UK government begins to push digital as global opportunity
- Summary:
- The Minister of State for Digital and Culture highlighted this week that digital exports are worth over £30bn a year. GDS, meanwhile, is formalising its international relationships.
Following the EU referendum result, it’s fair to say that the UK needs to figure out it’s long-term position in global markets. And it seems that those in Whitehall foresee digital playing a key role in this.
This week the Minister of State for Digital and Culture, Matt Hancock, took to Twitter to declare that we should be “Celebrating #GlobalBritain” and highlighted that the UK’s digital exports are now worth over £30 billion per year. That’s 14.5% of all UK service exports.
Not only this, but according to the most recent statistics from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the digital sector has been growing at a decent rate in recent years. For example, the gross value add of the digital sector was £118.3 billion in 2014, an increase of 7.2% compared with the previous year.
There were also 1.4 million jobs in the digital sector in 2014, up from 1.3 million jobs in 2011.
Shortly after the Brexit vote, the newly appointed Secretary of State for International Trade, Liam Fox, made his first trip abroad to the US to speak at Sage’s technology conference. He wanted to promote the importance of British technology and was positioning us as being open for digital business with international markets.
But this should come as no surprise. Digital is obviously a growing sector globally and there are plenty of other countries that see themselves as being ‘hubs’ for global buyers.
However, despite plenty of promise, can the UK really do itself justice and commit to digital investment? Given the state of our national broadband infrastructure, it’s arguable. As Martha Lane Fox, who created lastminute.com and is touted as one of Britain’s most successful internet entrepreneurs, slyly noted why Romania is EU's second fastest growing economy:
what a surprise = fastest internet in EU... https://t.co/3WTEvJgh6f
— martha lane fox (@Marthalanefox) August 24, 2016
And as Tim O’Reilly, a key proponent of open source and platform thinking on the web, recently said in a blog post entitled ‘What’s up with the British?’:
Despite having invented many of the foundations of modern computing, Alan Turing was convicted of indecency and eventually took his own life. The torch of the computer revolution passed to the Institute for Advanced Studies and other pioneers in the US. When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, he was given a knighthood, but nonetheless ended up at MIT rather than at Cambridge or Oxford.
In other words, Britain has a tendency to not follow through, despite having plenty of promise. There are plenty of other examples of British tech businesses being sold off to international giants, rather than attempting to scale from the UK market.
Can the UK become a hub?
This post was prompted by an announcement by the Government Digital Service, which posted a blog ‘Introducing the GDS International team’. Despite the recent turbulence at GDS, and the concerns that have been raised by all corners, the digital organisation at the heart of Whitehall is formalising its international digital ambitions.
Government tech is a good example of how the UK could position itself as a long-term hub of digital excellence, if it continues to challenge the status quo. For years government IT was seen as truly awful - and although there are still tonnes of problems - the UK recently got ranked as the number 1 country for e-government in the world and it has introduced a number of new ways of working in Whitehall, which previously would not have been possible.
The GDS international team said that global collaboration is becoming increasingly important to the organisation, as it continues to influence international standard-setting bodies and knowledge shares with other governments. The blog post says:Our team acts as a bridge between GDS projects and the teams that have the expertise. We’re here to co-ordinate international collaboration and set the international strategic direction.
GDS was doing international work before April, but our role is to act as the umbrella team that knows about all this work. In these first 4 months, we’ve spent time researching how the team can help GDS to succeed. Our backgrounds in policy teams have given us the skills to fully engage GDS in cross-governmental international work.
We co-ordinate GDS’s participation in lots of international fora. One of our more informal projects is the International Working Group on Digital, set up by the Ontario regional government in Canada. Lots of digital services are just starting out, whereas GDS is one of the most advanced organisations, and it uses the Working Group to share expertise.
Bt June 2016, GDS says that it had welcomed visitors from 52 countries. The majority of these visits were with regards to:
• leaders looking to start digital transformation in their government
• established digital services
• communications, industry or procurement ministries
• people who want to learn from our mistakes
• experts who want to make a reusable component similar to GOV.UK Verify or Pay
• officials who want our advice on a challenge relating to governance or controls
In essence, GDS is seen as a centre of excellence for governments across the world. And despite its flaws, those inside GDS should be thinking about how the UK government can capitalise on the fact that it has had a multi-year head start on many other countries looking to replicate some of its successes.
My take
GDS has always worked closely with international teams, and the likes of the United States and Australia constantly thank and praise the organisation for leading the way. However, as O’Reilly notes, we’ve been leaders in technology before and then handed over to others to see the real success.
Even outside of GDS, the UK has an excellent opportunity with digital. But we need to invest in it, foster it and push it out to global markets. We need to be clear that we want to be the centre of excellence for anyone interested in modern, digital technologies.
Only time will tell whether or not we can commit…