Earlier this year, Britain’s departure from the EU finally happened. Amid all the debate about Brexit’s impact on UK businesses and citizens, what is not talked about as much is the effect the split from Europe will have on the civil service and government departments.
Potential trade tariffs and regulatory reforms loom large in post-Brexit planning, but the procedural restructuring involved in Brexit may disrupt the public sector before anything else.
It goes without saying that the day-to-day functioning of most government departments is heavily reliant on processes that have for years been defined and managed by the EU. HMRC, the Home Office and Defra, among others, will be affected by the UK’s exit.
In most cases, civil servants within these departments have been implementing EU procedures for the whole of their professional lives.
Government departments will need to increase productivity in previously unimagined ways
But now the EU is to be cut out of the loop. This puts huge demands on the public sector to create new working methods and back-office processes from scratch — at a time when budgets and resourcing are already strained.
Clearly, significant transitional work will be required to keep the machinery of state running smoothly under this increased workload. Government departments will need to increase productivity in previously unimagined ways if the UK is to rise to the challenge that Brexit poses.
A clear example of this is on Brexit’s ‘front line’: the Dover-Calais border. According to the Port of Dover’s annual report and accounts, almost 2.5 million commercial road haulage vehicles pass through the port each year. Every vehicle must log its inventory with Defra — a process that previously worked with an EU mandated platform.
Once the transition period is over, this responsibility will fall to the UK. It is a vital, painstakingly laborious task — and the system must be ready to go. French authorities warn that a delay of even two minutes at the border could lead to up to 27,000 vehicles queueing on either side of the Channel in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
ServiceNow has helped to deliver new digital workflows to automate how inventory data is logged and processed by Defra’s digital platform.
It’s a significant shift away from having a team of people battling with manual processes and creating new operational models. Automation has quickly and simply taken away an administrative burden, freeing up manpower for the many other urgent items on the Brexit to-do list.
For Defra — and in many other government departments — every gain in productivity is vital. Because a huge proportion of the department’s work will be affected by our exit from the EU, the level of disruption these departments face is unprecedented.
The public sector needs all hands on deck as we attempt to navigate the choppy waters surrounding Brexit.
Time is of the essence, with the transition period set to end on 31 December. Civil servants are under immense pressure to deliver a Brexit that will be as pain-free as possible within this timescale, so we need to ensure that our government departments are equipped with the technology they need to maximise efficiency. Digital workflows and process automation will enable the public sector to focus on preparing for life outside the EU by helping to ease the burden of additional admin that accompanies a restructuring operation of such magnitude.
As Amelie de Montchalin, France’s European Affairs Minister, stated at the end of last year: ‘The most important thing with Brexit is not the way we divorce, it’s what we build afterwards.’
This philosophy must be spun into the fabric of government departments if we are to cope with the added complexity that Brexit will bring.
Alex Osborne, Senior Director at ServiceNow
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