I was sitting in a hotel in Dubai and testing the UK's digital public services – it had been a great two weeks as a part of the International panel of judges looking at the country's transformation.
Dubai has always impressed me.
Yes, as a country they don't have austerity, although that doesn't necessarily translate into agencies' budgets, but the way they think outside the box to deliver excellence for the customer seems to be a part of their DNA now.
My challenge in the hotel was to complete the passenger locator form – to get proof of vaccination the QR code on my phone had to be held up in front of the laptop camera. The light was a problem, and it took six or seven attempts to get the NHS app to communicate with the .gov passenger locator system.
The progress in only a year was impressive. The use of technology to join up services around the client has always been strong in the best Dubai public services, but this year we saw something new. The idea of prevention of the need for public services was starting to emerge.
We have seen it in the best of UK public services, from East Ayrshire's respectful funerals to Barking's building community capacity. Unfortunately, this was not matched in my experience of our digital public services.
But we do have the capacity to deliver truly human-centred design, something we hope to emulate in our social care case management system. The passionate commitment of care workers and recipients of care involved was not to merely create a records management system, but to create something that supports best practice.
With the assistance of councils we are building a platform that joins up all involved and puts the recipient of care, their carers and advocates, in control – making the information more meaningful to them and supporting best practice.
We call the project CMS 2030 (users are looking at a better name as we speak!!!). If you want to get involved in the design of the next generation of CMS for social care, then please go to www.iese.org.uk/social-care-case-management-system.
Dr Andrew Larner is chief executive of the Improvement & Efficiency Social Enterprise (iESE), which supports public sector transformation
This article is sponsored content for The MJ
