Governments are under constant and intense pressure to keep costs low while delivering quality services to their citizens. To maximize their efforts, government organizations must be strict, and public sector technology decisions must ensure the best return on their investment. The most successful government bodies are ones that have leveraged technology and Enterprise Architecture insights to digitalize and improve their operational efficiency.
In the United Kingdom, the Government is undergoing heavy digital transformation lifts with achieving efficiency savings as the main driver. In 2021 the Cabinet Office created the Central Digital & Data Office (CDDO) to lead the digital, data and technology function across government.
In the “Digital transformation in government: addressing the barriers to efficiency” report from March 2023, some alarming numbers were revealed:
They estimate that nearly half of all technology expenditure was dedicated to “keeping the lights on activity on outdated legacy systems”, and they found a lack of clarity around how services flow from end to end for their users in more than 80 percent of the organizations they visited.
The message in the report was quite clear: “Our work over the past decade has shown that, across government, attempts at digital transformation have had little lasting success. Government cannot achieve real transformation without reshaping the business of government and understanding the challenges presented by legacy systems and data. Transformation is not simply implementing new systems and software. Government must modernise its existing ageing systems and their associated business processes to make significant and sustainable reductions in overall running costs.”
With Enterprise Architecture as the crucial hub in digital transformation, Ardoq is helping UK government organizations succeed on their journey. Some of the organizations currently using Ardoq are:
- His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS)
- His Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO)
- The Cabinet Office
- The Met Office
- The Ministry of Justice
- UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
- Crown Commercial Service
- NHS Dorset
According to Ardoq’s Account Executive working with UK Government customers, Sam Smith, the need to modernize is paramount for enhancing efficiency, fostering innovation, and improving citizen-centric services.
“Although all UK Government organizations are different, some of the main challenges are often the same. Outdated IT systems, legacy systems, hidden costs, and very complex landscapes. Many of them have outdated EA tools and are looking for a modern EA platform to navigate the transformation. With Ardoq, they get that power and flexibility, but in addition, they get a platform where they can better engage with business users by creating reports, dashboards, visuals, and presentations to meet the various stakeholder needs,” says Smith.
Making Data-Driven Decisions at His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service
His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Services (HMCTS) is a government agency in the UK administering 4.5 million legal cases annually across England and Wales and employs over 17,000 people. Former CTO Jay Bangle held a talk in London about how they underwent a £1.3 billion transformation program to modernize the justice system to work even better for everyone. The technology team used Enterprise Architecture software to lower costs through centralized services and automate processes.
In a short amount of time, HMCTS, with the help of PA Consulting, transformed the organization with an EA platform in three ways:
1. Overcoming Challenges with Data Management and Collection
Like many other organizations, HMCTS faced difficulties managing time-consuming data entry processes scattered across various one-time-use documents. Risks popped up when, for example, employees left the organization without a clear transition or data repository.
HMCTS implemented Ardoq Surveys: customized, user-friendly web forms with specific questions for different departments within the organization to revolutionize its data collection. This streamlined and standardized the process of collecting data, making it simpler and more consistent. At HMCTS, over 1000 contributors are responsible for maintaining data through surveys and updating presentation visualizations immediately. This has drastically improved their data quality and consistency with a fraction of the maintenance effort, requiring only two people actively overseeing the management of Ardoq as a platform. Steve Killelay, Lead Architect at PA Consulting, shared their big “aha” moment with the platform that enabled such efficient data maintenance and capture as well as buy-in from the wider organization:
“I think the biggest ‘aha moment’ has come from engaging business users in a different way. The democratization of business data has been absolutely invaluable, especially with capturing and maintaining information. Helping users recognize that we’re not asking them to do any more work when they’re supporting and contributing to Ardoq. We’re asking them to do the same work in a much more structured fashion. So, it simplifies their own workflow processes, with the advantage of being able to share their input with other business users. This means we can give back much greater insights than they would be able to derive themselves.”
- Steve Killelay, Lead Architect
Major Technology Debt Consolidation Program for HMCTS (PA Consulting)
The Enterprise Architecture team, led by then-CTO Jay Bangle, utilizes Ardoq’s dynamic visualizations to effectively present data to key stakeholders. This approach allows the entire organization, regardless of technical capabilities, to digest important data on the organization more easily. Continuous engagement with Ardoq through Survey contributions ensures that its data is reliable. This data in turn powers the visualizations generated automatically based on the latest data in the platform, ensuring that various audiences are always up-to-date.
“We’re a large organization, one steeped in history, and undergoing the largest transformation of its kind anywhere in the world…Spreadsheets, PowerPoint, and tools that didn't talk to each other weren't really cutting it.”
- Jay Bangle, then-CTO at HMCTS
2. Innovative Solutions in Unexpected Departments
Before adopting Ardoq, the Digital & Technology Services (DTS) team internally handled the recruitment process using Microsoft Forms and spreadsheets. This approach was not scalable. It lacked holistic overviews of candidates and failed to capture valuable information from discussions or individuals involved in the hiring process. The team needed a modern HR platform, and Ardoq seamlessly filled that void.
The Enterprise Architecture team accelerated, simplified, and aligned all participants in the recruitment process using available features like Broadcasts and Surveys. Broadcasts allowed them to automatically assign tasks to the appropriate individuals at the right times. They could consolidate crucial data so that decision-makers had one secure location in Ardoq to access all the necessary information. This insight allowed them to prioritize and expedite recruitment efforts for the most critical vacancies.
3. Enhanced Strategic Planning in Public Sector Technology
With the right Enterprise Architecture software, HMCTS can see the bigger picture in ways they have not previously achieved. This broader perspective empowers them to tap into the organization's expertise and identify opportunities for resource optimization and risk management. HMCTS can now contextualize its strategy and better recognize dependencies and impacts.
The next stage in HMCTS’s journey will be to decide which projects to advance, identify strategic risks and ownership, and mitigation strategies. In line with this, the executive team can critically assess existing projects to determine their alignment with their strategic goals.
How Ardoq is Taking Public Sector Transformation to the Next Level
Public sector organizations in the UK are undergoing a remarkable transformation of their digital public sector technology. At the same time, departments continue to uphold responsibility for the efficient allocation of their resources and services. HMCTS is just one of several significant UK institutions that have chosen Ardoq to help them supercharge their efforts.
The Met Office has found the Ardoq platform vital in overcoming data siloes and providing critical visibility into critical interdependencies:
“The ‘aha moment’ for me when working with Ardoq and building out our data is that it has been all about focusing on the relationships between things. We have had so many islands of information in the past, and a lot of projects in the past have focused on improving each one of those islands. But the power that we’re seeing is when you join those together. It has been incredibly valuable to be able to look across the organization to see what the connections are, and what the impacts are - to be able to model, show, and interrogate that.”
- James Tomkins, Former Chief Architect at the Met Office
Like HMCTS, HMPO has also found Ardoq’s collaborative crowdsourcing features to enable and empower stakeholders to keep data maintained more easily, liberating the architecture team from becoming a data bottleneck:
“The use of Surveys and Broadcasts has been a game-changer. We discovered this via another department that was using it. One of the challenges in capturing information about your estate is the number of people who have that knowledge, and you can become a bit of a bottleneck. So this enables us to maintain that data much more easily. We can get regular updates from people who know their systems. It has been a key enabler for us.”
- Gary O’Reilly, Chief Technology Officer at His Majesty’s Passport Office
Ardoq provides many of these entities with a cloud-native Enterprise Architecture platform that empowers them to make faster data-driven decisions, enhancing their personnel management, procedures, software, and information. To prove this, we put in the work needed to fulfill the requirements for the UK’s Crown Commercial Service’s Government Cloud (G-Cloud) 13 framework, which enables UK public sector entities to purchase cloud-based solutions quickly and easily.
The past few years have seen government entities hastening their digital transformation efforts by embracing cloud technology that adheres to specific standards. The G-Cloud framework guarantees that vendors comply with the necessary requirements applicable to public entities. This is pivotal in establishing precise criteria for vendors to be included in the digital catalog. Ardoq, as part of G-Cloud, is dedicated to facilitating public entities in leveraging its data-driven EA platform without the need for additional resources to evaluate cloud solutions beyond the scope of G-Cloud.
“Public sector bodies are transforming their digital public services whilst remaining accountable for where and how their resources are used,” said Robin Fitzhugh, UK director at Ardoq. “They need access to technology that enables smarter and more efficient decisions.”
Powering Dynamic Knowledge-Sharing Communities
Ardoq strongly advocates setting up arenas for knowledge sharing between organizations in similar fields. With shared sandboxes, for example, organizations can support and learn from each other as they grow in their capabilities in the Ardoq platform. Ardoq, as a participant in G-Cloud, is dedicated to enabling public entities to utilize its data-driven EA platform without additional resources typically required to evaluate cloud solutions beyond the G-Cloud framework.
“At Ardoq, we try to help our customers in all ways possible, and by bringing those who face the same challenges together we know they find the right answers faster. With the UK Government customers, we see that having a shared Sandbox in Ardoq lets them see how others solve problems, share ideas, and test ways of working in a shared and safe environment. Hopefully, they will be able to achieve results faster and succeed on their transformation journey,” says Amrik Soar, Customer Success Manager at Ardoq.
Ardoq has also brought together customers at physical events all over the world, including in London. Community exchanges foster growth in EA by enabling our customers to trade ideas, learn from the experiences of others, debate the challenges facing the industry, and network with peers. As Kristine Marhilevica, Global Director of Customer Support, says: “It's not just about suits and ties; it's about spending an afternoon with like-minded professionals, exchanging ideas, having fun, and learning from some of the best in the Enterprise Architecture universe.”
Ardoq is powering more than just public sector technology transformation. Learn how organizations across the world across varied industries are leveraging Ardoq to navigate complex transformation initiatives, overcome organizational siloes, and accelerate their growth. 
