In the context of their work, our speakers explained how they address the need to deliver more with less in the services they deliver for their organisations. 

Hayley described DWP’s financial operations as “the size and scale of a bank”, with the department responsible for a third of all annual UK BACS payments – 640 million individual payments worth around £240 billion each year. 

She explained that occasional “big black swan” moments – such as making payments to take into account short notice bank holidays, including after the death of the Queen in 2022 when DWP had to make an advance payment that would have been due on that date. Moments like this meant departmental resources had to be mobilised to do more at short notice and within compressed timescales. 

David ‘Sarg’ Sarginson, who has at Opencast supported a range of government and other clients with their digital service delivery, said it was vital that organisations were clear from the outset on the outcomes they needed from their services.  

“From an architectural point of view, we certainly try to do more with the same. Systems and processes that have less moving parts and more consistent technology are just cheaper to maintain and faster to iterate on,” he said. 

“If you want to do more with less,” he said, “creating fewer lines of communication, backwards and forwards, is important.” 

Hayley agreed that clear and consistent communications, alongside clear roles and responsibilities, were key. 

“Having a great scope and agreed plan and how we execute it is really important,” she said. “Strong relationships with wider stakeholders are also important across the business, to make sure that everybody is executing the same plan.” 

She added that the increased cost-of-living had previously impacted DWP’s workload, with a huge temporary increase in payments – but the department had been prepared, with design process, people and tech all coming together to respond to short-term demand peaks.  

“We had standard service offers, so it was straight forward to on board more volumes, and we ran it through pretty much as business as usual but with extra volume."