Choosing wisely: leaders’ insights on prioritisation in government
Civil and public services must make a multitude of difficult decisions every day and knowing what to prioritise can be challenging – not least when it comes to digital transformation projects. In this Global Government Forum webinar supported by knowledge partner Unit4, experts from Canada, Norway and the UK discussed how to decide what to fix, modernise and fund
Sorting priorities is an ever-shifting task for governments and in the context of the modern technologies that hold the promise to transform public services, hard and quick choices must be made.
Though government leaders everywhere know they must start somewhere, choosing where to begin requires information, intuition, vision and determination.
At a Global Government Forum webinar supported by knowledge partner Unit4, speakers from Canada, Norway and the UK came together to share their approaches to making these difficult decisions.
Participants drew on their experience in a range of areas, including digital transformation, cloud services, modernising public sector finance, and prioritising investment in and delivering value from technology.
Priorities in procurement
Dina Kakaras is deputy director of national cloud and infrastructure at the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Her 18 years in commercial and procurement, and experience overseeing multi‑billion‑pound portfolios across cyber, cloud, software and intelligence, has given her a keen sense of which business cases to prioritise.
“I feel like every business case has a digital lens, and therefore the benefit that a [government] organisation… can get from that business case has to reflect the digitisation of services [and] the efficiencies that you might get around automation,” she said.
She went on to say that while there has always been a focus on “making sure that there’s a value-for-money proposition”, a bigger discussion needed to be had around “how much capacity that might unlock in our resources in a way that allows us to really optimise where we spend our time”.
“Yes, of course we want maximum cash and efficiencies, but we also want to redeploy resources where they’re needed most, and that’s both at the departmental level and across government.”
Kakaras also made the point that procurement officials often have no choice but to run separate procurement processes for the same product or service so that it can be used across different domains of government.
“What we’re trying to apply a lot more in value-for-money propositions is [enabling]… colleagues [to] lift and shift that in a way that allows [them] to extend those services into the domain that [they’re] operating in, as opposed to running another procurement for the same service with the same supplier,” she said.
Start small, be agile
Next to speak was Dag Strømsnes, division director of the Norwegian Agency for Public and Financial Management in Norway. Strømsnes’s experience of developing and implementing strategies to ensure compliance with rules and regulations gave him perspective on what governments seeking to digitise services should be trying to get right.
He said it is important in Norway that big digital projects advance national priorities, such as improving public services, digital inclusion and national security and resilience, and that prioritisation is given to projects that will fill existing digital gaps.
What he is “most eager” about, he added, is the use of data, impact analysis and cost benefit analysis to really understand the economic impact and productivity gains, or otherwise, of slated projects.
He also noted that Norway has a “complex regime” for big ICT procurements in excess of €75m (US$85m) involving a higher level of quality assurance through the Ministry of Finance.
“What we always need to assess is digital maturity [of the organisations applying for investment] related to the sectors and the owners of the projects, in relation to technological infrastructure, data capabilities, and also cybersecurity readiness which is of great importance and really high on the agenda in Norway,” he said.
The Norwegian government – like others – has seen big ICT projects fail and has therefore been “a bit afraid” of embarking on new ones, he added. Therefore, it has shifted to a best practice approach of starting small and working in a more agile way than had been the norm previously, with a big focus on the organisation seeking digital investment being able to demonstrate that they would be able to manage and deliver the project in question successfully.
The importance of business cases with a ‘clear path’ to ROI
Ian Owen, senior director of industries and global head of public sector and higher education at webinar knowledge partner Unit4 – who is an ex-public sector official as well as having 20 years’ experience working for suppliers to government – stressed that there had been “lots of big IT failures in every geography”, and that Norway in no way stood out in that regard.
When evaluating digital transformation plans as an accountant, he said he always looked to see a business case with a clear path to return on investment (ROI).
“From what we see within the market at the moment, it’s not a lack of initiatives [that stands out], it’s that we can’t always bring focus to the things that are most important and focus on the outcomes.”
Putting citizens “at the centre of it” and making decisions based on what is going to satisfy them – from taxpayer savings to effectiveness – is key, he said.
“We’re always trying to drive those [things]… but sometimes we don’t always specify it as well as we could at the start to make sure that we drive the right outcomes.”
The important thing, he emphasised, is for governments to ask: what are the actual outcomes that we’re trying to drive?
“If we get that clear at the start, then that makes it easier to come up with a business case that makes sense. And hopefully… it means we don’t think about everything that is technology related as just being technology. Technology projects usually fail because we’ve not managed the people correctly. It’s not usually the technology that has fallen down.”
‘Fluidity’, benefit realisation, and KPIs
On the point about outcomes, Kakaras added that departments need to think about what ‘good’ looks like at the end of the process, as well as how they can allow “fluidity as the project goes on”.
Strømsnes added that the lack of a “benefit realisation plan” can often be the cause of a floundering project. The team behind a project might have it mapped out over a number of years but doesn’t know how to realise all the KPIs that have been set for it.
He acknowledged that “it’s difficult to measure the quality of the project in such a way, and if you can’t measure it, how do you manage it? The regime in Norway is strict. We need the KPIs, and we need to measure [projects] for the documentation. That is pretty hard work, but it’s useful”.
Kakaras warned, however, that measuring KPIs can easily become the bulk of the work for government officials, and that given the time it takes to evaluate a project, teams often lose sight of the original aims.
“Whilst I think we should be really clear on the outcomes and the things that we want to measure… sometimes we forget why [we started],” she said.
Addressing the ‘cumbersome’ nature of governance
Arianne Reza is deputy minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada. She said the move to a “citizen-focused approach to digital” – in her opinion, one of the most significant changes in this domain over the last two decades – is now “as key as stewardship [and] as probity of funding”.
This focus means that the government has to “think about a wallet, a suite of digital services that we’re offering citizens”, she said.
She added that the discussion had driven home to her the “cumbersome” nature of a lot of existing governance processes, especially those around large digital transformation projects.
“There are lots of gates, lots of checks and balances, audit functions, senior sign-off, accountability,” Reza – who regularly testifies in Canadian parliament about related decisions – said.
The citizen-centric approach to digital had created a “tension point… in terms of governance because governance can be heavy, clunky, slow, meanwhile the world around us is agile [and often working to] 90-day sprint deliveries”.
Making noise in a tight funding environment
A question raised by an audience member towards the end of the webinar was about how leaders responsible for high-value but ‘less visible’ services could demonstrate their impact and make the case for the investment they need to modernise and scale.
Owen said that the most important thing was to generate noise. “You’ve got to be noisy when you’re in a situation where you’re competing for very limited funding,” he said.
“You’ve just got to get out there and be more vocal. The more that you show people what you’ve got and what you can do… the more chance you’ve got of getting some additional funding.”
Kakaras agreed, advising those in this situation to “start talking, and don’t stop talking until you’re heard”.
“Sometimes the stars have to align for the right conversation with the right person, and there is no strategy for that. But I would say, if you believe in it, go for it, and tell as many people as possible, and use every communication method at your disposal,” she said.
The ‘How governments decide what to fix, modernise and fund’ webinar was hosted by Global Government Forum with support from knowledge partner Unit4 and took place on 18 June 2026. You can watch the webinar here to hear the panellists discuss additional topics such as:
How to engage with innovative startups and SMEs and enable them to compete for government contracts to diversify the supplier base
How to stay abreast of emerging technologies and keep departments and agencies informed of what’s in the pipeline
How to get the right people involved in the decision-making process when it comes to digital investments
Addressing legacy technology
How governments can work to become more agile
About Jack Aldane
Jack is a British journalist, cartoonist and podcaster. He graduated from Heythrop College London in 2009 with a BA in philosophy, before living and working in China for three years as a freelance reporter. After training in financial journalism at City University from 2013 to 2014, Jack worked at Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters before moving into editing magazines on global trade and development finance. Shortly after editing opinion writing for UnHerd, he joined the independent think tank ResPublica, where he led a media campaign to change the health and safety requirements around asbestos in UK public buildings. As host and producer of The Booking Club podcast – a conversation series featuring prominent authors and commentators at their favourite restaurants – Jack continues to engage today’s most distinguished thinkers on the biggest problems pertaining to ideology and power in the 21st century. He joined Global Government Forum as its Senior Staff Writer and Community Co-ordinator in 2021.
