Introduction

There is a price to be paid for everything. The enormous payments made by individual governments around the world to support economies as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic will need somehow to be funded. The additional impact of other subsequent world events also cannot be discounted.

Cutting the costs of the public sector budget is inevitably in the cards, sooner or later. Even so, previous experience has shown that an approach of austerity to control costs isn't always best. Austerity as a solution has historically been seen as a major contributor to political tension, as evidenced by governmental approaches following the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. Some suggest that austerity could be the best and perhaps only way forward, especially when we are in a low-interest-rate environment; low interest rates are usually only a temporary relief, and higher interest rates do not normally provide a panacea.

The mood to managing debt has changed from a decade ago. Then, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel pressured the European states to reduce their debt levels to preserve the integrity of the Euro. Nowadays, economists such as Ulrik Knudsen, appointed Deputy Secretary General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2019, are calling austerity "an old-fashioned way of thinking" and one that leads ultimately to isolationism.

Although perhaps in a less dramatic form, it is almost certain that there will be a financial impact on the public purse as a result of the pandemic. Savings will have to be made. For many sectors of society, and despite political reassurances, essential reductions will be made in public funding. While the proverbial barrel is not yet dry, the amounts available from governments to prop up public services are likely to diminish. This scarcity will affect services as diverse as policing, social services, medical care, and public administration. It will also affect both national and regional strategies. At an individual level, it will affect the funding of leisure services for the public, as well as how we are policed. It will also have an impact on matters as mundane as how often the streets are cleaned.

All of these effects, and others, will force us to find ways of providing services at lower cost. Budgetary costs will inevitably translate into manpower reduction and possibly higher levels of unemployment. For many sectors, there is likely to be a struggle to maintain the level of current services, and the potential is for the frequency and quality of public services to start to fall below our expected standards.

We should not underestimate the size of the public sector. In the majority of countries, public sector expenditure represents 35 to 60% of their GDP. At a global level, between 14% and 19% of all employees are paid from the public purse. Indirectly they are funded by the taxpayer. While one simple argument is to increase the taxpayers' contribution, invariably there are political pressures that relate to that option as a remedy, not least that few political parties have been successful at reelection on a ticket that promises to increase taxation.

The aspect of politics equally cannot be overlooked - although this is not meant to be a book that is political in nature. Rather, governments need to prioritize public services so that funding can be appropriately allocated. This in itself is no small task. How might a government prioritize policing over healthcare, or street cleaning over the care of the elderly? The reality is that all these sectors will need to be maintained in one way or another.

Having created a dark picture for the future, I've written this book as an antithesis to that situation. It aims to provide insight and a way forward, whereby the quality and efficiency of almost all types of public services can be improved through the effective use of data, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence. It helps provide a road map for an analytically infused future in public services, where improvements can occur (or, at the very least, the quality of services can be maintained) at no additional cost (or maybe even at a reduced cost) to the taxpayer.

Recent developments in analytics and AI are timely. They coincide with our time of greatest need. The advent of ubiquitous devices providing multiple data points, together with new forms of analysis, helps create new insights that will inevitably affect the way in which public services are undertaken. The advent of 5G and ultimately quantum computing will also improve the quantity and quality of data collection and its analysis. However, we need to recognize that this will not be a world taken over by data scientists and computer systems, but rather that there is a need for experienced and trusted practitioners (who might be called "traditionalists") to ensure that there remains a balance between essential services and effective technology.

Effective implementation requires experts in their fields to be able to interpret the output from data, and from this to create new business models and working practices. This is not simply a matter of digitalizing the present, but also one of reimagining the future.

This book has been written principally for three groups.

First, it is for those directly employed in the public sector who will be faced with the challenge of maintaining and in some cases even improving public services, yet are concerned about or maybe even have a fear about the technologies likely to be used. Those people in this group are key stakeholders, as it will be their knowledge and experience that will play an essential part in the transformation. The range of those involved will extend from those at an operational level to those who act at an executive level. Both of these groups, and all those in between, will benefit from having a single reference point into a complex area.

Second, the book is for those data scientists and AI experts who, while having a knowledge of the "pure" elements of data management and AI will nevertheless have limited appreciation of the key business drivers of various public sector activities, and without whom it will be more difficult to understand how technologies might be best implemented. The nature of the advanced analytics and AI boom will necessarily require a great increase in those who have requisite technology skills. This second group may comprise mature candidates who have decided to retrain to keep up with the times, and also comprise new entrants who have chosen technology as their preferred career.

The third group is a critical component to the process of transformation. These people are those who sit in the Office of Finance and whose job it will be to identify likely returns of investment and also to measure the benefits that accrue. Although effective implementation of AI will bring a combination of hard and soft benefits, it is this group that is most likely to want to measure the financial benefit of AI transformation, especially as the greatest pressure will be on financial control and constraints. For many organizations, the topic of risk management also sits within the Office of Finance, usually assisted by additional forms of governance.

Despite there being many different elements within the public sector, which might be described as "vertical components," there are also key generic features that apply across almost all of them. Better understanding of these generic features or "horizontal components" leads to greater improvement in knowledge transfer and facilitates a move away from what is seen by many to be a siloed mentality, toward what will be a more holistic approach to the provision of public services.

The scope and breadth of public services is so wide as to render it virtually impossible to cover each and every service in complete detail. Therefore the book will consider some of the key public services, which are dealt with as individual chapters, such as healthcare and defense, but otherwise bundles together other services. This bundling is not arbitrary but rather follows the grouping of public services in the UK Government, which, while not perfect, suffices to provide a framework for the text.

Throughout the book, progress to date in different public sectors will be evidenced where possible by documented case studies that are already in the public domain.

Beyond all this, there are also geographical and demographical issues to consider. The topic of public services has international scope, which is overlaid by cultural aspects and differing types of governmental attitudes. This potentially leads to different nuances in terms of implementation and adoption. Invariably there will also be a different response to some of these ideas dependent on the demography and attitude of the citizen themselves.

The book adopts three key precepts: First and foremost, that it is the citizen who needs to be the overriding concern in these transformations. All that will happen going forward must necessarily be in the interest of the citizen who has to engage with the process, either directly or indirectly. This level of engagement might demand that the citizen needs to undergo some shifts in thinking, and to have a change of mindset. One of these changes will necessarily relate to the topic of data capture, its security, and how this data is used. Some citizens, perhaps even a sizeable proportion, will be concerned about this development. The book will necessarily reflect on the role of the State, dealing with some of the implications that attach to that consideration, and how this particular challenge might be addressed going...