Public Service consulting

Today’s Health and Human Services leaders need fresh thinking and bold action to deliver outcomes that truly matter. 

Universities and colleges around the world face two major and opposing challenges. On the one hand, governments are spending less money on higher education. This is forcing universities to seek alternative sources of funding. On the other, students expect more and better services from their universities and are keen to see them integrate digital technology into the learning experience.

Alongside these two major issues, universities also face questions about what and who they are for. Employers complain of the gap between graduate skills and those needed for the work place, while the demographic of students is shifting as more adult learners enroll. To successfully adapt, universities need to find new ways to partner with employers to equip citizens with the skills they need for the workplace. This will mean shifting their focus away from the traditional model of attracting and enrolling school leavers and concentrating instead on creating lifelong learning opportunities.

As people live longer and as healthcare costs rise, many people’s pension plans will fall short of providing them with a comfortable retirement. Pension funds have an infinite investment horizon, coupled with an unending commitment to pay benefits to citizens, but the ratio of people working and contributing to funds against those withdrawing money is shrinking.

Challenges at the macro level are fed by issues at the micro level: People are ignoring their retirement and are putting off planning for it.

The pensions industry must help to change people’s behavior so that they are planning for retirement from an earlier stage in their lives. Embracing digital technology will be central to this effort: The introduction of digital retirement coaches via mobile apps and virtual reality, for example, will help ensure that people are more aware and better educated about their future financial needs.

Digital disruption presents one of the biggest challenges to public safety agencies, but advances in digital technology are also generating some of the most innovative solutions.

Public safety agencies must now police an entirely new virtual space. The volume of cybercrime now surpasses that of physical crime. Digital is also increasing citizens’ expectations for faster, more tailored services at a time in which agencies face budget cuts.

Agencies must adopt a preventative approach to guarantee public safety and data-driven insights will be central to this effort. If harnessed appropriately, the enormous amount of data now generated can be used to help predict and prevent criminal activity, while integrating digital technology into services can generate savings and drive value for the public.

With ever rising citizen expectations, shrinking budgets and the sustainability imperative, cities globally are looking to secure better futures by embracing data, digital and ecosystem collaboration. In parallel, the Smart City movement is scaling beyond pilots and into core infrastructure and IT budgets. Leading cities are adopting a citizen centered ethos, using technology as an enabler to create physical and digital services fit for the 21st century.

Public infrastructure is foundational to major urban centres and communities. Yet the delivery of those projects has barely changed in half a century, creating budget leakage and operational inefficiencies, making it difficult to meet rising citizen expectations. This is driving the pivot to digital, to better manage complex portfolios and improve asset management for both new and ageing infrastructure. With new mobility solutions and 5G on the horizon, new infrastructural futures are being reimagined.