360° Public Services and Security in the Age of Digitalization – online and offline

From computerization to digitalization

Getting the most from processes and data

Currently: The first steps towards digitalization have been taken: several paper processes have been converted to digital processes. While this has yet to arouse much enthusiasm among the general public, it nevertheless provides the technical and organizational cornerstone for digital transformation. With no joint or coordinated approaches in sight, more significant progress remains elusive. What remains are numerous non-digitalized processes that hinder workflows, complicate operations and thus lead to frustration. Local use – keyword: own data centers and on-prem solutions may have been phased out, but they still dominate thinking. These data silos and applications make the customer experience different from one authority to the next. This is perceived as complicated, inconsistent and not customer-friendly. Digitization has been going on for decades, but digitalization projects only appear in the media as expensive and negative. This is often due to the burden on business and IT caused by complex and long-term projects. It has a direct impact on the attractiveness of the workplace. So how can we bolster enthusiasm in digitalization?

Tomorrow: Customers of the future will no longer get the runaround from the authorities or state-owned companies. It is the dawning of a new era with a one-stop shop with visibility of the latest data and information, accessible to citizens and companies via an ergonomic portal. This could be made possible by institutions setting up joint, inter-agency platforms. A common core, plus highly sensitive modules could be developed, capable of transcending the boundaries of authority to ensure quantifiable implementation risks. This approach and consistency creates new end-to-end optimization options, developed with agility in mind (i.e. according to current priorities as opposed to outdated requirement lists).

Getting an early start is crucial to success. Adopt a bold approach and initiate discussions from the very beginning of the procurement stage with potential suppliers in order to reach a common understanding. In short: move away from the list of requirements and towards an honest conversation. The transparency of the platform allows users to see who is using their data, for what purpose and how it is secured. This creates the necessary trust for using the platform and vis-à-vis the authorities.

Opt-in or opt-out of solutions, where citizens decide for themselves what personal data can be used for, are becoming increasingly important for citizens. Workflow efficiency is thus constantly enhanced through standardized process mining. Calculations are price-optimized with dynamically allocated computing power from the cloud as well as with data sovereignty. The forms and models of work are adapted to the digitalized future: ‘New Work’ has increasingly found its way into public administration in recent years. In some cases, the place and time of work are even much more flexible than in the private sector.

Raising awareness and building trust in every situation

Everyone is part of the safety measures

Currently: Public Services make the headlines time and again: The media regularly report on hacked authorities, such as the hacker attack on Xplain in Switzerland in March 2024⁴ or a ransomware attack on a municipal IT service provider in Germany in November 2023⁵. France also experienced a devastating cyberattack on two payment service providers in the healthcare sector in spring 2024, which was the largest data leak in French history to that point ⁶. The final one to note is the hacker group who attacked the U.K., U.S. and Canada in March 2024⁷.

The press also reports on local and national crises that are poorly executed with only sketchy descriptions of the actual circumstances. Meanwhile, an ever-increasing amount of data generated for crisis management fails to produce any relevant information or added value. Citizens and companies do not have an overview of the state of information, current security situation or prevention options, and are thus not prepared to deal with a crisis. They can’t be blamed for this, as relevant information is spread across different sites and locations, and independent research is difficult and time-consuming. There is also a fundamental lack of trust in data security. No wonder! Ultimately, people pose the greatest security risk. Thus, it’s important to start by raising awareness and building trust to ensure sustainable security. But how do we do that?

Tomorrow: Public services organizations are early movers in cyber security, e.g. through regular audits and bug bounties, because security is an absolute prerequisite and quite simply standard. System hardening ensures that even human error do not trigger any hazards. Redundancy concepts, ITSCM and BCM overcome system failures without damage. Residual risks are insured. AI and joint validation systems condense the flood of data into qualified information and are used as decision support systems to manage the situation. Citizens and companies are part of the crisis organization, as they are continuously trained regarding the current situation, security risks and prevention options and can obtain information quickly and easily. Content management systems offer linguistically and culturally prepared content via multichannel, barrier-free. Chatbots personalize even further. Active participation is supported with the help of gamification, thus keeping personal awareness of safety and prevention measures up to date.

Radical change driven by innovative technologies

Technological progress has made public spaces extremely safe

Currently: Are emerging smart technologies really an alien concept to public services organizations? You might think so. A lack of common ground, know-how, fear of changes to the legal basis or simply a lack of time makes the public service a latecomer when it comes to new technologies. Experts and specialists carry out meticulous, time-consuming work that could, in principle, already be technologically digitized and automated today. What’s more, the manual checking of critical content involves a high level of mental stress. The time invested in tedious administrative tasks could be much better invested in innovative initiatives, for example in AI-supported systems. In addition, police forces rely primarily on gut instinct in investigations and to ensure public safety. This is the norm, because experience has to be acquired. Until now, data has remained unstructured and underused. It is still widely underused for systematic evaluation of situations, for data-based security concepts or for digitalized chains of evidence.

Tomorrow: Innovation has established itself as a continuous process in government institutions and utilizes the potential of employees’ know-how, which has often remained untapped until now. With the use of apps, add-ons and intelligent process automation, there are no more digitalization gaps, thus guaranteeing the highest standard of security. Together with industry, the public institutions test the new technologies for their own use in Innolabs and develop prototypes in extended workbenches. Artificial intelligence facilitates data mining in the interest of public safety. Only a small fraction of the data needs to be checked by humans. With the broad range of IoT sensor technology available, there are data protection-compliant solutions for detecting flows of people, unusual patterns or even events. Automated monitoring of the digital space and digital chains of evidence on blockchain offer maximum security in the public space, while data-based security concepts provide protection in the cyber area.