Digitalisation has become a hallmark of calls for modernising public services. It promises to reduce costs, increase efficiencies and open new opportunities for accessible, flexible service provision, not least in rural and remote areas. However, despite broad calls for adopting digital tools to facilitate efficient public services, the question remains how to digitalise service delivery and which tools to adopt.
Why public services differ in their digital potential
‘Public services’ is an umbrella term for very different services brought together by the fact that they are delivered by or on behalf of the state to tackle a wide array of needs, which have been identified through political decisions as worthy of public action. These needs, however, are manifold and diverse, ranging from providing emergency shelter to vulnerable individuals and families to supporting mental health. To tackle them, public services carry out a wide range of activities, from fighting fires and educating people about fire risks to providing immigration advice and supporting integration.
Serving diverse needs and fulfilling highly diverse tasks, public services are themselves not homogeneous; they cover a wide set of activities carried out by public, private and voluntary sector organisations. Given the diversity of needs and activities, public services are very differently equipped to embrace digitalisation. Moreover, while some service activities lend themselves to adopting digital technologies, others may be restricted in their digital capacities. A crucial feature that shapes digital opportunities and possibilities for digitalisation more specifically lies in the nature of the service itself, notably its relation to physical space.
Pandemic insights: How services adapted to lockdowns
During the pandemic, we explored how voluntary sector organisations that delivered different personal services adapted to the restrictions imposed around the use of shared spaces and lockdowns. Services shifted towards digital working and delivery, wherever possible.
To avoid travelling and to control infection risks by using shared spaces, services relied on digital technologies to adjust their internal workings. Team meetings shifted online and working from home became the norm, facilitated by digital tools. Some personal services used digital technologies to substitute face-to-face contact and avoid sharing spaces. Advice services shifted from in-person to being provided via digital technologies, mostly messaging and videoconferencing tools. Social activities to support integration took place online. The digital realm provided ample opportunities for the interactions on which these services depended.
Other services, however, could not simply remove the spatial dimension and shift towards the digital realm. A virtual refuge cannot in any form address the need for material shelter; it does not provide a roof over one’s head. Food needs to be transported and prepared in physical spaces. As a result, these services depended on a material presence in physical space; they were concerned with the management rather than the substitution of physical space.
The divide: Physicality-bound vs. non-physicality-bound services
Now that the pandemic has passed, lockdowns have been lifted, and spaces can be easily shared again, what can we learn from these experiences and insights?
In a way, the pandemic highlighted the importance of physical space, not only as a place where infection risks reign, but also as a vital aspect that shapes the opportunities of digital services. It has been shown that some service activities, such as providing advice and support, rely on personal interactions. These may take place in a setting where those using and those providing the service are in the same place, or they may rely on digital modes of communication, such as video calls. As they may or may not be delivered in a shared physical space, they are not physicality bound. Other activities, however, cannot be carried out without a material presence in physical space; they are hence bound to physicality by their very nature.
Whether service activities are bound to physicality or not has important implications for their digital potential. While not-physicality-bound services can, with more or less effort and success, be disentangled from physical space, for physicality-bound services, delivering them without recourse to physical space is unimaginable. Therefore, the digital potential hinges on the particular activities carried out and whether they can be performed digitally, either by remote provision or via a digital-enabled presence (e.g. robots), to a sufficiently high standard – an assessment that can change over time as it depends on different factors such as (perhaps most importantly) the development of digital tools and technologies at any given time.
Digital opportunities in internal organisational work
The internal working of an organisation, from information sharing to working locations and practices, exists, at least to a certain extent, independently of service provision. Even where some of the services provided by an organisation are physicality bound, not all parts of its internal workings are.
This means that digital opportunities may differ between the internal workings of an organisation and its service provision activities. Furthermore, different organisations may perform different service activities, combining, for instance, advice or support services and providing refuge. The specific relationship to physical space may differ between these activities. It hinges on the specific activity carried out, not on the organisation performing it. Establishing the digital potential of services, therefore, means accounting for the limitations that arise from physical requirements for each service activity.
Future outlook: Building nuanced digital strategies
In summary, while digitalisation holds the potential to significantly alter services and their provision, the digital potential is closely intertwined with the relationship between an activity and physical space. To understand digital opportunities and develop successful strategies, a nuanced perspective is needed.
As digitalisation options differ by activity, such a nuanced perspective needs to distinguish the digital potential of individual tasks rather than broader services or organisations. As with many public service innovations, the contingency approach may often be the best; digitalisation can be thought of as a suite of possible measures using digital tools to be applied based on an individual assessment of each service activity’s requirements and potential.
Dr Elizabeth Cookingham Bailey is a Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the University of York specialising in the understanding the voluntary sector’s role in the creation and delivery of social policy.
Dr E. K. Sarter is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick with particular research interest in digitalisation, sustainability, public services and employment.
Understanding Public Services Edited by E.K. Sarter and Elizabeth Cookingham Bailey is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £22.99.
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