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HPE News. Tech Insights. World-Class Innovations. We take you straight to the source — interviewing tech's foremost thought leaders and change-makers that are propelling businesses and industries forward.
Michael: Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, and a very big welcome to Technology Now, a weekly show from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where we take what's happening in the world around us and explore how it's changing the way that organizations are using technology. We are you hosts, Michael Bird over in the UK.
Aubrey: And from Florida, Aubrey Lovell, and in this episode, we're exploring how the public sector is faring at a time of constant uncertainty and the power of resilience. We'll be looking at how organizations can train for resilience in the face of rapidly evolving challenges, be that political unrest, natural disasters, or uncertain budgets. We'll also be looking at how large organizations can stay agile while working towards core strategic goals, and of course, we'll be looking at the books that are changing the way you, our audience, and some of our previous guests see the world. So if you're the kind of person who needs to know why what's going on in the world matters to your organization, this podcast is for you, and if you're enjoying it, subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don't miss out. Take it away, Michael.
Michael: Right. So the last year has seen a whole lot of turmoil from the war in Ukraine to, at the time of recording, three British prime ministers in one year, the US midterms, extreme weather, and loads, loads more. These kinds of challenges would be a kicker for any organization, but the public sector is right on the front lines of any global upheaval. They're relied on to do a good job of keeping our countries running despite what's going on the world around them. Policies, research, and delivery of services needs to continue regardless of things like flooding, heatwaves, changes of leadership, changes in budget, and a whole load more. So with all that, how can tech help and why does the running of state organizations actually matter to other organizations?
Aubrey: That's right. Well, this week, we're joined by Russell MacDonald, chief technologist at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, focusing on the public sector and hybrid cloud computing. Russell, thanks so much for joining us.
Russell MacDona...: Thanks for having me on the show. It's great to be here.
Aubrey: So it's a pretty interesting time for the public sector. What kind of practical challenges are we facing right now in this space?
Russell MacDona...: Well, where did we even start? I think even five years ago with the National Audit Office described the UK civil service as operating in a decidedly suboptimal environment. So they were already under pressure back then, and I think as you said in your introduction, since then, we've had Brexit, the UK's exit from the European Union, we've had the COVID-19 pandemic, public health crisis of a generation that put a lot of strain on public services, but was also a catalyst for agility and resilience.
We've had the threat of job cuts across the civil service, 91,000 job cuts, which would be 20%, and if that wasn't bad enough, we've had all this recent turmoil with, as Michael said, three prime ministers this year alone, the leadership contest effectively paralyzing government from making any decisions. In the midst of all of that, the death of Her Majesty, the Queen, and then against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Ukraine, we've got the highest inflation in 40 years and spiraling energy prices, and the civil servers aren't immune from the effects of that either.
Michael: Yeah. And government bodies aren't really known for their flexibility or agility. So how are they able to move so quickly when a new policy or a new challenge turns up? So for example, here in the UK, the policy on fracking, I believe changed twice in 2022. So that must have caused some headaches for those working government.
Russell MacDona...: It's true that the structure of today's civil service was really designed for stability and it's got that perception of being slow to adapt. I think all of those events that we just spoke about mean that the public sector's having to learn to be resilient, and when we think of resilience, maybe we think about rolling with the punches, but actually, it's about anticipating change. It's about adapting and growing from experience rather than just reacting to problems as they come up.
And I think with the fracking example that you give, the key difference between politicians and government departments is that politicians are seeking popular opinion, which can change with the wind, but the civil service have to do all the analysis, the research, the consultation behind the scenes to inform policy and understand what is and isn't feasible either now or in the future, and in the case of fracking, all of that research has been going on for decades. So what does this mean for IT? Well, really, it's about better decision support, it's timely access to knowledge and information, but increasingly, it's also about what if scenario planning to help departments respond and anticipate what changes might be and what the impact might be for them.
Aubrey: So that's really interesting, Russell. I think let's dial it back around that topic of resilience and take a deeper dive. So when we talk about resilience, in particular, national resilience because as we know, we've kind of had this common theme throughout the conversation, the world really is changing and we're dealing with all of these extreme events, whether it be weather shortages, sorry, price fluctuations. They're becoming more common, and obviously, there's a narrative here around a fear of a global recession. So from the highest level, what tech challenges does that present and how is the public sector dealing with it? So essentially, why does it matter?
Russell MacDona...: Yeah. I think resilience from a technology point of view and national resilience in particular is coming into focus and climate change has definitely got a role to play in that, and one of the challenges for a small country like the UK is that we don't have a lot of real estate in the country to put data centers and hyperscale data centers around the place. So there's a lack of regional diversity, and within the southeast of England in particular, there's a lot of public cloud data centers and that's an area where power utilization's already highly concentrated due to just more people living there, and an example of that was this summer, we saw the highest temperatures on record, over 40 degrees for the UK, which is unprecedented.
And that caused a cooling failure in one of these data centers, which took down services for two cloud providers on the same day. Now why is that a problem? Well, most public sector organizations can only store their data within the UK and if the only choice is to put your data in one region, then there's a real risk to critical national infrastructure from overreliance on particular parts of the country or particular providers or particular networks. So the resilient answer to that is really a move towards more hybrid multi-cloud strategies where you can mitigate that risk of vendor concentration as well as mitigating some of the risks associated with geography and climate.
And also as part of that, you need to have a more joined up approach to things like multi-back up, sorry, multi-platform backup strategies, cybersecurity, business continuity, and disaster recovery. So that's all coming front of mind, whereas I think before all of this, there was a danger that it was just assumed that the provider would take care of all of this, and I think now, we're seeing things failing and going wrong, then customers are realizing they've got to take that into their own hands and be more resilient themselves.
Michael: Is this pressure on public services a global problem? What challenges are other countries like the EU and the US, what are they facing?
Russell MacDona...: It's fairly widespread. I think in general, public sector are always under pressure to do more with less. I think the whole COVID-19 was a global pandemic, it wasn't a UK specific thing. The economic crisis is really being felt throughout the world, and then we are in climate adaptation as well. So the idea that we could mitigate the effects of climate change are really running out and we're having to adapt to it, and we're hearing now about Haiti and other countries which are being really affected by drought and famine or flooding or extreme weather. These are all the result of climate change and governments are having to respond to that in a way that they've never had to before.
So we can't stop these things from happening, but we have to be more resilient when they do, and so that's what I was saying about really planning and getting ahead of it by doing scenario planning and what if strategies that say if we change this or we have this contingency plan, what difference will it make? Will it really work, and actually, doing some testing of the infrastructure before the worst happens, but I think COVID-19 was a real test for that because it did put a lot of pressure on the whole public sector and require really a rapid response, which traditionally, the public sector wasn't really set up to do. So they've had to learn to do it. They've done it once, so they know it's possible, and that means as we go forward, we need to do more of that.
Michael: I think it's fair to say that the public sector does sometimes get looked down on, particularly by being quite slow moving and a bit bloated, but is there anything that you think other organizations can learn from the way that public sectors around the world operate?
Russell MacDona...: Yeah. I would've agreed with you a couple of years ago. I think it's a bit unfair to say that they're slow moving now because I think if you look at the work of the government digital service, that prepared departments to be a bit more agile, a bit more citizen-centric in the way that they designed services, and when COVID struck, suddenly, everybody's interested in what the government has to say and there was something like 1.5 billion unique page views of Gov UK coronavirus information between January 2020 and May 2022. So that's unprecedented.
And I think when you talk to the people from GDS, they said that they remained motivated because they were proud to be working on something that was so impactful. So I think that the greatest thing that we can take away from the public sector is purpose. In the private sector, we talk a lot about customer experience and growth and revenue generation and so on, but in the public sector, that customer experience is about it's saving lives, it's protecting the vulnerable, it's educating children, it's supporting the economy. So these are really worthy things, and they need technology and digital services as much as any bank or retailer. So I think for me, working in public sector, if you want to make a difference in IT, then there's no better place to be.
Michael: Awesome. Well, thank you, Russell. That's all we've got time for, but don't go anywhere because we've got some questions from the audience in a little bit, and listeners, we will drop some useful links about some of the stuff that we've talked about with Russell in the show notes.
Aubrey: Next up, it's down to you, our audience. This is the time where we open the floor for you to give us your recommendations on books which have changed the way you look at the world, life, and business in the last 12 months.
Michael: And if you want to share with us your recommendations, there's a link in the podcast description. Just record a voice note on your phone and send it over.
Andy Cachaldora: My name's Andy Cachaldora, I'm general manager for Northern Europe for GE Healthcare Digital Business. There are some main books, there's some really good old ones that I constantly refer back to like Stephen Covey, Speed of Trust, et cetera, but Sarah Brummitt's book on engaging people remotely. Pre-COVID, everybody's face to face meetings and it was quite easy to engage with people and encourage your workforce on how to get messaging across quite simplistic. Now that actually a lot of people are working from home is Sarah's written around, but how do you keep that engagement? How do you keep your staff engaged in a remote environment? It's absolutely crucial, especially for multinationals now to manage people from a distance. You need to give them the autonomy because you've hired them to do the right job, but also keep them motivated and think about their welfare. So it's Sarah Brummitt, so you can get it from Amazon.
Michael: Thank you, and once again, do keep your book reviews coming in via the link in the description. Russell, have you read anything recently that you can recommend to us?
Russell MacDona...: I do. I've got it on the book shelf here.
Michael: Okay.
Aubrey: Nice.
Russell MacDona...: So this is Genius Makers by Cade Metz. It's published by Random House, and it's a really interesting story because it's about how artificial intelligence was once consigned to the fringes of the scientific community and nobody really believed that it could work and it had any legs, and it was through the work of people like Professor Jeffrey Hinton who demonstrated results with neuro networks and that caught the attention of big tech companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft.
And really catapulted AI to the forefront of our daily lives, and I think we've seen recently some news about OpenAI launching the demo of ChatGPT and that's how far we've come with AI, but also we've still got a very long way to go to even come close to the power of the human mind and generalized artificial intelligence. So it's fascinating that I've been in IT long enough that we're starting to write history books about it, but yeah, it's a really interesting read.
Aubrey: That's a great recommendation. Thanks, Russell. Okay, it's time for questions from the audience. You, our listeners, have been sending in your questions to Russell MacDonald on the topics of public sector technology and hybrid cloud. So our first question comes from Lindsay in Zurich. She wants to know what, if anything, is being done to avoid data silos in the public sector, and should there be a concerted drive to bring data together even internationally where it's safe and relevant?
Russell MacDona...: Okay. Well, hi, Lindsay. That's a really good question. The public sector's always been traditionally very risk averse, particularly when it comes to data and privacy, but something that we're seeing a lot more is this need for collaboration and partnership to deliver joined up services like integrated care services in the NHS and social care, and up till recently, the answer would've been let's centralize all the data in the cloud and let's put some analytics over the top and some magic will happen, but every time we do that, there are all kinds of privacy ethical data protection, governance issues with doing that, and so we need a way that we can bring the analytics to the data really wherever it lives.
And at HPE, we created a solution called swarm learning, and basically, it works by allowing organizations to keep hold of their sensitive data while exchanging only the insights and the learnings from the data with their partners, and that way, they can improve the accuracy of machine learning models without compromising privacy and security. So this approach was actually used during COVID-19, which we've talked about a lot today, but necessity's the mother of invention. So I think that whole swarm learning framework that we developed really appealed to researchers who were trying to look for a vaccine for COVID-19, but were faced with this problem of not being able to exchange data over geographical boundaries. So it's a great example of distributed learning.
Michael: Okay. I've got a question from Darren from Belfast who would like to know whether you think the government's digital first model was a wise idea and whether you think it's worked. Actually, before you do that, can you just quickly define what the UK government's digital first model actually is?
Russell MacDona...: Okay. Well, so I think there's actually two things here. There's something that was called digital by default and then there's the cloud first policy. So digital by default basically made departments think about service design from a citizen-centric perspective. So designing services that people would actually want to use, and that's broadly been a really positive thing. It's made the user experience of accessing government services easier. We've got Gov UK's like the single domain where all those services live. The cloud first policy, on the other hand, made the mistake of suggesting that digital transformation could only be achieved through public cloud platforms.
And that basically widened the gap between new digital services being developed in the cloud and all of the back office systems that fulfill that digital demand, which sit mostly outside of public cloud, and so that's why at HPE, because we have this edge to cloud strategy, we talk about being consciously hybrid, we talk about joining that whole story up and understanding that some things are right to put in the cloud, particularly citizen facing digital services. That's absolutely the right thing to do, but you also need to modernize the back office infrastructure and bring that basically up to the same level of capability as public cloud so that you can join that whole story together.
Aubrey: Thanks, Russell, and again, we'll drop a couple of links in the podcast description for more on these topics.
Michael: Right. We are getting towards the end of the show, which means it's time for this week in history, a look at the monumental events in the world of business and technology, which has changed our lives. Aubrey, I was disappointed you didn't sing that with me, but that's okay. That's fine.
Aubrey: I wasn't ready next time.
Michael: I'll cue you in next time. Okay.
Aubrey: Okay, perfect. The clue from last week was Hubble bubble, toil and trouble. It's not the hardest one we've ever done, but it was of course the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope this week in 1990. The $2.5 billion telescope was successfully deployed from the space shuttle discovery, but would then be plagued by flaws with its mirror. A software fix would keep it functioning until a proper fix could be applied in a daring spacewalk on Christmas Day, 1993, prompting decades of incredible images of the cosmos. Next week, the clue is I love apples. If you know, you know so keep it to yourself.
Michael: Okay. That brings us to the end of Technology Now for this week.
Aubrey: Thank you so much to our guest, Russell MacDonald. Thank you, Russell, for being here, and to our listeners, thank you all so much for joining us. Technology Now is hosted by myself and Michael Bird, and this episode was produced by Sam [inaudible] and Zoe Anderson with production support from Harry Morton, Alicia Kempson, Allison Paisley, Alex Podmore, and Ed Everston. Technology Now is a Lower Street production for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. We'll see you next week.
Michael: Cheers.