Government leaders need to find new ways to make public services better for both citizens and the environment, while managing with constrained budgets.
Despite the accelerated acceptance of digital service delivery during 2020, governments face powerful forces including demographic and social changes, climate change and shifting patterns in world trade and politics that are changing their citizens’ needs and creating funding challenges.
Capita has a proven track record of working in partnership with government to transform public services, providing agile and resilient services that improve millions of lives. We help government departments to adopt technologies such as automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve productivity and citizens’ experience, and to make the most of their resources as they strive to deliver critical public services that touch lives and drive social value in every corner of the UK.
To achieve full digital transformation, we deliver sustained change to people, processes and technology. We de-risk programme delivery by building solutions based on proven, flexible technologies that are configured to customers’ needs.
Using mobile technology, we’ve helped the Health and Safety Executive’s Gas Safe Register to transform the way it provides advice and support to engineers working on site, improving gas safety. Our live video streaming technology ResponsEye allows an engineer to stream video footage of an installation on their mobile device and to receive real-time feedback and advice, resolving queries more quickly and efficiently. It also allows citizens to report potentially unsafe gas work and to receive technical support and advice quickly and accurately. We’re now trialling the technology for use in low-risk gas inspections to significantly increase the number of inspections we can deliver and, therefore, improve gas safety even further.
We’ve helped NHS England to transform its administrative support services for more than 25,000 GPs and specialists, such as transferring patient records and ordering supplies. Our company PCSE processes and delivers approximately 240,000 orders for medical supplies to around 37,000 customers every year. It has created a digitised, centralised operation that ensures that every doctor and patient across England receives the same high level of service and that there’s a consistent approach to data, security and communication.
Using digitisation, we’ve helped the Education and Skills Funding Agency to transform its online bursary application service for the Care to Learn programme. This supports young parents and care leavers in continuing their studies and developing the skills and knowledge they need for success. Our digital user experience experts completely re-engineered the application process, making it straightforward and much quicker and adding support by chat, phone and email to increase completion rates and reduce errors. This service transformation project reduced the average application time from 23 days to just three and reduced the cost-of-service by 40%. We’ve processed more than 3m applications and paid out more than £2bn in funding on this new system.
We helped to establish and run The Pensions Regulator (TPR) — the public body that protects workplace pensions in the UK. TPR works with employers and those running workplace pension schemes so that people can save safely for their retirement. We’ve worked with employers across the UK to help put more than 10 million people into a pension scheme and pay money into it straight out of their salary (known as ‘automatic enrolment’).
We designed, implemented and now operate the systems and business processes for London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone. Using automation, data analytics and digitisation, we’ve helped Transport for London improve citizens’ health and take a major step towards making the city zero-carbon. In its first six months of operation, the Zone cut dangerous nitrogen oxide emissions by 29%. The system also enables drivers to pay Zone charges through the most convenient channel, handling more than 12,000 payments a day.
Through Urban Vision, our strategic partnership with Salford City Council and construction company Galliford Try, we’ve helped to transform the provision of affordable housing by turning empty properties into homes. With Salford’s fast-growing population, the city council needed to unlock the potential of unused and run-down buildings and quickly provide homes for people who needed them the most. We gave it expert support in valuing and buying properties, and in creating development agreements. This transformative approach reduced the number of Salford’s empty properties by 57% in just six years and netted the city council £55m in government funding for new homes.
The UK’s 2050 zero-carbon targets, a more competitive retail market and an improved experience for energy consumers are all being enabled by Smart DCC, a Capita company that delivers the GB smart metering network. We have installed more than 53m smart meters across the country, allowing people and businesses to monitor their energy consumption more accurately.
We’ve also built and implemented a brand-new secure data network that connects smart meters to the systems of the energy suppliers and network operators. Once connected, customers can easily switch suppliers: this fosters a vibrant, competitive energy market for them. The intelligent data that the network harvests will continue to support the transition to a more responsive energy system, increasing Britain’s energy resilience and supporting the government in meeting its ambitious climate change goals.
At the heart of these initiatives is the government’s mission to make a meaningful, valuable and measurable impact on citizens’ lives.
Service transformation will continue to be a vital tool for government to improve the lives of people all over the country, to future-proof its processes, and to ensure that valuable resources are being spent effectively as the nation faces the powerful forces of climate change and technological disruption, which are changing citizens’ lives and creating new financial pressures. Capita has the expertise, capacity and track record to support government by continuing to deliver service transformation projects at scale and pace for its departments.
