

Typical risks may arise from failing to provide adequate resources to match a project’s ambition, lacking proficiency to handle a multi-cloud setup, and failing to align with security frameworks. These ‘bear traps’ can be more prevalent if digital transformation is rushed, and organizations speeding up their efforts must be double vigilant because, with haste, comes a lack of focus. 

Prioritizing security, not project outcomes

Security must be the primary concern for any organization undergoing digital transformation, says Rick Hemsley, UK&I government and public sector cyber security lead at EY. That’s the bottom line. Organizations need to “integrate security considerations into every aspect of the development of new systems, processes, and products,” and those that fail to do so “will only be able to take a reactive, whack-a-mole approach to cyber security, instead of adopting a proactive mindset”.

There’s more to avoiding traps than putting security at the heart of digital transformation, though. Organizations need to learn to think differently about security too, says Frank Kim, SANS Institute fellow, cloud curriculum lead, and CISO-in-residence at YL Ventures. “A key metric in the past would have been the mean time to failure, or for something bad to happen. 

“But in the modern world, we look at the mean time to recover,” he tells ITPro. “We don’t think about the mean time to failure because we are expected to fail on a regular basis, so recovery is more important.” 

This approach resonates with a new attitude towards risk, where risk can’t be eliminated entirely, but needs to be understood and managed effectively. 

Speeding up processes heightens risk level

Organizations that decide to speed up digital transformation efforts put themselves at greater risk of leaving cyber security gaps waiting to be exploited, says David Sarginson, head of software development at digital transformation consultancy Opencast. “More change means more risk,” Sarginson explains. “The more change you introduce at any time increases complexity, and therefore the chances of unanticipated consequences.”

Further complications arise from organizations having a multi-cloud setup, Kim adds, and staff needs to be familiar with the nuances of different cloud setups, he says. “Your security team must be knowledgeable in a multi-cloud environment in each of these areas including the pitfalls, the configurations, and the mistakes that could be made. Ideally, architect from the start what those best practices are into your infrastructure.” 

When process speeds are accelerated, there’s less time to get to grips with the nuances, and more opportunity for gaps in security to manifest because security likely won’t be baked in at the outset. “[By] designing best practices directly into the infrastructure code and set-up, you’re providing a paved road for internal stakeholders that need to move to the cloud and adopt these processes,” Kim continues. “When you go off the paved road you know when to pay attention a little more.”

Instigating the right culture

Effectively dealing with cyber security risks associated with digital transformation, whether it’s been sped up or it’s happening at a slower pace, requires a risk-based approach from the outset, says Hemsley. The CIO and security teams should have the right level of knowledge and resources to “create a security framework which is defined by proactivity”, he says.

Achieving this might need an element of cultural change, and Kim confirms this isn’t always easy. “An organization can’t change culture overnight,” he says. “Depending on the size and the nature of the organization it takes anywhere from three to ten years to change.” 

Once organizations then undergo a process of risk awareness, sufficient resources must be allocated, and all employees should be trained on cyber security best practice, adds Sarginson. In addition, his advice includes using frameworks, where possible, like the NIST Cybersecurity Framework or ISO 27001. This may help to make implementing protections more efficient by removing the need to work out a security posture from first principles.

Ultimately, avoiding cyber security bear traps involves taking the proper technical steps and the right cultural ones – or as Kim puts it: “It’s not just about implementing new technology, like lift and shift. It’s about building out your people and building out your processes.” 

In a post-pandemic world where we’re more connected than ever before and the rate of change is faster than it’s ever been, it’s time for IT professionals to move away from the concept of ‘digital transformation’ and instead embark upon a continuous journey of ‘digital evolution’. 

As you will be aware, digital transformation is defined as a disruptive shift achieved via the digitization of non-digital products. In just a few short years, however, this concept has been jettisoned to the technology scrap heap – thanks in large part to the global pandemic. 

Over a two-year period, organizations around the world were forced to pivot, and then pivot again. Now, organizations everywhere must adopt a mindset of digital evolution, the continual incremental adoption, and refinement of emerging technologies – or risk being left behind. 

There are numerous benefits to moving from a digital transformation to a digital evolution mindset. It’s generally more cost-effective to drive efficiency by evolving what you already have, rather than scrapping it and starting over. This approach is usually better for your people also so that they can improve familiarity before focusing on the next phase of innovation. 

But how do you achieve this change – from digital transformation to digital evolution? Here are five strategic shifts needed to move your business from current to future state.

Setting clear objectives

Before you do anything else, bring your team together and collaborate on an agreed, long-range digital roadmap. This upfront investment of time will ensure alignment and clarity about your current or future state, how to get there, and with gaps identified. 

It will also help you prioritize activities and set measurable success criteria. Finally, it will ensure you have identified key stakeholders (both internally and externally), which will enable you to engage the right people, at the right time, and in the right way.

Digital estate mapping

Once you’ve created your digital evolution roadmap, map your existing digital estate – and keep coming back to it. This will help you identify patterns of overlap between your existing platform capabilities/features and uncover ways that platforms and data can come together to deliver new products, services and experiences for your customers and end-users.

The use of analytics and customer surveys can also play a key role in analyzing the effectiveness of your existing technologies. 

Skills development is critical

A robust analysis of your objectives and technology capabilities is next. During this process, consider your existing web development expertise as well as the roles of UX, Service Design and Customer Research and Insights. Bring analytics and business intelligence, data engineering, and DevOps into the mix also.

Consider these roles in the context of your objectives and digital roadmap. If you need to upskill, redeploy, or source new talent, you’ll want to ensure relevant stakeholders are looped in and fully briefed timeously – and this will help. 

Ensuring concise business alignment 

The single best way to practice digital evolution – and maximize your investment – is to ensure full business alignment. To achieve this, an integrated approach is required, including having the right people and processes, a structured review process, regular communications and engagement, and a supportive workplace culture. 

In moving from a siloed or singular to a connected and ongoing approach, you inevitably move from digital transformation to digital evolution.

Developing a financial mindset 

With everything outlined so far, it’s hardly surprising to point out that digital evolution requires a different financial mindset – away from significant upfront investment and toward regular, sustainable long-term investment.

Invariably, digital transformation projects spend large sums, very quickly and in the early stages of the project because of the hunger to deliver big, and fast. But they usually ‘blow out’ and end up being scrapped. Instead, support digital evolution with sustained – and sustainable – long-term investment.

A good approach here is to develop a clear and concise business case against each objective on your roadmap. This will help you prioritize and budget, focusing spend where it delivers the most benefit. 

Leaving digital transformation in the past and adopting digital evolution is essential for ensuring that businesses can continue advancing at a steady and sustainable pace in service of their customers, in line with the latest developments and with a people-centered approach.

Initially, it might feel like you’re swimming against the digital current, but it will ensure incremental, continuous improvement across your digital offerings.

The industrial metaverse looks set to help transform almost any complex task that requires advanced modelling or 'next-phase' simulation tooling, moving it into pole position for solving multiple industrial and IT challenges.

According to Prith Banerjee, chief technology officer at Ansys, the metaverse will facilitate the modelling of laws of physics in greater detail than today's digital twins. Digital twins have been a great business asset for years, but already many ventures are pivoting to using the metaverse, as exemplified by the recent partnership struck between Siemens and Nvidia.

"If you have to change the design of a clay model of an aircraft wing for another run, each time you do it, it costs $10 million. Already, with a virtual wind tunnel, if we say a wing is going to fly, it’s going to fly," says Banerjee.

Banerjee defines digital twinning as modelling physical assets with sensor-enabled links between the physical asset and the virtual model – increasing accuracy, predictability, cost savings, and safety by further enabling remote working and accelerating innovation.

Finding a business case for the metaverse

Digital twin data can reveal how, say, a robot is performing today and what happens if different data is fed in on changing conditions, such as hotter weather or component failure. If bidirectional flows of information are enabled, automation working off digital twin data can do things like shut off heavy equipment in specified circumstances.

But metaverse takes the concept further still. "With internet powered by 3D, the metaverse is about making things as if you're almost actually there at the time," Banerjee continues. "With Zoom, I can see and hear you, but that's all. Metaverse is about how close can you go to absolute reality."

It can do modelling and predict consumer behaviour en masse, but engineering companies like Ansys seek 3D visualisations in real-time for fostering efficient, sustainable industrial design and manufacturing processes.

"Companies building industrial systems, whether wind turbines or solar power plants, in the past, would have to physically go inside the lab with multiple R&D people working together. With the metaverse, the physics you once had only 'on the other end' become replicable everywhere," Banerjee explains.

"If you compare gaming engines like Unity, they might have you driving around in a race car, it feels almost like reality, but not at the level of physics."

Mimi Keshani, co-founder and COO at Hadean, agrees, adding that gaming environments like CCP Games' Eve Online, with its multiple interacting entities, are created using "exactly the same tech" used to develop a synthetic training environment or digital twins of an existing process.

"You can save PhDs from repeating the same tiny difference in experiments over and over, those two minutes assigned to that eight hours of set-up to repeat exactly the same experiment," she points out. "Reduce complexity, reduce costs, reduce your footprint, make better decisions. Actually, simulation is our only power for telling the future."

Modelling to save money and innovate

Simulation is a highly complex emergent – dynamically evolving and learning in real-time – that’s being used to make decisions. These include data on hardware lifecycles, pan-national collaborative supply chains, sustainable manufacturing, or human behaviour en masse, Keshani agrees.

Of course, some of this is being done already for testing, evaluation and analysis of materials used, supply chains and more. The metaverse is about evolving towards still more accurate simulations, pending investment in remaining challenges around data quality and structuring, skills, security and interoperability. Also, abstractions must be built on top to achieve service-type technology set.

"(Companies should) use the standards and comply with things in ways that make sense across the industry," Keshani recommends, adding vendors are going to have to meet businesses halfway, offering more help beyond SDKs and recommending C++ training. "That's going to be a key challenge."

Tom Fairbairn, distinguished engineer at data mesh company Solace, notes its customer Unilever's 2000 ships transport cargo worldwide subject to ever-changing conditions rippling across its network. Millions of pounds can be lost or saved based on just-in-time decision-making, affecting not just Unilever but the whole supply chain. Even containers that are sitting empty cost money, Fairbairn says.

"They have satellite data tracking of ships. It's about grabbing that data as it occurs and doing something with it – juggling production schedules, updating logistics partners so lorries aren't sitting waiting for containers and so on," he says. "[They need a] virtualisation control tower, with a real-time view of exactly what's going on over the ocean."

Advanced machine learning can better triage inefficiencies and delays and help model knock-on effects related to specific decisions as they progress. When that can happen in real-time in both directions, that begins to indicate how the metaverse can deliver fuller visibility and control.

"You can determine and act on the variance in the outcomes, or potential outcomes, modelling effects of uncertainty," Fairbairn says.

Tapping into data to boost productivity

For Sylwia Kechiche, principal analyst, enterprise at network intel provider Ookla, applying AI and machine learning to large datasets merged with third-party sources in the metaverse will increase productivity and revenues across manufacturing.

"Data has become key," Kechiche confirms. "More intelligent planning tools can offer greater insights into sustainability, mapping out the entire product lifecycle."

Digital twins can be seen as early-stage – or a component of the metaverse – although standards for every aspect of the metaverse still require definition by the Metaverse Standards Forum (MSF) and others, including around real/virtual world integration, 3D asset interoperability, digital asset management, capabilities, avatars, privacy and more.

"2023 will see some more foundational work taking place," she adds, with the industry already picking off lower-hanging fruit, such as 3D mesh components for Microsoft Teams, AR/VR training and digital twin per se.

"In 2023, we could see more of a geo-digital twin – a fusion of geography and technology."

Certain technical requirements for latency and uploading will only arrive with 5G-Advanced from 3GPP Release 18 – although that standard is set to be frozen by the end of 2023, Kechiche adds.

Soubhagya Mohakud, vice president, Europe sales at Persistent Systems, confirms it's working on metaverse for educational demos, teaching simulations, and field ops support for remote servicing, maintenance and repairs. "This'll go a long way in improving 'first-time' fix rates and reducing costs."

Yet Jonny Stephens, consultant at Bearing Point, warns the lowest-hanging applications so far appear "squarely on the 'human' side" even though immersive screens and demos can certainly deliver business benefits.

"The metaverse can get dragged into discussions of extended VR. For modelling, quantum [computing] might be the tech to look at, rather than extended reality (XR)," he says. "For a lot of that, I don't really like the word 'metaverse'."

However described, advanced modelling and simulation that improves reporting on middleware and legacy applications running big complicated bits of machinery can save costs as well as maximise human abilities to interact with some systems, he agrees.

According to Forrester, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) products and services are set to grow to $22 billion by 2025. And as automation becomes the new fabric of digital business, IT professionals and business leaders need to cut through the complexity of standard automation programs to find the right service provide to help them achieve their digital transformation and differentiation.

This report identifies and evaluates 15 of the most significant and leading RPA service providers to see how each one measures up in order to help you find the one that’s right for your business.

View now to the current offering, strategy and market presence of each.

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Art produced by artificial intelligence (AI) models has quickly gained popularity throughout the year. Driven in part by its ease of use, and coming off the back of years of generative AI development, AI art has become a defining subject in the tech conversations of 2022.

The exact enterprise use cases of ChatGPT and DALL·E are still unclear and, at present, the models are in a kind of public testing phase as people and businesses explore the potential and limitations of AI art as it stands.

How does generative AI work?

A mainstay throughout the year has been DALL·E 2, OpenAI’s model for generating images based on a user prompt. DALL·E works by translating prompts into machine readable keywords, which are weighted against a constantly-updating model that recognises images.

To achieve this, it uses a model called contrastive language-image pre-training (CLIP), which has been trained on many millions of images to determine the vector spaces and dominant features of images. This means rather than simply knowing what an image is, CLIP allows the AI model to identify how much of the image any given prompt relates to in order to work out each image’s individual features and descriptors.

By reverse-engineering this same model, DALL·E can generate images with a given percentage dedicated to visuals it thinks the prompt implies. For example, the prompt ‘dog on a chair’ might inform DALL·E that some of the image – say, a third – has to contain a chair, as its large-model training has suggested. Through training with huge datasets and, after a long development process, OpenAI set these models loose to the public through their website, where one can generate a set number of images for free every month.

In addition to its increasing popularity for generating images, OpenAI’s chat generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) is able to generate tracts of text based on a prompt. For example: In 2022, AI art is becoming increasingly popular. Some AI art is created by algorithms that randomly generate images, while other AI art is created by humans who use machine learning to create art that is more sophisticated and lifelike. Some people believe that AI art is not really art, but others believe that AI art has the potential to be even more creative and expressive than traditional art.

Woodward it isn’t, but as this was generated in seconds based on the prompt 'write a paragraph about AI art in 2022’, it’s an example of how the model can be used to quickly produce text that passes a basic bar for grammar and covers any given topic.

OpenAI has been through many iterations of its GPT natural language processing (NLP) algorithms and the current GPT-3 model has previously been withheld from public use over safety fears. The next iteration, GPT-4, is currently in development.

Happy AI-powered holidays

At IT Pro, this got us thinking: How can we test this technology in a manner that’s both thorough and festive? The answer, of course, was to combine DALL·E with ChatGPT to create a unique set of tech-themed Christmas cards.

Starting with artwork, it immediately became clear DALL·E was struggling with the term ‘Christmas card’, even when introducing the concept of Christmas into the visuals sparked by other elements of the prompts.

A Christmas card themed around virtual reality

It usually processed this by plastering a garbled (and frequently cut off) form of word art that read ‘Merry Christmas’ over the top of whatever it'd generated, as with the particularly vibrant virtual reality (VR) card.

The ‘cloud storage’ card was a little more in line with the art you’d expect to find on a Christmas card, but also basically nonsense. A very “Happy Cloaday” to you too, DALL·E.

Cloud storage Christmas card

The same cannot be said for the ‘CIO’ card, which was exciting but intense, festooned with garbled festive messages albeit far from ‘Christmassy’.

CIO Christmas card

To mix things up a little, we tried out a more generic prompt, ‘Hacker dressed as Jack Frost’, with the hope this could be a cheeky image to include on the front of an IT security team’s Christmas cards. We even mocked up a Grinch version.

“Cheeky” is not how I would describe the result, which is more than a little disturbing and reveals the limited extent to which DALL·E can generate believable human forms. Perhaps this is better as a Halloween card — it’s certainly not fit for any mantelpiece.

Hacker dressed as Jack Frost

Generative AI is rooted in the uncanny valley

Bringing in specific style descriptors appeared to rein in the madness somewhat, as seen in the ‘satirical cartoon’ prompt, which is the closest to anything you’d find on a real Christmas card. Yes, the face on the data centre technician is scrambled, and the text is gibberish, but the art style carried across is recognisable enough.

Satirical cartoon of Santa helping out in a data centre

The same is true of the watercolour painting example. In all likelihood, this comes back to CLIP, with each specific element introduced to the prompt changing the balance to which DALL·E can go wild with the other elements in the image. As what I’m assuming was a happy accident, the watercolour brush strokes omitted the faces of all but one of the ‘elves’ in this example, which ended up looking more like a stylistic choice than machine error.

Watercolour painting of software engineers dressed as elves, working on laptops in Santa’s workshop while a CEO dressed as Santa gives them a thumbs up

The charcoal engineer prompt did a more than passable job of recreating the physical medium, and could certainly pass as a photo of a sketch, rather than digital art. It’s only upon closer inspection that the illusion of the medium falls apart, with each stroke far too smooth to have been made with charcoal. The only real gripe with this image is that it ignored the Christmas theme — the engineer should have been climbing the North Pole, but we’ll just have to use our imaginations for that.

Charcoal sketch of a 5G technician climbing the North Pole

Remembering this balance and the statistical models that lie behind systems like ChatGPT and DALL·E is key to setting your expectations. It's not magic, and even if prompts are carefully phrased it doesn't make a bit of difference if there’s no training to support whatever use case you have in mind.

ChatGPT writes a haiku

Take this example of a ‘haiku’ prompt.

Prompt: A Christmas card written in haiku form, containing the word "Kubernetes".

A haiku is a Japanese form of poetry comprising seventeen syllables in three lines of five, seven, and five. This is not a haiku. Beyond that, it exposes the system's inherent weaknesses, as it falls back on cheap tricks when faced with a tricky prompt. Abandoning the metre and form of a haiku entirely, the model wasn’t even able to believably introduce the word “Kubernetes” into the output, instead choosing to dump the word front and centre in the out-of-place first line.

ChatGPT writes a corporate Christmas message

What if you’re not looking to send your Christmas card to one person, but a whole company of employees?

Prompt: Write a Christmas message to be shared via company email to a small tech firm with 20 employees, reflecting on the hard year the company has had but with optimism for the new year.

No one could call this heartfelt, and neither will anyone to raise a toast to the company’s CEO at the Christmas party. If it’s a bit vague and cliched, though, it’s a message that could believably be shared around via email at the end of the year, and not immediately recognisable as an AI-penned message.

For generative AI, results lie in the use cases

Considering the use case carefully applies to images too. Images the system can generate work best at a tiny scale. Take a step back from your screen, and some of the more passable images look ‘real’ enough. Look at them too closely, though, and you notice all the unsettling features that have become a trademark of AI art.

Take the ‘computer motherboard with Christmas lights’ prompt for example. If you’re reading this article on your phone, the illusion of the image may have held up longer for those viewing this on a monitor. Go back and zoom in on any of the fairy lights — or the circuitry of the motherboard itself — and you’ll see it’s really a mishmash of warped lines, hard edges and blurry stand-ins for detail.

A computer motherboard with Christmas lights

This also applies to the ‘charcoal sketch’, which looks roughly like charcoal from a distance, but up close appears plasticky, and instantly recognisable as a digital representation of the physical medium. Because AI image generation of this kind relies on ‘diffusion models’, in which random noise is edited pixel-by-pixel until it resembles the prompt given, DALL·E images tend to be wobbly on close inspection and fall apart under close scrutiny. This manifests most obviously in the programme's efforts at faces, which veer firmly into the ‘uncanny valley’.

Will generative AI replace creatives in the future?

We're not at all convinced AI has the necessary skill to supplant human artists. As we see, the models have a long way to go before they can begin to match the quality of human artists, and even the best outputs, a plethora of which can be found online, have strange flaws.

There are also strong ethical arguments against the widespread use of generative AI to create art, which include the damage it would cause to the value of creatives’ labour, and the legal grey area in which scraping work created by other people to train an AI model lies. For these reasons, AI art should not be seen as a revolution in the art world, nor a welcome tool for creatives, but a burgeoning area of development begging for close regulatory oversight. Arguments for legislation, such as the US’ proposed AI Bill of Rights, apply in every way to AI art, which challenges core human abilities to a degree that calls for greater debate.

Undeniably, ChatGPT is more convincing than DALL·E. Perhaps this is because there's no written equivalent of the uncanny valley and that, unlike the more disturbing results of DALL·E, ChatGPT outputs come across, at worst, as the handiwork of someone who isn’t a very capable writer.

That isn’t to say it’s a silver bullet for those out who want to write poetry for their office, but don’t have the knack for it. ChatGPT is worse than you, I guarantee, so keep up the practice. But with its ability to generate prose that only needs to be passable – such as a quick email response – NLP models may become more integrated into software like word processors. It could be used to generate generic product descriptions or company emails.

Above all else, humans will still need to play a key role overseeing AI creations; none of the artwork or text here could yet stand up on its own. If used for public-facing use cases, organisations will have to assign teams to manage the output of the likes of ChatGPT to make sure the AI-generated content cuts the mustard.

Japan is known around the world for its technology – in high-speed rail, robotics and even toilets. Even watching the recent Bullet Train offers a glimpse into how Japan is perceived, with the film set on arguably the country’s most famous technological landmarks. The story is very different at home, however, with businesses and the public sector alike struggling to modernise. This struggle to digitally transform, which puts Japan at risk of restricting its future growth, is down to the government’s fragmented leadership, businesses in thrall to an archaic working culture, as well as a shortage of tech talent.

Given these challenges, it was shocking to witness Japan’s digital minister Taro Kono treating the subject so lightly at Singapore’s STACK 2022 Developer Conference. In a short video message, with his head beaming high above the stage, Kono smiled while telling the audience they might have heard about Japan’s war against the floppy disk and fax machine. “We are so fed up with analogue technology,” he quipped, adding he thinks Japan is lagging behind on digital transformation. “We hope we can catch up with you soon.”

Japan isn’t just “lagging behind”, but suffered a full-on “digital defeat” during COVID-19. The nation struggled to implement an online vaccine booking system and had to resort to physical tickets. It was so slow that prime minister Yoshihide Suga called in the armed forces to help and, after several more digital embarrassments, led to the creation of the digital agency, which Kono spearheads. As its head, it might have been worth Kono giving the impression he takes his job more seriously, especially when failing to evolve led to a logistical catastrophe during a global pandemic.

Japan’s time to digitise is running out

Kono “war” on the floppy disk made for a great soundbite, and even raised his profile internationally. Based on his appearance in Singapore, and, it seems he only sought to repeat his material and give further oxygen to this talking point. It might, though, be time to get serious about digital transformation and face up to the potential consequences.

In Singapore, there couldn’t be a greater contrast between two countries – one sailing ahead and one struggling to stay afloat. Kono’s digital transformation agency, established on 1 September 2022, is understaffed. While Singapore’s GovTech employs more than 2,000, Kono’s agency employes just 700. This is despite Singapore’s much smaller population. Indeed, Japan’s leaders might do well to take inspiration from what Singapore is aiming to achieve. Its various agencies are working on a number of exciting projects, with a helping hand from GovTech, from digitising food production to preserving natural greenery.

Instead of concrete ideas, Kono talked about “warm hearted” digital transformation, which means technology that can reach people across the country, including marginalised groups, to create a more inclusive society. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you can’t implement any kind of meaningful digital transformation to begin with, technology won’t reach anyone.

This is against a backdrop of the country shedding population fast, with half a million “disappearing” each year. This is mirrored in the number of people dropping out of the workforce. With depopulation and an ageing society to contend with, Kono pits technology – in a nebulous way – as the answer to these challenges. This is despite many previous efforts running into problems, with no strategy to overcome them in future.

The city of Maebashi, where the government is connecting its national My Number ID card – kick started in 2016 – with a payment system for transportation, is a good example of how even new projects are faltering. Despite being live for a number of years, the government has struggled to attract citizens to register for the ID card. Soon, it’s set to be linked with driving licences and, by 2024, citizens need to sign up or potentially lose access to public health insurance. Despite its growing significance, though, people can only register for one by filling out a form and sending it through the post – another analogue process for the pile.

Digital ambitions should begin at home

Kono was keen to point out Japan is hosting the G7 Summit next year, where it hopes to take the lead on all things digital. During the summit, he wants to lead talks on data free flow with trust (DFFT), which looks to govern data flows through international cooperation. Yes – the country still using floppy disks hopes to push for better international frameworks.

The digital minister even analysed the data strategies employed by other countries. He says China, an authoritarian government, has a monopoly over personal data. Europe on the other hand, has GDPR where privacy comes first and last, and with which it’s hard to move data across borders. Lastly, he mentioned the US – a “wild west” when it comes to data.

As for Japan’s model? It’s looking to hit the “right balance” between Europe and the US. By appearing to analyse these rules without offering an original model for Japan, though, Kono is merely giving the impression he can talk the talk on the world stage. Meanwhile, everyday services, in Japan, continue to suffer. It’s almost as if the government is leapfrogging the issue, focusing on abstract ideas international treaties, while unable to bring the change he advocates for at home, where he has the opportunity.

There could be more at play here than meets the eye. Under the current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, three cabinet members have left within a month. His approval ratings are also sinking. Although Kono is part of the same party, he could be lining himself up for the top job if Kishida does decide to go, especially since he was seen as the frontrunner in the previous leadership election – which he lost.

Leading his agency might signal he advocates for change, but Japan still has a mountain to climb. Meanwhile, If Kono did depart his current role, it further underlines just how fractured digital leadership is, with three ministers leading the agency in just over a year.

Kono appears to be weaponising digital transformation to engage with his counterparts overseas while neglecting the core issues domestically. Regardless of his own ambitions, the need for concrete digital transformation in Japan continues to grow, with the economic consequences worsening the longer this remains unaddressed.

Japan s in serious trouble, with political leaders who are neglecting to implement genuine change and public services crying out for streamlining. COVID-19 already exposed major cracks in Japan, leading to a devastating effect on citizens. Instead of cracking wise about floppy disks, it might be time to get serious and recognise the desperate position Japan is in.

This article originally appeared in issue 32 of IT Pro 20/20, available here. To sign up to receive each new issue in your inbox, click here

Japanese culture is a hugely successful national export, working its way across the world thanks to the nation’s rich history, heritage, and cuisine – all married with technological supremacy. When picturing Japan, you might imagine a high-tech country where bullet trains zip across the countryside and into cities powered by futuristic systems.

Not all is what meets the eye, however. Japan has, surprisingly, been lagging behind in digital transformation for decades. A quarter of firms hold off digital transformation, while 9% shun it completely, according to Forrester. This is higher than other comparable countries, applying to just 2% of businesses in Malaysia and 1% in Indonesia. Moreover, just 39% of decision makers surveyed said their firm is engaging in digital transformation.

This may come as a shock, especially considering the global prominence of tech giants like Sony, Toshiba, or Fujitsu. Domestically, however, it’s a different story, with a sluggish approach to digitisation typified by the continued use of fax machines and floppy disks, underpinned by a cultural lethargy towards change at the heart of government.

Fax to the future

Most Japanese offices still use fax machines and, until two years ago, it was rather common to expect organisations to answer any questions through faxes, says Parissa Haghirian, professor of international management at Sophia University, Tokyo. Another tradition still in use is the hanko, or personal stamp, whereby, before COVID-19, almost every document had to be stamped instead of signed.

Online banking, meanwhile, was introduced almost a decade later than in many other countries, underlines Haghirian. “From what I know many banks still don’t have apps. Most Japanese [citizens] still use a small bank book if they need an overview on their spending,” she explains, pointing out that online banking records at Mizuho Bank are only available for the last three months.

The hanko stamp was still in widespread use before COVID-19

There are a number of reasons change is so slow, she says. Japanese workers don’t change jobs very often, meaning you won’t find many changing internal processes based on experience from their previous firm, so things stay as they are. There aren’t enough IT professionals, either, due to a labour shortage. This means companies begin developing their own platforms with employees who don’t have the right skills or background. There’s also little outsourcing to technology firms, meaning such companies don’t spread teachings across the wider business landscape, nor train employees in using specific software.

On top of this, Japan is grappling with a demographic challenge that underlines a wider reluctance to change. Its society is the oldest in the world, with people aged 65 or older numbering 36.21 million in 2021 – a record-high 28.9% of the population. By contrast, it’s 2020 figure (28.6%) was far higher than the likes of the US (16.6%), Sweden (20.3%), France (20.8%) or Germany (21.7%).

“The decision makers are old and they have no other experience than one firm,” adds Haghirian. “If something new comes up, they often cannot understand why this is necessary, and disapprove of change.”

Many customers are elderly, too, and Haghirian believes they aren’t comfortable using new systems or apps. They also have the time to physically travel into city offices and banks during the week, rather than rely on online services.

Haghirian believes it will be difficult for the Japanese government to move away from using outdated technologies, especially since – even in government – the right people aren’t in charge. She explains, in the past, individuals have been appointed as the cyber security minister but without the right expertise in the field. Meanwhile, many key responsibilities are devolved to regional governments, which makes coordination more difficult.

Market influences, on the other hand, are more effective. When Chinese tourists in Japan started using cashless payment services, for example, Japanese companies realised they were missing out on a big market, explains Haghirian. This led to SoftBank and Yahoo Japan starting a joint venture called PayPay, which now provides cashless payment services.

As for whether the government successfully digitally transform public services, she thinks Japan needs an overall long-term strategy for the whole country, managed and implemented by IT professionals, “not some Japanese grandfathers”. “Paternalistic decision-making structures, and the belief that anyone can do the job, are the biggest problems,” she explains. “Not only in the government, but also in many big Japanese firms.”

Let’s get digital

This paternalistic tradition is a major impediment that makes it difficult to get rid of outdated technology, agrees Jun Mukoyama, visiting senior research fellow at the Asia Pacific Initiative. Standards are set by the most senior participants in an organisation, who prefer a ‘business as usual’ approach to adopting new technologies. She adds the risk-averse and inerrant nature of government officials slows the change too.

The Japanese government’s failure to use digital technology in response to the pandemic sparked criticism in Japan. Mukoyama explains it took months to deliver cash grants to citizens, and the government couldn’t capture real-time patient data since hospitals and health centres use telephones and fax machines to communicate. This was much unlike the experience in countries like the UK, in which digital transformation actually accelerated.

“The shock of such a ‘defeat in the digital war’ has led it to establish the Digital Agency in September 2021. It has been a year since its inception, and the government is making gradual progress,” says Mukoyama.

Recently, the new digital minister Taro Kono declared a war on floppy disks. This was because a government committee discovered around 1,900 areas in which businesses are required to use storage media like floppy disks when making applications, or holding data.

The digital minister Taro Kano (pictured) has declared a war on floppy disks

This issue came to light as part of the committee’s broader aim to audit the nation’s processes, explains Mukoyama. It’s been working on evaluating around 60,000 laws, orders, circulars, guidelines, and administrative procedures to check whether “analogue procedures”, like requiring floppy disks for specific processes or conducting a process in-person when it can be done online are still in place.

The nation’s Digital Agency is hoping to introduce a bill to revise all such regulations in 2023, while guidelines and orders that don’t require a legal amendment will be revised within 2022.

Over the past year, it’s focused on laying the groundwork for digital transformation in government, says Mukoyoma. It’s cleaning up fragmented or non-standardised data, for instance, to create proper base registries which will act as a reliable source of information on data points like people, companies and locations. It’s also created inter-ministerial roadmaps to plan for the years ahead, and handed out My Number Cards, which is part of the social security and tax number system. Mukoyoma hopes digital transformation will be implemented more smoothly in the coming years, with this groundwork meaning companies and municipal governments have fewer obstacles.

Change begins at home

In 2018, Japan’s government realised it needed to transform digitally, which is why it introduced a paper on digital transformation which warns of the ‘Digital Cliff 2025’, says Tsuneo Fujiwara, vice president and Gartner fellow with the CIO Research team. Reaching the Digital Cliff means the country could suffer an economic loss of up to ¥12 trillion (roughly £71.6 billion) per year if it can’t digitally transform.

There are a number of challenges that needed to be overcome, he says. The Ministry of Economy and Trade (METI), for example, was concerned about the combination of an ageing population and the insufficient availability of IT talent.

Japan’s leadership around digital transformation is also fragmented. One of the most outspoken pro-digitisation prime ministers was Yoshihide Suga of the Liberal Democrat party. He was elected in September 2020, and created the Digital Agency, but resigned just a year later after struggling to contain COVID-19. The first head of the digital ministry, Yoko Ishikura, was also forced to resign. Beyond this, it appears other ministries often ignored the Digital Agency’s recommendations on how to digitise internal processes.

The government’s track record is poor, says Fujiwara. He thinks, however, the leadership is there with Digital Agency chief Taro Kano. He underlines that METI, too, has, been a serious and continuous force in pushing the digital transformation agenda.

The government's record is poor, but there are signs of optimism for the future

The ministry, for example, has published a digital governance code, which encourages companies to kickstart digital transformation projects. If companies show they have adhered to the code, they can apply for special recognition, with certified businesses able to use a prestigious logo in their marketing to show they’ve embraced modernity.

“You have these incentive programmes to get companies to transform which will, in turn, transform the citizens,” believes Fujiwara, adding these schemes, combined with consistent leadership in the Digital Agency, should be incentive enough to get people – including the government – to digitalise.

Like in any country, digital transformation will help modernise Japan, he continues. It could also once again spark a culture of innovation the nation has lacked for the last 30 years. He says Japan was highly innovative after WW2, but has, in recent decades only been making incremental improvements to existing processes rather than implementing new ideas. From a cultural perspective, he believes introducing digital transformation could be a breath of fresh air for the country, and set it back on the right path.

Japan is running out of time. Although the country’s making encouraging steps, it continues to face an ageing population, leaders who refuse to embrace change, and public services in desperate need of modernisation. Failing to get a grip was devastating during COVID-19, and might lead Japan to the digital cliff-edge by 2025. This need to digitise, however, will only become more urgent and challenging the longer it takes, with Japan’s leadership charged with fundamentally transforming business culture alongside, simply, the tools and systems organisations use.

Countries around the world are embarking on a digital transformation to boost their economies and revitalise public services. While some nations continue to languish in analogue processes, struggling to break into this digital age, others are setting new standards and innovating at pace.

From preserving the city-state's greenery, to eliminating manual processes in agriculture, Singapore is one such nation aggressively injecting technology into the fabric of society. Questions, however, arise as to how desirable it is to digitise as much as possible, and what the best model for digital transformation might be. IT Pro visited a number of projects across the island nation over the course of a week to find out how Singapore is attempting to lead the world on digitisation.

Using technology to preserve greenery

Thanks to its location on the equator, Singapore enjoys a climate of perpetual summer and is dominated by tropical rainforests and mangroves. Officials claim that it's one of the greenest cities in the world. Travellers who arrive at the airport are immediately struck with Singapore’s greenery, with trees lining every road and plants crawling up designated spaces on the sides of buildings. Over the years, Singapore has shifted its ethos from being a ‘Garden City’ to a ‘City in a Garden’, whereby the city bathes in tropical foliage – emphasised by its seven million trees, with two million of them planted in the urban area.

Indeed, the National Parks Board (NParks) has its work cut out, with 3,347 hectares of nature reserves to look after, alongside 400 parks and gardens. To help, it’s aiming to create an ecosystem of technology by digitising a swathe of processes, says Tan Chong Lee, assistant chief executive officer of NParks.

An NParks employees knocks a tree with a metal hammer to determine its health

The organisation has created a digital twin of its urban trees by coupling light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology with machine learning. This lets NParks remotely inspect its trees and manage them better, since it can model growth or monitor carbon sequestration. Lee says staff can check their trees on a regular basis through remote access software from the office. Additionally, if there’s any sudden tree movement, wireless tree tilt sensors attached to some alerts NParks to if a tree has been uprooted.

If any trees need a physical touch, NParks deploys its contractor fleet management system to monitor contractors’ vehicle locations and work progress through videofeed. The closest contractor can be alerted to a tree and solve any issues. From there, they’re able to use drones or tree drills connected to tablets to monitor the tree’s health. The TreesSG software also allows the public to plant, plot, and search for trees through its website. Members of the public can even leave a 'Treemail' to post a photo along with a comment.

Cutting grass has become digitised too. NParks has installed grass height sensors, attached to its employees or vehicles, which is paired with an automatic lawn mower. Once the grass gets above a specific height, the lawnmower can get to work. It claims this saves 70% on manpower versus manual grass-cutting. It also uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to verify its plant stocks.

The NParks robot helps visitors, and also lets them know when it's time to go home

These different forms of technology are all developed in-house, reveals Chong Lee, before they’re shared with NParks partners. He hints these systems are also shared with other countries, but declines to name them.

A smart city begins with a smart district

Singapore is also developing its first smart district so it can decentralise its main business district due to traffic congestion, explains James Tan. Tan is director of digital transformation agency GovTech’s sensors and IoT team as well as the JTC, an agency in charge of Singapore’s industrial progress.

The Punggol Digital District (PDD), located in the north east of Singapore, is around 50 hectares, which “isn't very big”, says Tan. The district is targeting high tech companies to move in and start new ventures, with the aim of creating 28,000 new jobs.

This drive comes hand-in-hand with the Open Digital Platform (ODP), a smart district operating system, which the agencies aim to deploy by January 2025. This is essentially a platform that hooks up to sensors and IoT devices across an area and allows them to be controlled from single user interface (UI). The agencies are aiming to bring in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities to also turn the ODP into a digital twin, to help make better decisions.

This will be the first time a district comes with software to power it and govern how smart systems work together. The ODP aims to unify a host of separate functions, including a smart car park system, cleaning robots, a smart grid, and more. It’s already running in two of JTC’s estates, including a building in the western Jurong region. In a demo, the platform was able to control door locks, delivery robots and cool temperature inside a room.

Tan highlights how it could be used in the new Punggol district; it can provide data on anything from local transport to water levels. The idea is that by combining different streams of data, it can help businesses and local authorities be more prepared. For example, if there are high water levels in the district, the platform combines this with weather forecasts to see whether flooding could be an issue

Tan (pictured) demonstrates how weather data and water levels could be combined in JTC's digital twin to predict flooding

Integrating smart systems together can lead to significant cost savings for the public sector, he adds. Fewer people are needed on the ground to inspect systems, since this can be done through the platform. Companies may also be able to link up with the system to smoothen businesses operations. For example, last-mile delivery firms, like Amazon, could connect to the platform and help their robots enter buildings to complete a delivery.

However, Tan admits when the platform was created, cyber security was the team’s first major worry. “They were very concerned as to what happens if your command and control systems got hacked,” he says. Tan adds if the overarching system goes down, every single silo system must continue to work, which is part of the platform’s design principle.

As to whether the project is looking to integrate the tree data from NParks, Tan says they could bring tree information onto the platform, but only using JTC data. He questions how useful “outside data” would be, and is scpetical of mixing datasets together. It’s an early hint that, despite progress Singapore’s agencies are making, digitisation within the island nation might not be so collaborative.

Using AI to feed fish

Singapore imports 90% of its food, with the 10% it produces comprising vegetables and fish. Due to this imbalance, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) was estsablished in 2019, with a target of boosting domestic production by 30% by 2030, or “30 by 30”.

To help fish farmers increase production, SFA’s Marine Aquaculture Centre (MAC) teamed up with GovTech’s Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Division (DSAID) to create a tool to count rotifers.

A crucial component in large-scale fish hatchery, rotifers are zooplankton used to feed fish. They only live for 72 hours, and a disruption in their supply leads to a significant loss in any fish harvest. On St John’s Island, DSAID and SFA are developing a mobile app that can count the number of rotifers in an image of a water sample taken from fish larvae tanks. This process takes 40 minutes if carried out manually, but it takes just one using the app. The AI tool uses the open source library yolov3 to train labelled images, and is hosted on the cloud.

The process of counting rotifers will be slashed from 40 minutes to just one by applying AI

Developing the tool took up to six months, reveals Tan Kai Wei, a GovTech software engineer. He underlines that, since it’s based on open source code, the agencies didn’t have to build the AI engine from scratch. All they needed to do was train the model. It’s missing some functionality, such as an authentication layer, although Tan stresses they can add a layer in future if they want. Set for deployment within three to six months, they hope farmers will use the app to count rotifers based on images taken on their smartphones.

An island embracing technology

This anthology of digisation offers a glimpse into how Singapore is undergoing an exciting phase of digital transformation across its public sector. It’s worth considering, however, whether it’s necessary to digitise absolutely everything – and to the nth-degree.

For example, is it really necessary to measure grass height through sensors to know when parks need to be cut? Given Singapore has a similar tropical climate all year round, it may be easier and more cost-effective to set a simple schedule.

Alternatively, considering the security and privacy consideration that must be overcome to build and launch smart city IT infrastructure, one might question whether many innovations will see the light of day. It’s also important to consider whether businesses will really attach sensors to all corners of their buildings, given the cost involved. Although it might look flashy, and attractive to visitors, organisations might find the immediate ROI lacking.

Also related to this abundance of technology is the fact each government agency appears to be working on different projects and in different ways – giving the impression technological transformation is being pulled in different directions. While each agency does know best – using their own data to build systems to solve specific problems they face – it could also lead to inefficiencies. With each agency choosing its own path, it isn’t clear to what extent these tools and systems will be interoperable across the breadth of the public sector, or whether workloads and functions might be needlessly duplicated.

Opting for a federalised approach, rather than a centralised approach, provokes a sensation that agencies are competing with each other, hence an almost over-the-top infusion of technology into every process. That said, Singapore is comfortably ahead of many of its international counterparts, and confident in its approach. It’s impressive how agencies, along with a soft guiding arm from GovTech, are developing their own tools to solve everyday problems. With more encouragement from the digital transformation agency, it’s exciting to see what might come next, and whether these systems could eventually be shared across the spectrum of Singapore’s public sector.

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Not all companies mastering digitalisation are young, agile start-ups. In fact, most businesses tackling digital transformation have old technology stacks, which can leave IT leaders managing a mixture of old and new technologies and infrastructure for an extended period of time.

Planned digital transformation projects are just one of several scenarios that can lead to this situation. Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are one of the most common, says Andrew Hewitt, senior analyst at Forrester, and, as seen during COVID-19, when a company must respond to unexpected challenges.

“This happened a lot during the pandemic, as people needed to quickly invest in cloud-based technologies," he says. "Another cause of this type of mix is when an organisation makes substantial customisations to a particular application – to such an extent that it’s really difficult for them to replace and so they hold on to that legacy technology.”

The challenges of a mixed IT estate

An IT estate of this kind creates a lot of complexity regarding interoperability, compatibility and knowledge gaps. “Depending on how old the technology is (I just talked to a CIO still using green screen applications based on AS/400), it’s challenging to support old systems in the long run," says Alexander Buschek, senior director analyst at Gartner. "People proficient in these legacy systems are often close to retirement, so working fluently with teams supporting old and new systems can be challenging.

“However, the main question is where does the data live? Often it has to be the old legacy ERP. Requirements of data and analytics will then need to be met by implementing yet more systems, which makes matters more complicated and expensive.”

Some issues can even be caused by problems accessing and retaining talent, adds Michel Savoie, technology transformation and trusted intelligence consulting leader at EY UK&I.

“Attrition is a big problem with technical talent, and if organisations are facing a high employee turnover, then they’re constantly losing knowledge on how current tech works,” she says. “This can lead to new tools being implemented as a way to resolve this lack of expertise, resulting in various solutions across the business, all at different stages in their lifecycle.”

Taking all this into account, it’s not surprising that 30% of midsize enterprises plan to increase their investment in legacy application modernisation. However, for those in the midst of managing mixed estates, temporary solutions are possible.

Security, compliance and behavioural challenges

As was the case for many organisations, COVID-19 was the trigger for the Disability Trust’s digital transformation journey, as it wasn’t set up to operate in an agile way. The minute it had a hybrid estate of legacy and new technologies, though, it was faced with a range of security, compliance and behavioural challenges.

“When we moved our on-premise data to a cloud structure, we were confronted with challenges around making that data more easily consumable for end users who were comfortable with our traditional approach," says Graham Fisher, the organisation’s head of digital. "We also had difficulties joining up certain data sets and sources, and the security implications that came with that. Also, in the short term, decommissioning some systems and procuring a new capability drives further complexity into the business from a technical point of view, especially at an architectural level.”

When it came to cyber security, Fisher decided to implement an ‘as a service’ approach. “We’re not security specialists – to buy endpoint products and implement them ourselves is expensive and complicated,” he explains. “The economies of scale of using [an as a service] approach were far better.”

Where they faced data consistency challenges, they looked to virtual private networks (VPNs) and similar solutions to move data into another position where it can be accessed more easily from cloud solutions and consumed more easily by employees. This, however, drives a huge security risk.

“The biggest concern for us is the insider threat, whether that’s leavers exfiltrating our IP or confidential patient information being unwittingly shared on public forums, the impact could be critical – both reputationally and for the people we support," he continues.

“That means we need to be able to carefully control which sites are used, and what apps our data flows across. At first, we were trying to manage web filtering through large, externally-managed firewalls. It was complicated and far from agile. Censornet then helped us to own and drive the filtering ourselves and get a clear understanding of the patterns of information coming in and out.”

Creating a common platform

Many travel companies have large networks made up of acquired companies and/or partners, which leads to multiple tech stacks running different, often legacy, architecture. In the case of Expedia, this led to difficulties with compliance and resiliency and created work redundancies, with every team trying to automate their own database.

“Adopting a common platform helped us get our arms around the hundreds of tools Expedia Group uses and enabled us to create a scalable architecture without adding more complexity to the database infrastructure,” explains Rathi Murthy, Expedia Group’s CTO.

“We built database as a service (DaaS) to support monitoring and resolve incidents without the need for manual intervention, freeing up developers’ time. This solution also gave our database engineering team more control and visibility across the enterprise and broke down silos that made it difficult to keep costs under control and enforce best practices.”

Meanwhile, TUI’s digital transformation project accelerated during the pandemic as it looked to transition from a set of localised organisations, traditionally acting in silos with separate tech stacks, into one microservice-based platform that serves all markets at scale. It still has legacy systems in place, however, and is in the process of gradually onboarding all markets to start providing new services.

“Naturally this comes with challenges. For a big business, it can feel like there’s a constant cycle of decommissioning products as we sunset legacy systems,” says Milan Juza, CIO of web, mobile and payments at TUI Group. “The risk can be to do this too quickly or oversimplify the process; in reality, this process takes much longer than anticipated as each country has its own nuances and tech stacks. The art lies in responsibly managing the paradigm between decommissioning the technology properly, and not impacting the customer while doing it quickly to avoid long-term costs.”

TUI’s approach was to look at what products it had, how it wanted to sell them and how customer needs had changed. “The reality was that, in most of our legacy systems, many existing capabilities just weren’t being used, so it was important to ask ourselves whether each piece of the tech stack was valuable and justifiable," Juza continues.

"We began making changes based on value and experimentation. This allowed us to work out which parts of the tech stack were no longer needed, which still served us and where we needed to innovate. This is helping us to dramatically reduce the complexity of our systems, time spent working on them and ultimately produce less waste and more business and customer value.”

Spurred on by the pandemic, digital transformation has become a core business aim for many companies both in and out of the tech sector. When it comes to handling data on a massive scale, especially when such data is sensitive, compliance is key. The insights from data analysis can be priceless for business growth, but require careful strategy in order to be properly implemented.

This week, we talk to Nicola Wadham, Chief Information Officer at the Financial Ombudsman Service, about the specific digital transformation work she’s been leading, and the importance of properly streamlining data flow.

Highlights

“When people talk about technology, it's always the context in which you're deploying is, that is the difference between just a piece of technology that you can put in, and a piece of technology that you can put in and use, and really exploit. And it's that final mile, I mean, which I want to draw out and talk about that final mile of, yeah, I've put some technology in, and it's really singing. You know, the implementation is one thing, but the actual value, and the transformative change of that technology is a whole other road, and the two are equally important.”

“You have to consider more points to get a process to flow through, because you’ve got to change your digital channel, make sure your non digital channels are keeping steps or the customer experiences safe, make sure you don't upset your automation fees, the case work's all linked in, and flow it through. So, it's a more complicated change to make, and a more profound thing to decide. So you need that additional layer of governance, with a small 'g', and understanding and collaboration.”

“It certainly feels and looks more like an efficiency and service for a journey, because I'm not selling anything to anybody. There's that whole layer in a retail space, where you're trying to identify what they're looking at, where they're clicking, you know, I'm interested in where they're clicking to make sure that journey is as smooth and lovely as possible.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

• Financial Ombudsman Service
• Five reasons why digital transformation is essential for business growth
• Data protection policies and procedures
• Workday creates startup fund for enterprise AI
• What is data analytics?
• Workday's Accounting Center helps businesses manage financial data
• Most public sector leaders think their data infrastructure is not fit for purpose

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This automatically-generated transcript is taken from the IT Pro Podcast episode ‘Accelerating digital transformation'. To listen to the full episode, click here. We apologise for any errors.

Rory Bathgate

Hello, I’m Rory Bathgate

And you’re listening to the IT Pro Podcast. This week, we're settling a digital dispute, and who better to go to than the ombudsman?

Spurred on by the pandemic, digital transformation has become a core business aim for many companies both in and out of the tech sector.

There's a lot on offer through the process, but it also comes with its own set of questions - on-premises Vs off-premises, the degree to which automation should be used and which enterprise solution (if any) is best for you.

Joining the show this week to discuss digital transformation efforts, streamlining financial data flows and increasing visibility on metrics, is Nicola Wadham, Chief Information Officer at the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Nicola, it’s a pleasure to have you on the show.

Nicola Wadham

Rory, it's absolutely great to be here. And I'm delighted to be able to share a little bit about what we're doing at the at the service with you.

Rory

Thanks so much for coming on. So I guess just straight off the bat, there's a lot going on right now, economically. But also, as I mentioned a bit in the intro, digital transformation is a real core focus for a lot of businesses. Do you think that right now it's a real priority for businesses?

Nicola

I think so very much, and it certainly comes through in all my conversations with our sister organisations, they're on a similar journey. I wondered if it is a little bit of a moment, just to explain a little bit about the Ombudsman Service. Not a lot of people may have come across us. So what does the Financial Ombudsman Service do? We've been set up under parliament decree since 2001, so we're 21 years old this year. Our service is free for consumers, and every year we have around about a million people that come to us with questions. And from these contacts, we have around about, roughly, up to 200,000 complaints that we manage in a year. So we look at those complaints, and we investigate and resolve those. So, if a financial business and a customer can't work out their complaint together, they come to us, and we will give an unbiased and fair answer about what has happened. And we have the power to put things right. We are committed also to sharing our insight and experience to encourage fairness, and confidence in the financial services. So that's our remit, and that's what we're tasked to do. I think it's also worth mentioning a little bit before we start on, on what we've been doing and the digital journey. A little bit about the business model, if I can say that I will use the word 'business'. We are a service that — you fall over yourself a bit by saying service. Sometimes people think we're financial services. No, we're really a complaints management organisation. And that fact that we are a service, and not a commercial business, does sit at the core of our design, thinking and obligations. We are here for all customers and our customers are the complainants and of course businesses. This means, of course, we have to be accessible and responsive, we have to have channels for all people to be able to come to us. And of course, we're holding data that is sensitive and secure, we have to hold that data securely, as do all organisations, but we must also use that information in a compliant manner. And use it for insights and analysis in a compliant manner. And indeed, we hold all our data under a public task consent model, which allows us to do some aggregation and an inference of patterns and so on with the data we hold. And we have a lot of data.

Rory

Sounds like it!

Nicola

We have masses. Really, I heard from Microsoft that we had one of the largest SharePoint repositories in Europe —

Rory

Oh wow.

Nicola

Which I probed a number of times, we have a lot of documents. I think the other characteristic is that we have many consumers that come to us and over the course of our existence in our current form. We've helped nearly 5 million customers. Those people will come to us once on the journey. Hopefully people don't have bad experiences with financial businesses, but it tends not to be a repeat business. So a person will come with us on a journey once to get their solution resolved. So it's a lot of individual people going on the journey. We're also demand led, so we don't know when the next thing will emerge in the market that needs solutions. So we have to be very responsive. And that, again, this is a key point in our design and thinking for the digital journey is, how do you suddenly scale up? And answer questions fairly, when the expertise of the investigators is key, and it's a skilled job to do. And, of course, we're not a commercial organisation, so we're funded from the regulated financial businesses. And there's also a case fee levy, so we have a twin funding source. And that, of course, means we must spend our money wisely. And one of the things here is, of course, we're very transparent, we have to be very clear about what we spend and how we spend it. So we're not, we're not a vast organisation. UK-based obviously, and I have around about, just under 200, folk in the technology department. So you know, a great small team, but those are the constraints that we've been on the journey with. So that's just a little bit of background, because I know, when people talk about technology, it's always the context in which you're deploying is, that is the difference between just a piece of technology that you can put in, and a piece of technology that you can put in and use, and really exploit. And it's that final mile, I mean, which I want to draw out and talk about that final mile of, yeah, I've put some technology in, and it's really singing. You know, the implementation is one thing, but the actual value, and the transformative change of that technology is a whole other road, and the two are equally important. So we have this very basic process on one hand, we take queries, some are not for us, so there's a meet and greet and triage moments —

Rory

An audition

Nicola

— so no we don't handle water complaints. Yes, you can come to us, your financial complaint we can manage, then we take the details and turn that into a case. Then we categorise it so that we can send it to the right person to look at. And then we assemble all the information about the case so that we can weigh up the pros and cons. And then we do an assessment. And then we form a conclusion, and we communicate that. Very straightforward I think, as a business process. If you you started back in the paper days, which I think the Ombudsman Service was not not such a very long time ago, their case files, and they went on a journey to digitise that, very much following the paper flow. But of course, now we have the opportunity to, to to work differently, and layer and add value out of the whole process. So that's the sort of journey we want. So what have we done? First of all, we've got our casework on a Microsoft Dynamics platform. So that's up in the cloud, and the associated documents storage also up there in the cloud. So that's lovely. And the information is secure in there, and flows through. And we have, we don't have a digital portal right now as we have phone channels and mail and fax. But we're able to just advertise that too widely.

Rory

And that's one of your targets, isn't that actually, the digital portal?

Nicola

Absolutely! So the digital portal is going to make a big difference. Not only is it something that clearly in the modern age one wants to offer consumers, that can access that channel easily, that opportunity to work out of core business hours, bring their issues in to us so that they can raise that complaint and indeed, self serve, you know, what's happening? How's it going on? Can I share information? And indeed for our businesses, so that they can see how they're doing if the bigger businesses who have more than one case with us at a time see how they're going. Are they, are we waiting on any documents for them, and it's safe way to send that information to us. Obviously, we're never going to turn off the phones, all the other channels we'll keep all channels open, but the portal will certainly sit there at the front end. And of course, that allows us to get that earlier insight in terms of demand. We can see automatically who's calling other trends coming out? Are we getting more of one type of case coming through, it's like an early warning system, it allows us to think a little bit more about the way we've disposed our caseworkers in the business side, so we're getting a little bit more of this type of case, we need to increase the team over here that's dealing with that, so that we can can deliver our opinions in a very timely fashion. But that whole layer of then, it's not just a channel for consumers, it's the channel for consumers, and then the use of all the data. And then the use of that data, not just as a report backward-looking, but almost real-time, hey, we're getting we're getting more car insurance complaints, we need to increase that team. So that you've got that real time, sort of ability to flex the organisation.

Rory

And would that be something that you're looking to move into maybe even into models as well? I mean, I'm going to ask a bit about automation and AI, a bit later. But that kind of forward thinking approach, when you can draw out that data of, let's say, for example, you used car insurance. Oh, there's there's a big influx. And then, do think that the digital portal would help you maybe anticipate, and be able to ramp up scale in areas that you anticipate you'll see influxes in, in the future?

Nicola

So I think that's a very interesting question. Thanks, Rory. We will get early warning of changes in patterns of complaints. And that helps us early say, reach out to the businesses and say, we are seeing this do you want to have a little look at your complaints process? You know, and sometimes, it could be that they have an issue with their complaints process that more things are falling through the through the net, because obviously, financial businesses like to have a robust complaints process that the ideal is that no one would ever need to want to come to the Ombudsman Service . Our success is our extinction. But the predicting demand, that's a slightly different function, we we spend time with the industry talking about trends we can anticipate, that there may be more issues in the macro economic climate and so on, based on past patterns. So sometimes, of course, there's an event. If a bank had a cyber event, a couple of years ago, that caused some detriment, and we had a little spike of cases related to that. And that's not something that you can well, you could predict a cyber events going to happen somewhere some time, but that's slightly different to estimating trends. And it's not, it's not a bad thing, because obviously FinTech I mean, that's another whole thing, you know, the banks are, and financial institutions are, absolutely innovating, using new technologies. And, if they didn't innovate, we wouldn't have new products. And so inherently, there's going to be some products that might have a slight issue if it's sold in a particular way. And so that early understanding where they might want to tweak a product or advice or the way they're selling, is very important. So that core piece around engagement, prevention collectively with the industry is very, very core. And that's based on on on our information and insight. So it's that layer at the front end, early warning, as well as the channel, it's not just the channel, it's all that rich stuff around it. And yes, absolutely, coming onto intelligent automation. We're partnered with Baringa, to install some machine learning that can do automatic case categorisation that drives that more accurate understanding of the case earlier. And indeed, the business that's related to, to get that that higher than than a human can do, and manage that whole process. It just takes some friction out, and of course, provides that more accurate information again earlier in the process.

Rory

So that's sort of a back office processing step, and then when it's passed on for flagging, or for individual review, that's then being passed on to a human employee?

Nicola

Absolutely, and human in the loop on everything we do, we absolutely keep humans on the assessment and the judgement, there will not be, we will not be automating the decision. We will be facilitating the flow of the assembly, of the data, we will be facilitating information. And we will be supporting those ways and automating administrative tasks, but we will not be replacing the judgement elements. Although, of course, it's very helpful for us to understand the judgments because then again, you can spot any inconsistencies and support the quality agenda so that we have a quality outcome for each for each and every case. So that whole piece is landing in the very near future. So you have that lovely end-to-end flow. And then if you couple that with our back office system organisation that we've done, it's been live for just now a year, we put in Workday for our finance, HR and payroll solution. And replacing a very worthy, but multiple set of applications that I'm very glad to see the back of. So we've now got all of our back office systems in one place, the ability then to understand in great detail our casework shape and cohort and the various skills and so on. With the demand, you're getting to that vision that I have, that literally you can, you can spin up your teams for the day, almost very closely aligned to the demand you're getting in, and that efficiency so that you don't accidentally land a motor insurance claim on the pension person's desk. And you can cross train, and support so that you're driving that workforce planning into a whole different level of of understanding, prediction and, and flexibility. And that's with we're going to be working on with the Workday skills cloud, and populating that with information, objective information about case workers, because obviously, we know what they can do. And we need to be able to support people on training journeys and so on. But that ability to take that demand early site, and translate it into the best configuration of the routing and casework, I really think it's going to produce a lot of improvements. Yeah.

Rory

So this combined solution, are you seeing an improvement in observability across your service, by combining what was a number of disparate solutions into one through Workday?

Nicola

On our digital journey, we're literally putting in these components of Workday, is in our case work system, is in the intelligent automation pieces, is going in this month, the digital portal this month, and built over the next six months in a pilot iteration. So that end-to-end joining up, we will have that. But each of the pieces that we're putting in will incrementally take us there. And I think that's really that we've got several layers of that digitisation, we've got the the technology implementation being safe and secure and sensible. So the workday implementation was really quite exemplary, we put it in in a year, and fully remote and the first first implementation of that globally. Not bad for a small organisation. So there's the implementation layer, then there's that process that's joined up so that integration, technical integration that's working. And then there's the layers on top that say okay, now with this additional insight, I'm going to give you this dashboard with this information that you haven't had before. Who is looking at it? And how, and what are the steps to exploit the information that's been had, in that iterative way till we get to that, almost press a button and it gives you work schedule for the day, step that we will get to, we will be able to get to. So, of course, alongside all this technology, and making sure that we're using data in in a compliant manner, and again, that piece of work on how we hold the data, was key is that, that understanding that data literacy in the organisation, how we serve up information in a clearer way, with our data strategy. And then for my business colleagues, the extra new roles that they need to be able to work with, this enriched information, yes? So that there's all these controls, and governance to manage change. So at the moment, we have change pipelines and platforms on our casework system that's improving it continuously. It's a SaaS platform, of course. But the governance layer that says the next process journey that we're going to take end-to-end is a bigger, that layer sits across the top of that, and you need all the integration pieces and an understanding at your executive level, that these steps are joined together. So on the one hand, it's more profound when you make the change. But on the other, you have to consider more points to get a process to flow through, because you’ve got to change your digital channel, make sure your non digital channels are keeping steps or the customer experiences safe, make sure you don't upset your automation fees, the case work's all linked in, and flow it through. So, it's a more complicated change to make, and a more profound thing to decide. So you need that additional layer of governance, with a small 'g', and understanding and collaboration. And changing the way of working, and thinking with people who are more used to a project way of working, is part of the journey that we're on.

Rory

So, that successful transformation is not just a case of identifying what needs to be transformed, what needs to be automated, what needs to be combined, but also very precise strategy of the order and the years-long rollout. So, as you pointed out, not to disrupt services for customers, not disrupt things unnecessarily in the automation space, and also for employees?

Nicola

Indeed, that's it in a nutshell, Rory, we keep running the way we are, we add this extra capability. So basically, I see it as adding more and more services. So we need to ensure that there are people to consume the services; I sometimes think about my lovely smartphone, and all the functions and features that come out. And they have the big events, which people get excited about. And I'm probably not adopting and using all the features and keeping up. So you know, am I getting the most out of my phone? Probably not, even though some of the new features are really quite smart and quite exciting. So, you know, this is, again, back to the point that I was making earlier that you can be successful as a technology leader with your lovely technology and look, you know, we're going to the cloud, we're coming out of our data centres, let's think about IT is also a customer, you know, our automated patching, our better security posture, more information there. I mean, what's not to like? So you can be good at all that stuff. But if you haven't taken your business with you and thought about your adoption strategy. So in my team, we have now adoption, people who are in adoption, my business relationship management function is bigger and wider. We have more business partnering, we're helping more in the insights and reports, we are designing the reports. We're cataloguing them, we're giving people not just the report, but also information about how and where to use it. So, if that's slightly unusual for technology function, but we actually designed the operation, reporting back to the board with the information that's then used, because we've got knowledge and understanding about those things within my function. So my function goes from the technology side all the way through to the use, and adoption, and exploitation. So we advocate the use of the innovation services on Workday. We're helping people understand, for an employee experience, yes, you can use Workday everywhere you can use the systems. It's actually starting to engage again with technology. I see it not just as an easier way of transacting some of their HR processes, but also for getting folk more technically literate, and more data literate. That's a problem for me and my colleagues, it's not just "it's a technology business, you consume it". That's not the game we're in at all.

Rory

And on that point of identifying the services that you can offer, but then what actually going to be used by customers, you mentioned near the start of the episode, that you don't get many return customers, tha by the very nature of the Ombudsman Service, its customers seeking for a claim to be settled. And hopefully, if everything goes right, they aren't returning. Do you think counter intuitively, that sort of helps you focus on a more universal experience? Because you aren't getting repeat customers, you're almost freed from the the trap that some businesses fall into, in that they're focusing too much on providing services just within their narrow focus?

Nicola

It certainly feels and looks more like an efficiency and service for a journey, because I'm not selling anything to anybody. There's that whole layer in a retail space, where you're trying to identify what they're looking at, where they're clicking, you know, I'm interested in where they're clicking to make sure that journey is as smooth and lovely as possible. And if people are falling out, what can I do to improve the process? So my focus is very, very simple in one way, that I only have one objective is to make that whole process as as as easy to navigate for our consumers as possible. And indeed, the banks, again, I say the banks, but the financial sector. You might think it's the big players up there, but actually, they account for about 30% of the complaints. And the rest is a large number of really quite small businesses, and some of them really small, independent financial advisors might be in there, so quite small businesses. They also need to be able to, you know, "oh, gosh, I've got a complaint with the ombudsman, oh what do I do? How do I interact?" Whereas, of course, the bigger players you have established relationships with. So it's on both sides, that we need to make that as easy as possible, because if we do, then we shorten the time that we can assemble the information, if you recall, part of the doing a good fair thing is to understand all the elements, all the relevant elements around a case, so you need to assemble all the information from the consumer and from the business, and making that as easy as possible. So that you can pull the stuff together to make your view is it's very, very important. So it's a very single use case or requirements. And much easier, I think, than some of my retail colleagues that deal with digital customer journeys.

Rory

Absolutely. So we've talked about some of these goals for 2022, things that are underway, like the digital portal. Are these carrying across into 2023? And if not, do you have predefined goals for 2023 that are separate? Or is it this the same continuation, with the sort of step-by-step process of digital transformation of the Ombudsman Service?

Nicola

Well, that's a good question. Our fiscal year end, is that March tax year end, not the calendar year end, and our investment cycles, it sits across the year. So I will say that 2022 largely concludes the end of our foundation investment for those building blocks. And the 2023-4 year is around that integration, exploitation and adoption agenda. So, we are moving and shifting our investment focus, and our resource focus a little bit away from doing projects. I mean, these projects are difficult to do, you know, putting in a new CRM system or Workday or digital platform. These are not, you know, people have struggled with that and coming out of our data centres, these things are, there's a lot, you know, there's a lot of —

Rory

You can't trip over and, you know, digitally transform a service.

Nicola

You know, we've sort of got now, we've got those components in place. So next year, we have a couple of goals, we will be using, adopting, adopting Adaptive, remember that one, Workday to enhance our workforce planning. So there's a project that is a project, but if you look at all the other projects and the things we're doing, it's all about dropping those capabilities into that cadence of backlog, the continuous improvement, with that integration layer so that we're going okay we're now going to pick this process. So we drop from dropping projects into, okay, let's pick this process and really streamline it, let's go almost horizontally down the problem stack rather than these sort of siloed efforts. So as an organisation, we're flipping from, at a macro level, project, tick, process, go. And that whole piece about driving value, which is why that whole integration, and conversation with our business colleagues and working with them in that seamless way, and getting people really comfortable with working with the intelligent automation bots, and those things, so that understanding that, it's not perfect, there will be exceptions. So you always need your people to manage the things that the automation can't, of course you do, it's not going to automate everything. So that that's the journey we're going on. And that, what success would look like, at the end of next year, would be that the, continuous change, that cadence, was really starting to hum along and people would be lined up against that roadmap of that gradual change. And, also making sure that as we deliver that, that the opportunities are then turned into that that shorter timeline, or greater productivity, or more consistent results, so that you can see that trend of continuous improvement in terms of our service. Because, you know, we should be fast, fast, free and fair, and you know, faster access to justice. And if we take too long, we've had queues, no secret, and cases that aren't resolved in a minute, either. So let's, make the whole service move more quickly, but keeping that eye on that quality. And so that's what I see for next year. And then the adoption journey, I think, is fascinating, because we always talk about technology, but again, technology without using technology is just lovely, shiny technology. I don't want to have conversations about applications, I want to have conversations about what we've done with the applications. I think that's more powerful.

Rory

And on that topic of what you've done with the applications, and also on the point of having to change work culture to reflect automation, and not just sort of piling automation on top of existing work culture. On a broader point about digital transformation something that digital transformation has been credited with, is opening doors for diversity. Increasing job opportunities for people with disabilities, but also potentially changing patterns, like the working day are those. The kind of discussions going on right now in the Ombudsman Service?

Nicola

Well I think, okay, so see around the diversity and inclusion, which is terribly important. It's very, very important for our casework colleagues, and they do a fantastic job to have understanding and empathy with consumers. And I don't mean, we're not, we're not consumer, we advocates. We but it's helpful. If you can understand when people are talking to you that experiences and of course, we have some, you know, difficult and distressing cases where you've got, you know, issues with financial coercion and so on in relationships, or, you know, but vulnerability or people. You've got really quite serious outcomes depending on our decisions. So, being able to to understand what it feels like to not have too much money or to have elderly parents, you've been scammed out of stuff, etc. It's very important in the way that we can communicate and relate to and therefore understand the essence of the case. So having a range of backgrounds, and people is very important to us. So, the diversity and inclusion culture in the Ombudsman Service is very strong. We've done a lot around recruitment in terms of blind, CV sifting, and those types of of things, we have a very supportive and active set of workplace, adapt adaptations, and I think having worked elsewhere higher number of people who have those technical workplace adapt adaptations that we support, which is great. Obviously we are sort of office-based organisations. So some people with some disabilities are more able to work in this environment, because maybe mobility issues and so on are easier to accommodate. So we have those things happening in the service, and a very strong set of networks where we the networks are really there to help share and inform and include. So it's not the faith network, for that faith, it's that faith network to explain about, you know, ways that certain cultures, or faiths treat money or things need to be understood in that area. So I think we, you know, is a very diverse organisation, and hopefully, as inclusive as as we can make it.

Rory

Fantastic. And then, just sort of generally on the point of those changing workloads, with the landscape of the kind of complaints that you're getting coming through. FinTech, you mentioned earlier just sort of looking forward into the future; are you seeing sort of growing demand with FinTech increasing pressures through complaints around FinTech? Is that something that you're anticipating, when you're factoring in your digital strategy?

Nicola

Absolutely. But it's interesting because I took a really good look at this when I came in, and have been to various conferences and so on on the topic. And when I just distil it down to the ‘so what’ for the Ombudsman Service? And the so there are two ways that Fintech has the effect, which is the common outset of shortening the life cycle of a product introduction, and making perhaps products more granular. So, If you have a more stable, you'd have just one type of mortgage because it's quite difficult to change it. And so you get used to it. If you've got Fintech, allowing more niche products to be tried, and so on, and the speed to put a product out and all them variate. So, instead of getting imagined a diet of, you know, bulks of one type of thing against, you know, so few products out there, you get more smaller amounts, for more granular pieces. So to some extent I'd say it puts the, not the complexity, but that the uniqueness of the cases goes up rather than something that is slightly more standard. So you need that ever more clear understanding of the precise nature of the product. So for us, this makes our incoming demand a little bit less standard, and that's the challenge. And obviously, there are things around, use of algorithms and the fact, the fairness of the product of it's been served up or denied for folk and that's an interesting area to consider our view, seeing that manifest and we are grappling with with understanding that. Our approach to new stuff is considered, and usually a lead decision is taken, about how we're going to to think about this new thing, and we communicate that out and it can be useful for business, to understand how we would think about a new product that they're introducing or have introduced.

Rory

Fantastic. Nicola, thanks so much for being on the show.

Nicola

Rory, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much.

Rory

You can find links to all of the topics we've spoken about today in the show notes and even more on our website at itpro.co.uk.

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We'll be back next week with more insight from the world of IT but until then, goodbye.

In 2021, organisations continued to embrace modernisation initiatives to improve agility and reduce administrative costs. Over the past year, companies have continued to deploy low-code environments to simplify integration processes, reduce costs, enable business users, and redeploy developers to more advanced areas and projects.

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It’s impossible to see the future, but modelling potential outcomes is powerful. Want to know how a driverless car will perform on a specific street in rare weather conditions or how an individual will react to a new drug or the impact of a larger train station on a city’s travel habits? You could wait and see – or you could ask a digital model to tell you.

Singapore is choosing the latter when it comes to everything from weather to solar panels to 5G rollouts. The country is the first to edge towards something approaching a so-called digital twin, in which all of Singapore is represented digitally to act as a starting point for virtual modelling – and perhaps even a reality-based metaverse.

Before zipping over to Singapore to examine how the island nation made a digital copy of itself, it’s worth taking a closer look at what we mean by digital twin. The idea originated in space engineering, with NASA attempting to test its spacecraft designs in extreme situations before they hurtled off the planet. In product design, a digital twin can be straightforward, a simple 3D virtual model of an object to better understand manufacturing, for example.

For training driverless cars, a virtual vehicle can be placed into the digital version of a city; the virtual twin of the car can then ‘drive’ through a simulation of scenarios it might not experience in its lifetime on actual roads. For healthcare, a virtual version of a person could reveal how personalised treatments impact the real patient. And with a city or a country, a digital twin offers a safe sandbox to model changes to weather, the impact of transport tweaks, and anything else urban planners would like to consider without high costs or major disruption.

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Mapping Singapore

As an island nation, Singapore is used to flash floods, but torrential rain in 2011 caused a series of damaging floods throughout the year, prompting the country to look at ways to fight back, especially with the worsening impact of climate change likely to exacerbate the problem. Alongside that challenge, local authorities had another problem: Singapore is a tiny nation with a dense population, meaning land use needs to be carefully considered. It’s pertinent especially with regards to why Singapore temporarily stopped building data centres, for instance.

To help figure out the regions most at risk from flooding, and better use scarce land, the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) created a 3D map of the entire country in incredible detail down to a tenth of a metre; it’s possible to see road lane markings. That first programme began in 2012, with aerial data collected in 2014 and again in 2019 to update the existing dataset.

The aerial data collection isn’t just about photos. Aircraft also carry LIDAR sensors that send out a laser pulse to capture 3D information such as the height of buildings. That extra data is necessary because Singapore has so many trees. “The ability for the laser pulse to penetrate through canopy is critical for Singapore,” says Teo Hui Ying, senior principal surveyor in SLA’s Survey & Geomatics Division, noting 47% of the country is covered by trees. “It allows us to generate a more accurate terrain map for the nation” than if trees were allowed to get in the way.

Plus, laser scanning can also be used within buildings, giving the dataset internal properties for some state buildings. “With the point clouds you can get a visualisation of a staircase in a building,” she says, or underground subway stations, a project the group is just starting to trial. The idea is that underground and above ground models could be combined to help map utilities and tunnels. After all, what makes up a city isn’t just what’s above ground and visible.

There’s another way to capture 3D data, notes Teo. The aircraft take photos vertically, looking straight down, but also at an oblique angle. “One aircraft model actually captures five images with very little exposure,” she explains. “That allows us to create realistic building models… and replicate the real world environment in 3D to facilitate simulation and analysis.”

Alongside that, beginning in 2015, the SLA began mobile mapping, with a camera mounted on a car, akin to what Google does with Street View. “It’s mounted on a vehicle that goes through public streets in Singapore capturing point clouds in 360-degrees,” said Teo. “This helps complement the ground information as airborne mapping has limitations.”

While that map was impressive, the two years required to collect the data and pull it all together meant it was already out of date, sparking a search for ways to more quickly update the imagery. In 2019, the country turned to infrastructure solution developer Bentley Systems’ mapping and digital twin software to organise images taken at street level as well as overhead. In all, 25 terabytes of data was collected over 41 days, including 160,000 high-res aerial photos, in order to create a digital map of Singapore that’s accurate to 10cm. In all, it took eight months – much faster than the previous effort but also more detailed and significantly cheaper at £19.5 million under budget.

Use cases for a national digital twin

Singapore built the map with a few key use cases in mind – notably land management and flood avoidance – but the aim was to create a product that could be used by multiple agencies in different, unexpected ways, including a terrain and obstacle map for flights in the area, national park tree mapping, and even future 5G deployment. “With the approach developed once, used by many, we aim to create reliable, high resolution and consistent data to meet multiple agencies’ requirements,” she says, stressing the importance of open standards for future data sharing.

For example, this detailed map was used to build a model to help plan solar energy rollouts, helping the government decide where to put solar panels. Researchers were able to discern where on a specific building’s rooftop a panel should be placed to optimise energy collection. “The map helps Singapore find out which buildings can harness solar potential the most,” she says.

Other ideas include building design, to see how a new development will impact existing structures. “3D building models have a lot of urban use cases,” she said. “If there is a new development, we can see how it will affect the surrounding area in terms of shadows, for example.”

Plus, such a detailed map can be used to help autonomous vehicles navigate the country, easing the rollout of driverless cars and other robotics. “High resolution street maps are something that is in progress and we are looking at targeting the autonomous vehicle and robotics industry,” she says, saying another future use case could be managing traffic of unmanned aerial vehicles, such as drones. “With testing UAV delivery and so on, you need very accurate 3D maps to ensure that the unmanned aerial vehicles are able to do their take-off and manoeuvres.”

And then there’s the metaverse. The tech catchphrase of the moment – thanks in large part to Facebook rebranding as Meta – means a digital map in 3D of a city, including interiors of buildings, could one day be visited by our avatars. “It’s something we’ve started to look at recently, and we’re working on small pilots with our 3D mapping data,” Teo says.

This multipurposing means the data must be shared between agencies, which is more complicated than it sounds. Not only are the data sets huge, meaning it’s not trivial to download or replicate, but they’re sensitive in terms of national security. “This mapping exercise takes in the whole of Singapore and there are a lot of security facilities,” she explained. Because of that, “all of the processing is done in a secure area.”

Instead, the data is hosted in the cloud, where it can be accessed and used. Plus, that means the SLA can generate smaller slices of data, such as a topographic map of an area, for a specific use case. “It seems very silly to actually pass the dataset to them because it contains more than 20TB of data,” she added.

Does a digital map make for a true digital twin?

While impressive – and handy – is this project an example of a highly detailed digital map or a true digital twin? What makes the latter is the ability to be updated, but this system still takes months to do so, meaning it’s inherently out of date. “We mention this as a digital twin, but at the same time we have to humbly say that we may not be there yet,” she says. “We are still in a development stage.”

She admits it’s a question of semantics, with some in the industry arguing a digital twin needs live data. “At the moment, ours is very much a snapshot,” she says. “What we have captured is a moment in time.”

The advent of real-time sensors and live cameras could change that, says Teo, but that’s no easy task. “We keep a lookout on new technologies that evolve with time,” she says. “Remote sensing would allow us to find out changes in between times when we fly. We can’t fly every year so we would need to adopt other technologies to help us detect the changes.”

And that’s just the technology to gather the data. In addition, the SLA would need software to manage the new data and compare for changes. Teo explains the aim is to use automation more in the future to build models out with less human intervention.

That’s why city or country-wide digital twins won’t be common anytime soon – they’re hard work. Instead, digital twins are more likely to be developed for specific pieces of infrastructure. Bentley Systems has created digital twins for a route upgrade for the Transpennine train line, a Chinese solar plant, and bridges in Minnesota, for example.

Still, cities are pushing ahead with the idea of capturing every nook and cranny in order to improve planning. Orlando, Florida is working with gaming giant Unity on a 3D model of the city to be used to showcase the region to investors, as well as urban planning, and Las Vegas unveiled at this year’s CES the first stage of a digital twin project with Cityzenity to help boost sustainability efforts. While it’s so far limited to a small area of its downtown core, unlike Singapore this is a live model with real-time data collected through sensors watching traffic, air quality and more.

It’s clear digital twins, be they city wide or limited to a specific infrastructure set, can help urban planners, but more data more often will be needed first. Singapore’s combination of aerial photography and LIDAR paired with street-level scanning shows one way forward, but the next step is sensors to automate updating the dataset. Then Singapore could truly be the world’s first country with a digital twin, enabling digital cars, drone deliveries and the metaverse – in short, letting all the future tech we keep talking about finally actually happen.

Procore has teamed with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to better channel construction data into facility operations.

Under the deal, Procore will leverage AWS’ IoT TwinMaker to accelerate the creation of digital twins for buildings, factories, industrial equipment, and production lines.

Specifically, AWS IoT TwinMaker will enable Procore data to be incorporated from the design and construction stages into operations.

Project owners will be able to incorporate as-built information from Procore with real-time data sources, including equipment sensors and video feeds.

Besides streamlining operations and maintenance, the aggregated information allows for lifecycle analysis of portfolio assets. Built-in connectors for integration paired with sensors, 3D visualization, and downstream data analytics further enhance the built environment.

“We’re very excited about our partnership with AWS. Roughly 80% of the lifecycle cost of a project is in the operations phase,” said Tiffany LaBruno, product director at Procore.

“With this partnership, we can leverage Procore’s course of construction data during that operations phase to help owners reduce costs, optimize performance, and be better prepared for future project needs,” added LaBruno.

What exactly is “app modernisation”? In its simplest form, it’s the process of updating an app so that it can be maintained, extended, deployed and managed in a way that allows the app to meet your current and future needs.

Application modernisation opens the door to several business and technical benefits for your organisation.

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With the transformation of the digital workplace, business leaders ensuring their organisations are future-proof are the ones equipping their teams with the tools to work from anywhere, and seeing employee satisfaction and productivity on the rise.

To help you rethink your digital workspace, there are six core technology capabilities to consider.

Download this resource to learn more about these capabilities and how you can accelerate your digital transformation to deliver the best possible experiences for your employees and customers.

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The last few years have seen a huge shift in the way we consume products and services. From streaming music to leasing cars, we are moving away from owning things and towards paying a monthly cost for using exactly what we need.

PC as a Service (PCaaS) is a modern consumption model for computers, allowing you to access the latest in computing technology, with installation and support included, for an affordable fixed monthly fee.

Did you know Dell enables over 300,000 classrooms worldwide?

Discover Dell PC as a Service powered by Intel® technology with Windows 11 Pro.

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Through a period of unprecedented disruption to the sector, education leaders, teachers and families have worked tirelessly to uphold the continuity of learning for students everywhere. The power of technology to support education wherever it must take place has been highlighted like never before during this period, but so have key challenges.

The need to ensure inclusivity of access to digital learning; the need to support teachers with the skills to thrive with new technologies; the need to protect against emerging cyber threats; and the need to be future-ready in order to meet disruption and seize new learning opportunities; all these have become ever more urgent priorities.

In this article, Dell Technologies will look at the biggest technology challenges, trends and opportunities impacting the education sector today and draw on insights from our experts – and those of our partners at Microsoft and Intel – to share best practices that will help educators face the future with confidence.

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The events of 2020 and early 2021 have challenged educators across the UK to an unprecedented level, but they have also shown the remarkable resilience and resourcefulness of people.

Education authorities, higher education leaders, teachers, staff and parents have worked tirelessly to uphold the continuity of education and ensure that the prospects, dreams and ambitions of every student are not interrupted.

The experience has, however, highlighted a digital divide between those students who have access to the devices, tools and connectivity to continue education remotely and those who do not. Governments and institutions have made immediate investments to address this issue, but are mindful that a sustainable, long-term solution is now needed.

Dell Technologies is fully aligned to this agenda. As a key part of the education ecosystem, we are dedicated to being the trusted digital partner educators can rely on to enable anytime, anywhere learning for all.

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No matter what the next wave of change brings, and regardless of how intensely the pace of change accelerates, the CIO of the future must be a Connected CIO. Using technology as a catalyst, the Connected CIO is uniquely equipped to help their organisations seize the opportunity to disrupt the status quo and transform.

The most successful organisations are already thinking digital-first and re-imagining how to differentiate with technology, and now is the time for CIOs to optimise the business for continued success.

Download this paper from Dell Technologies and Intel® to learn more.

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Paper was a mainstay of record keeping for millennia – but it takes up a lot of space, is hard to sort through quickly and is vulnerable to damage. In recent years, the reality of a wholly paperless office has come to pass, but digitisation can still be held back by budgetary and circumstantial limitations.

This report lays out three clear steps for a 90-day project of digitisation that will help your business to plan and execute the move to a paperless model while circumventing the most common roadblocks.

Download now to realise the benefits of going paperless and execute digitisation without any loss of information.

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Our new ways of working demand that we invest in digital proficiency for everyone.

The huge shift towards hybrid working in recent years means that there is a growing gap between people with digital skills and those without. To keep up with digital transformation and build a better working future, people need to develop digital proficiency across the board.

This whitepaper explores the state of the public sector in this new hybrid working world and how the cloud can be used to narrow the skills gap standing in the way of transformation.

Download now to learn how to support public sector staff and boost retention in our increasingly digitised environment.

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A recent study by the IDC found that the organisations that were increasing their revenue the most were the ones that had invested more heavily in new technology solutions. Not only that, it was noted that this has been enabled through flexible payment options, allowing for sustainable, flexible and secure IT.

The companies that are considered to be the digital leaders have shown themselves to adopt a wide range of digital platforms across their transformation, including AIOps, multi cloud, automation and digital trust.

Download this resource now to discover the UK IT infrastructure priorities for 2022, and why digital resilience is critical for delivering exceptional experiences.

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The digital age has proved to be a learning experience for the construction industry, which has traditionally been tech-resistant, however as new ideas and technologies have been adopted in recent years on pioneering projects, digital solutions are proving to save time and money.

With Covid-driven digital adoption predicted to be worth an additional £3 billion to the Construction sector by 2040, this whitepaper shares the latest findings from Centre for Economics and Business Research, looking at the business benefits of digital transformation in construction to the UK economy.

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With digital transformation driving innovation within businesses, the mainframe has progressed to a transformative part of the IT infrastructure thanks to the evolution of hardware and software.

Organisations leveraging their mainframe capabilities along with other new technologies and tools have reported improved system security and agility, along with business performance.

Download this study from IDC to see how, by delivering a "transformative mainframe" platform enables better integration across IT operations for greater customer experiences.

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To achieve exceptional customer experiences, on budget and in good time, you need to ensure your application performance is optimal, with full visibility of your app health.

Unfortunately, with the complexities of the modern IT environment and the rise of cloud-based applications, IT teams can struggle with the vast number of incidents and alerts to respond to and resolve.

Download this resource to realise optimal app performance, reduce IT costs and gain more time for innovation with AIOps, relieving any resource issues.

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As we navigate the changes brought about by the digital revolution, we see the role of the enterprise CFO changing. In fact, the digital world requires us to think very differently about what a CFO does.

In this ebook, AWS Enterprise Strategist Mark Schwartz compares the “old” and the “new” ways of defining what a CFO does in order to identify the traits of today's digital CFO. Though different CFOs and their enterprises have treated the role differently, it’s clear that the CFO has become central to driving the digital performance of the enterprise.

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Avast has signed a definitive agreement to acquire self-sovereign digital identity expert Evernym.

Keeping personal information out of centralized databases, Evernym's approach to digital identity offers individuals greater control over their digital footprint.

Besides enabling the International Air Transport Association (IATA) Travel Pass, Evernym's technology supports Bonifi's MemberPass solution for community financial institutions.

A decentralized or self-sovereign identity model gives users full control over their information, allowing them to choose what information they share and with whom, eliminating the need for passwords, individual accounts, and other forms of authentication that are susceptible to hacking, phishing, and interception.

This way, users' data is protected from being monetized by third parties, compromised by hackers, or abused by analytics companies.

Evernym CEO Steve Havas said: "Since its founding, Evernym has been a major catalyst in the global movement towards decentralized identity.

"We have led the development of new identity standards, built the world's first decentralized identity network, and launched a globally leading platform for enabling individuals to securely share their personal information.

“Combining our decentralized identity leadership with Avast's globally trusted reputation for protecting individuals is a perfect combination to help bring back privacy and trust in everyone's digital interactions everywhere, every time."

Notable verifiable credentials solutions from Evernym include Verity, Connect.Me, and Mobile SDK and White Label App.

The Avast-Evernym acquisition deal is slated to close by mid-December and the general availability of Evernym-based products is scheduled for 2022.

Avast CEO Ondrej Vlcek said: "Consumer trust in the online world has been critically compromised. Over 60% of the world's population has internet access today yet we don't have adequate provisions in place for these people to prove who they are online.”

“The result is that identity theft, online fraud and account takeovers are growing rapidly, as does mass-scale digital tracking and surveillance. Our vision for digital freedom is to enable people to manage and retain control over their personal data so that they can interact and transact safely, privately and with confidence.

"Decentralized digital identities are a key component of that vision. Adding Evernym's groundbreaking self-sovereign identity technology to our offering enables us to address this area and is a huge step forward in the realization of a digital world where decentralized, portable identities are available universally and globally."

The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) is set to receive $41.9 million in funding to digitise 240,000 of the nation’s at-risk audiovisual heritage items.

The funding is for four years and will help digitise audiovisual content held across eight National Collecting Institutions (NCIs). It will also allow the NFSA to double its current video and audio digitisation efforts, ensuring critical moments in Australia’s memory are preserved for generations to come, said NFSA.

The NFSA plans to expand its digital storage capacity from six petabytes to 165 petabytes over the four years and will boost its storage and cyber security to protect vulnerable systems from cyber attacks.

It will also create an off-site data centre to provide improved security and a world-leading disaster recovery capability.

The seven other NCIs to benefit are the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), Australian National Maritime Museum, Australian War Memorial, National Gallery of Australia, National Library of Australia, National Museum of Australia, and Questacon.

“The stories and memories these materials contain provide us with an immediate connection to our lived past, as well as insights into our national character and where we might be heading,” said NFSA chief executive officer Patrick McIntyre.

“And audiovisual media keep these stories alive in uniquely vital and moving ways. This boost in funding will allow us to get ahead of the risks of obsolete playback equipment and deteriorating tape formats.”

In 2020, the NFSA received a funding boost of $5.5 million to kickstart a critical project to digitise some of its audio and magnetic tape collection to the highest archival standard, before it was lost forever. This new announcement extends the work to support the digitisation of all known at-risk audiovisual material held in the collection.

This comes after the government allocated $67.7 million to the National Archives of Australia in July to help the organisation preserve its at-risk records and overhaul its cyber security systems. The funding is going to be used to accelerate a four-year digitisation programme and measures to improve cyber-resilience capabilities.

The New South Wales (NSW) government is expanding its digital twin platform across the entire state as part of a $40 million (£21.2 million) investment.

The Spatial Digital Twin brings together data sources from across government including spatial, natural resources, and planning, and integrates it with real time feeds from sensors to provide insights for planners, designers, and decision makers across industry and government.

The digital twin system is an open platform that can visualise 3D and 4D data to generate plans for buildings, terrain, property boundaries, and utilities. In the last 12 months, the digital twin platform received 18 million requests for access to 3D datasets.

Initially launched in early 2020 for use across eight ‘high-growth’ council areas, the platform is set to be expanded across the whole state over the next two years.

Council areas of Blue Mountains, Camden, Campbelltown, Fairfield, Hawkesbury, Liverpool, Penrith, and Wollondilly have all been part of the initial rollout.

“This investment will cement NSW’s position as the world leader when it comes to Spatial Digital Twin technology,” said Victor Dominello, minister for Digital and Customer Service. “This digital architecture makes it possible to visualise a development digitally before it is physically built, making it easier to plan and predict outcomes of infrastructure projects, right down to viewing how shadows fall, or how much traffic is in an area.”

The twin is part of the newly launched Live.NSW programme, which aims to develop a new platform, set to launch in early 2022, to allow communities to search for information based on their needs and places of interest. Dominello said it would bring information together to inform people about new developments, such as local schools or a proposed hospital, creating a snapshot of what exists and what is planned.

The funding for the project came from the NSW Digital Restart Fund (DRF), which is set to spend $2.1 billion across four years to invest into digital transformation projects.

The NSW Spatial Digital Twin was originally developed by CSIRO, the country’s science agency, and NSW Department of Customer Service’s Spatial Services. It was introduced to help planners, developers, and policymakers make more informed decisions, saving costs and creating efficiencies.

NSW isn’t the only state investing in digital twins, as Victoria announced in July it would spend $35.2 million to deliver Digital Twin Victoria. This would provide a digital replica of the state modelled on a successful pilot project that created a digital twin for the country’s largest urban renewal project. The government said it would transform planning and unlock efficiencies from the start to finish of infrastructure projects and help drive the state’s economic recovery.

As companies across the world pivoted towards remote work during the pandemic, one country had already grasped the importance of providing digital services from afar. New Zealand has been a quiet innovator when it comes to digital trade and implementing a digital economy that reaches across the globe. Whether this is the creation of the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA) last year between Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore, or the fact that tech giants like Amazon and Google are expanding into the country, it’s slowly being noticed as a technological innovator.

Although the nation has tended to favour its agriculture sector in the past, New Zealand is now trying to pivot this market focus towards technology as it underlines the importance of this industry in building its future.

Open for business

Out of the 22 APAC countries analysed in the upcoming Digital Trade Integration Index, a soon to be released report from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP), New Zealand is the most open country when it comes to digital trade, followed by Hong Kong and Singapore. More dated analysis from the European Centre for International Political Economy, examining digital trade restrictiveness, also puts New Zealand at the top of the ranking across 64 countries, says Martina Francesca Ferracane, a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute.

Google has expanded into New Zealand with an office in Auckland

Ferracane underlines that New Zealand shows open policies in all components of digital trade. She says that there are virtually no restrictions for trading ICT goods and online services can be provided freely across borders with no restrictions, except for some minor barriers relating to local storage of specific types of data.

Investment in sectors relevant for digital trade is liberalised, and the country has strong data protection and consumer protection frameworks, which Ferracane says are crucial to supporting digital trade. The country also implements safe harbour for intermediaries, ensuring legal certainty for platforms.

“This open approach enables companies to engage in digital trade, both in the country and across the globe, without extra costs or impediments,” adds Ferracane. “Therefore, companies can be more efficient and grow faster, exploiting the opportunities offered by the digital transformation.”

Ferracane highlights that a country like New Zealand is an ideal location for companies that want to have the freedom and space to innovate, but at the same time want to get quick access to customers from all over the world. She underlines the country has also developed innovative partnerships in the form of DEPA to promote interoperability between different regimes and address the new issues brought about by digitalisation. This, in turn, supports companies to export their services from New Zealand to the rest of the world, she says.

In the weightless economy, distance becomes no object

The tech sector is the fastest-growing sector in New Zealand, bringing in over $7 billion in export revenue and employing more than 40,000 people, says Michael Murphy, head of tech at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE), a government agency charged with helping New Zealand companies to grow internationally.

He says the growing success of the sector is helping to overcome some of the more traditional challenges the country has faced in terms of its perceived distance from critical markets. In the weightless economy, distance becomes no object, underlines Murphy.

“As the world continues to evolve, our size and distance become increasingly moot points,” says Murphy. “If the last 18 months have taught us anything, it’s that business remains resilient even when the ability to be physically close is impacted.”

New Zealand is attractive to global tech companies due to its size, he says. Although the country may appear “small” by some measures, it's because of its size, and the scale of its firms, that the country is able to pivot quickly and is highly adaptable, which is a huge advantage in the technology space, adds Murphy.

“Our isolation has driven us to become innovators, and we’ve had to be creative, practical, and ready to challenge convention,” he says. Murphy highlights that New Zealand is home to a number of world-leading companies and their products, including small business software from Xero, carbon recycling technology from LanzaTech, and aerospace manufacturer and small satellite launch service provider Rocket Lab.

Small business software company, Xero, is one of many companies New Zealand is home to

The country is also connected with most major global economies and has a highly advantageous time zone for international business. Murphy says it has an open, stable, and trusted economy that’s easy to do business with, which is one of the key reasons why the country is consistently ranked either first, second, or third in the World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ index.

Additionally, the government has a particularly strong commitment to its technology sector, while its workforce is well educated, creative, affordable, diverse, and cost-competitive by developed country standards, according to Murphy.

The need to digitise

Forbury, a commercial property market software company, embraces the concept of weightless export and digital trade, especially since over 90% of its customers are offshore, says Peter Rose, chief revenue officer at the company.

He says the fact that it has never stopped to consider the concept of New Zealand being open to digital trade speaks volumes, as the company has never faced any particular obstacles as a result of not having digital trading processes.

“We’ve never recognised the ‘digital economy’ as being any different from ‘the economy’,” says Rose. He underlines that New Zealand recognises the need to digitise, to promote the latest digital technology, and enhance the competitive advantage that comes from developing digital business and trade.

Considering the country sits at the bottom of the world and is geographically isolated from global markets, says Rose, weightless exports are an attractive and viable business proposition. The removal of geography in the digital arena is imperative for an isolated country like New Zealand to compete, and digital trade is not so much a nice to have but an absolute necessity.

Rose says that as countries are constantly competing for intellectual talent, New Zealand offers a range of attributes and advantages to attract such talent. This includes some of the easiest company setup processes in the world, a simple tax system that’s advantageous for entrepreneurs with no capital gains tax, and mature seed and venture capital industries that offer a pool of capital. New Zealand also consistently ranks in the top one or two for its anti-corruption environment, has top local tech talent, and offers a lifestyle that is difficult to replicate elsewhere. What’s more, tech companies are recognised as high-quality employers and welcomed in the country with numerous government and non-government support services.

Although DEPA has not directly affected Murphy’s business, he says the trade agreement recognises that New Zealand has to get ahead of the game and collaborate with other forward-thinking nations to create a competitive advantage.

New Zealand's legislators have cultivated one of the easiest company setup processes in the world

“Along with trade agreements, New Zealand is trying to create relationships that oil the wheels of commerce for a country with some natural geographic obstacles that are rapidly becoming potential advantages as the digital revolution overtakes and geographic distance becomes irrelevant,” he explains.

The country seems to be positioning itself as a leader when it comes to digital trade, and this could be an advantage as more nations around the world realise the importance of this industry and look to enter DEPA. New Zealand has understood the need for digital transformation in order to survive, enabling it to act first and get ahead of competitors, although it’s too early to tell whether it’ll hold onto this lead.

Cloud-based infrastructures were already in use before the pandemic, but there was significant acceleration in adoption as a result of it.

This study looks at the impact of this increased demand for digitisation and cloud use globally, surveying 2,600 respondents in 10 countries, to establish what security strategies and controls were implemented for these new cloud services and networks.

Download this report to learn how the organisations studied in Europe were able to manage their security through the use of encryption, and why data breaches in Europe were notably higher than the global average.

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The impact of the global pandemic meant that customer trust in brands to ensure their security in an increasingly online world was vital, particularly with the rise in ransomware and other cyber threats during that time.

Security starts with trust, and having an understanding of what partners and systems your organisation can trust with your sensitive data, therefore having effective security tools and policies in place is also key.

Download this study for a better understanding of:

• How much trust is built and broken in the digital world
• How much do we trust when only engaging with others through screens
• What external factors in digital channels challenge our trust
• Are brands and businesses doing enough to build trust

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Automation, online ordering and ghosts kitchens are some of the trends we saw in 2021 which you may want to participate in to support your hospitality business.

This whitepaper looks at the impact of the pandemic and an uncertain economy on the hospitality industry. Download it now to see:

• How slowed economic growth has hit restaurants
• How online ordering technologies can improve efficiency
• The growth of ingredient management technology

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Gain a better understanding of the evolution of businesses adopting digital self-service technologies, from Chipotle to Starbucks, and see how the pandemic has put pressure on the need for such tech.

This whitepaper will show you:

• Statistics on implementation of digital ordering tech
• Case studies with Center Parcs and the Chesterford Group
• Predictions for where this service will go next

Download it now for your three next steps for progressing digital ordering in your hospitality business and start improving efficiency and the customer experience today.

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Make sure your hospitality business gets the most out of its Pay at Table solution so you can deliver memorable customer experiences that keep your business competitive.

This whitepaper helps you see how your solution fits in with your wider digital strategy so you can better measure its success.

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Digital literacy is becoming as important as reading and writing for young people’s future life prospects, a new report from Vodafone has found.

Limited access to an internet-connected device, or a lack of skills to use one, is preventing those entering the job market from attending online lessons or exams, applying for jobs, and gaining the necessary digital skills for many of today’s roles.

Almost a third (29%) of respondents polled by Vodafone and WPI Strategy said that they had to share a laptop, tablet or PC for work, education or leisure in the past year, with families having to choose which child gets to attend an online class. This number was higher among those aged between 18 and 24, with one in two (50%) being forced to share a device, resulting in limited access to education or work prospects.

In the last year, it's not only education and working that has shifted online. With the UK government aiming to digitise many of its services, those with limited access to a device or digital skills are finding it increasingly difficult to renew their passport or driving licence, or to view National Insurance contributions and HMRC correspondence. Vodafone’s report found that 19% respondents don’t have access to essential online public services, with a quarter (25%) saying they only had access some of the time.

The disparity was especially evident when comparing socio-economic groups: 68% of those in the lowest socio-economic group said they had access to essential services, while those in the most privileged had the highest rate of access at 89%.

Commenting on the findings, Vodafone UK CEO Ahmed Essam said that “the consequences of living without connectivity or the skills needed to access digital services are huge”.

“Digital literacy is essential to the life chances of everyone in the UK. Access to technology, connectivity and the digital skills needed for many of today’s jobs is critical,” he said, adding that Vodafone is calling on “the Government, businesses, charity partners and civil society to work together to create a blueprint to address the digital divide once and for all”.

Julian Knight MP, chair of the DCMS Select Committee and Chair of the APPG for New and Advanced Technologies, said that he welcomes Vodafone’s report “for opening up the discussion on improving digital skills and access”.

“It is now clearer than ever that digital skills and the ability to be connected is a vital part of our day-to-day lives. The pandemic has shown how all of us rely on the online world to stay connected as school children had their lessons online, parts of the workforce worked remotely and we used the internet to stay connected to loved ones,” he added.

2020 was an unprecedented year for security teams amid the global health crisis. The threat landscape continues to evolve as malicious actors quickly adapt to the changing environment and are finding new ways to exploit your vulnerabilities. It is now more critical than ever to protect your workforce at the endpoint no matter where you are.

Legacy endpoint security tools have proven to be ineffective at preventing these sophisticated threats. It is time to consider a modern endpoint security solution to gain advantage over highly innovative attackers.

Download this eBook to gain insights into:

• 8 common endpoint security challenges and how they are solved by modernisation
• Benefits of modernising your endpoint security
• Why VMware Carbon Black Cloud is the easy answer to security challenges

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Remote working has affected all of us, forcing us to adapt our workspaces and overcome the new challenges it’s presented, mainly thanks to IT teams around the world and the new technologies available.

As we face the “new normal” and a new hybrid way of working, will the solutions brought into place with the Covid-19 pandemic continue to be sufficient in the future? Or is now the time for organisations to evaluate the best ways to enable continued productivity and staff engagement through technology?

Download this study, surveying over 1,000 office workers across the UK, and get a good understanding of how staff feel about the new world of work and what they think can help them thrive, so you can be better prepared.

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It’s more than likely that a hybrid working model is here to stay, following the abrupt anywhere working revolution brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. And not just for traditional businesses, as the education and healthcare sectors are also transforming the ways they work in order to enable more flexibility in how they collaborate.

In time, a majority of face to face meetings in physical meeting spaces will be replaced by hybrid meetings, with participants dialling in from a mixture of locations. So what should IT teams consider in their meeting room solutions?

Download this guide to learn the top five criteria IT professionals should look for when deploying and managing video conferencing solutions.

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Looking ahead to the future of the workplace, organisations are already preparing for further disruptions following the changes brought about by digitisation and automation in recent years.

The COVID-19 pandemic has sped up companies’ moves to digitise, forever changing how we all work. However, not all business owners may be ready for it.

Download this resource to understand:

• How video can aid employee collaboration
• Five key IT elements to consider for successful collaboration
• How to retain employee engagement and inclusivity

National Highways is set to develop a virtual twin of the UK's road network that can predict the time and location of potholes and other maintenance issues, as part of a wider plan to digitally transform the way the company handles maintenance.

The digital twin system will see drawings and static models replaced with digital versions that use live data to identify when maintenance is needed.

The project is being developed in collaboration with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the EU MSCA COFUND programme, construction and engineering company Costain, and the University of Cambridge.

National Highways hopes to combine “live” data from “intelligent materials” in the existing road surface to create a virtual road network. The government-owned company said that this will “dramatically reduce” the need for time consuming and costly on-site inspections, prevent unnecessary delays to drivers, and reduce the emissions generated by roadworks.

It also said it plans to use “self-healing” materials as part of new road systems that reduce the amount of maintenance required.

An £8.6 million EPSRC Digital Roads Prosperity Partnership grant and £6 million in funding from EU MSCA COFUND Future Roads Fellowships programme will support the project, the company has confirmed.

“It is high time the transportation infrastructure sector embraces digital transformation,” said Ioannis Brilakis from the University of Cambridge, principal investigator of the grants.

“We should strive to replace drawings and static 3D models with dynamic and data-rich digital twins, pdf documents with databases, file exchange with cloud permissions exchange, passive materials with smart materials able to sense and heal themselves, and automate all manual routine maintenance.”

This initiative comes as part of National Highways’ Digital Roads vision, which plans to introduce a range of technology to the UK's road system by 2025, including automated construction and “digitally enabled” workers.

National Highways said the vision supports the government’s ambition of "the UK being a world leader in shaping the future of transport" and supporting Britain’s growth.

The plans will help cut associated carbon emissions by around 50%, the company added, and help to meet the target of zero injuries or deaths on the network by 2040.

“From digital road models that can predict where maintenance is needed on the real-life road network, to self-repairing road surfaces, and automated cone laying machines, we’re committed to keeping the UK at the forefront of technological developments,” said roads minister Baroness Vere.

“The vision for Digital Roads also goes beyond 2025 and looks forward to 2050 and beyond. Freight platooning, personalised in-vehicle messaging as well as vehicles sharing data, and decluttered roads free from signage - these are some of the ambitions for the roads of the future.”

NHSX has published a new set of guidelines that aims to help NHS trusts embrace technology to further their digital transformation efforts.

The move follows a report from earlier this year which found that major technological innovations implemented in the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic need “further work" before they are locked-in.

Known as What Good Looks Like (WGLL), the new framework provides NHS managers with instructions on how to use digital technology in medical services – as well information about who should be paying for it.

NHSX hopes the WGLL guidelines will set a “common foundation that should be in place across the NHS”, from making it easier for patients to access online services to implementing the correct cyber security measures in order to avoid cyber attacks.

WGLL also calls for NHS trusts to make digital services, such as online access to care plans, test results, and electronic prescribing systems, easily-accessible across the whole of the UK, and not just in select locations.

This would help to reduce health inequalities as well as make work easier for frontline workers, whom, according to NHSX chief executive Matthew Gould, were a key part of developing the guidelines:

“They have been produced following extensive consultations with the frontline, and will continue to change as we get more feedback. They are designed to be helpful, empowering and clear. They set out what they should be driving towards, and how they will need to pay for it,” he said.

The NHSX has also published a set of proposals on how to tackle the obstacles in digital technology investments. Known as Who Pays For What, it aims to solve issues such as the uncertainties over funding sources, digital transformation costs, and lack of understanding of the benefits of digital investment.

The NHSX is proposing changes in financial and payments policies in 2021 to 2022 as well as seeking to encourage the uptake of established technologies and promote the adoption of emerging innovations.

It also announced that it’s bringing together multiple existing funding pots into one national application process, in order to simplify the bidding process and make funds more equally-distributed.

Commenting on today’s news, NHSX CIO Sonia Patel said that she hopes that “these resources are both empowering and enabling in terms of understanding the destination we commonly want to reach across the nation with digital transformation”.

“Talking to leaders across the NHS, there is a renewed belief and confidence in the digital and data agenda and increasing awareness of the importance it holds in supporting a modern NHS,” she added.