Report on Operations Management in the UK

            Government of the UK regulates the whole system of the UK through developing strategies and providing relevant services. Key services offered by the Government of the United Kingdom (UK) for the public are related to the control and obligations of the national government. Scope of these services can be distinguished as tax collection, statutory information for employment benefits management; registration of births, marriages, and deaths, and information housing and council service. Government of UK manage all input and output with appropriate strategies and ensure the completion of operations in the desired manner. Key aspects of traditional operations management concerns with the Government of UK are output, input, processing, production, capacity planning, and transformation. Government of UK decides and collect input from the public for the processing and production of desired products and services and later deliver output in the market with the support of effective supply chain. Input includes raw materials, financial resources and labor working on the services and products manufacturing. For instance, in the manufacturing, UK driving license ID organization require input resources such as paper, printer inks, labor and financial funds for processing.

            There are some operational challenges from the perspective of the digital economy "digital readiness and capacity and supply chain management. Digital economy facilitates the services delivery process through the improved and pervasive use of information and communication technologies. Government of the United Kingdom (UK) is trying to implement digitalization in all areas of their operations. According to the policy, all services of Government of UK will use information technology and artificial intelligence for improved output.  

Present work is consisting of information regarding the operations carried out by the Government of UK and managerial systems applied to ensure completion of these operations in the appropriate manner. Present work will also elaborate on the supply chain management of the Government of the UK for the delivery of products and services. Moreover, recommendations are presented in the report to discuss the possible ways to bring improvement in operations.     

Operations in practice of Government of the UK

            In the past, digitalization was not quite common in the UK, therefore, most of the services and organizational operations were supported by the manual systems. Somehow, now improved information system, communication technology, and artificial intelligence has made it possible for the organizations to get refinement and betterment in the operations through adopting digitalization. Government of the United Kingdom (UK) will also interested to take advantage of the situation. Digital systems and advanced information technologies will support the Government of the United Kingdom (UK) to deliver services in relatively less time and cost with more accuracy. However, suddenly changing the whole operations management system is also not safe. Operational functions of government of the United Kingdom (UK) will get development and changes in the digital economy that can pose challenging situations. Changes may also influence capacity and supply chain management of Government of the United Kingdom (UK). The conversion taking place in the operations of the Government of UK will also alter the output and profitability (digital economy).

            A key service of Government of UK is providing UK driving license ID. Taking the example of this service we can say that a lot of changes will occur in the operation management system of this service as a result conversion. For instance, before the adoption of digital systems and information technology government was used to take input (personal information) from the manually stored information in the files. Searching information was a time taking process. While through supporting digital systems now the government is capable to easily get information about a person from their stored records and information in the databases. Digital database can provide information in just a few seconds (Ukdataservice.ac.uk). Moreover, the digital system also facilitates finding historical information and other important information about a person while issuing a new driving license. For instance, digitalization has made it possible to get information about expired licenses and destroyed licenses. Information in the digital platforms enables outputs (manufactured products of Government of the UK) to be manufactured and delivered to the customer (the person for whom licenses are manufactured) (Gov.uk).

                Service provision has made it possible to meet the required standards of quality at the level of capacity. Level of capacity need to be appropriate and aligned with the demand for the service as some services has high and frequent demand as compared to other services. Basically, all services and products require time in processing from input to output. Material (information) processing can be related to the production of products to be delivered to the customers or recycling of the products to end waste materials. For instance, processing of old and expired licenses for disposal and manufacturing of new licenses. Thus operations and functions of Government of UK are getting changes and impact in response to the increase of digitalization and IT in the operations management and organizational functions.

Other than input and output of the operations supply chain management is also getting impact. Government of UK offer three service delivery models that can be selected by the organizations. All these service delivery model is developed with the purpose to deliver the security outcomes and business outcomes. These service delivery models are presented below:

In-house service delivery of Government of the UK

The model relates to the service delivery in which entire services locates within business boundaries. The organization holds total control of data, infrastructure, and resources.

Procured service delivery of Government of the UK

In procured service delivery organizations rely on contractual agreements that include service level agreement for the delivery of complete services set (Gov.uk).

Hybrid service delivery of Government of the UK

The combination of in-house service delivery and procured service delivery is known as hybrid service delivery. It consists of some components from in-house service but contracts sometimes with MSSP (Managed Security Service Provider) to delivery.

The analysis is focused on security aspects of service delivery models while having a consideration on IT deployment, costing, and staffing aspects (Gov.uk).

            Supply chain management is a comprehensive process that covers all activities concerning with the production and delivery of some products and services (Hearnshaw and Wilson). The supply chain starts from the purchase of raw material from the supplier and ends at delivery of output in the targeted market. Focus on the digital system has made it possible for the Government of the UK to create e-platform and digital platforms that customers can use to get registered online. Now customers no more need to visit offices to the collects registration form for recording marriages, deaths, births, citizenship, driving, and disability. In fact, they can easily download forms available on websites. According to the information presented on the website of Gov.uk the key services offered by the Government of the UK which is supported by the technologies are classified as:

(GOV.UK) Government of the UK notify

Government of UK provide notifications and updates to the users with the use of advanced information and communication technologies including e-letters, emails, and text messages in a cheap and easy way. 

(GOV.UK) Government of the UK pay

Government of UK pay service is related to taking and processing payments for the purchase of products and services. E-payment systems are also launched in which customers can get registration for the purchase of some specific products and services online.  

(GOV.UK) Government of the UK verify

        Online and digital services can make things complicated sometimes because of increased risk factor related to the identity frauds. Services and users identity can be protected from the frauds without having a face-to-face identity check just because of the government verify services. GOV.UK verification services work with the collaboration of several organizations like credit agencies (Verify.service.gov.uk).

(GOV.UK) Government of the UK platform as a service

            One of the key operations of the Government of the UK is to work as a platform for services. The government provides a platform for the deployment of applications without infrastructure specialists (Cloud.service.gov.uk). Government PaaS team takes the responsibility of developing applications and facilitate the customers to get the best customer experiences because of the advanced technologies used by the Government of the UK for the production and delivery of services.          

(GOV.UK) Government of the UK registers 

            Government of the UK also facilitate other businesses person and the public by providing them authoritative datasets on which they can rely. 

            Basically, the main purpose of focusing on the digital environment is to make services reliable and effective for the customers or the public. Digitalization of operations has created ease for the public to get work done easily without waiting so long. Moreover, such actions are also benefiting the Government of the UK as the profit margin is increasing with a decrease in the cost of operations and cost of service delivery. In short, the overall digital economy of the UK is improving as a result of the attention given to the digital environment by the Government of the UK.

            Thus the significance of the supply chain and the interoperability of information has made it possible for the government of the UK to show better performance in operations and accomplish organizational goals concerning with the cost, dependability, speed, and quality. 

            Even there are a number of benefits associated with the digital environment but still, there are operational challenges. For instance, many people living in the United Kingdom are not enough familiar with digital systems and computer systems. So transferring all operations in digital style will cause a problem for them. Moreover, it will also require high technical staff to work on these jobs. The current stuff is recruited on the basis of their skills in the relevant work area. Employees have the knowledge and educational backgrounds specifically in the relevant fields. Therefore we may also find it hard to deliver the desired output so easily with a high percentage of accuracy. The last and most important challenge caused by the digital environment is security threats. Data breaches are quite common. Data stored in the databases and online portals can be breached and accessed by the hackers or third party.        

Conclusion on Operations Management of Government of the UK

            In this section, the conclusion of the current operational scope and capabilities is presented in brief details. Summarizing the whole discussion presented in the above sections we can say conclusively that the Government of UK is regulating operations for the public in the UK. Effective strategies are developed for the operations management and supply chain management related to the offered products and services such as driving license registration and manufacturing, birth, death, marriage, and business set up registration. Modern technology including information and communication technologies are making it possible for the Government of the UK to provide e-services and other products in the digital environment. Considering the specific case of driving license registration and manufacturing we can conclude that the organization collects information from the digital platform as an input and process this information by sending it to the manufacturing area. Printers use pages to print licenses and at the end provide final output to delivery licenses to the customer through the use support of effective supply chain. Because of the digital environment, it is possible for the Government of the UK to accomplish organizational goals related to the accuracy, speed, and cost. Somehow, discussion also presented some possible challenges (such as cyber security issues and IT skills) caused by digital environment that need recommendations.    

Developing digital operations capability of Operations Management of Government of the UK

There are some recommendations to deal with challenges: 

Firstly, the Government should pay focus on IT experts and skilled workforce. In other words, the Government of the UK will have to recruit stuff having high-level computer skills and expert in IT to execute operations in the desired manner.

            Cybersecurity challenges are quite common in the digital economy. The challenge related to data breaches and third-party access can be reduced through making security system strong. The organization should also provide basic level training to all employees about security and possible symptoms of security threats. The government should implement the modern software and malware control system. Threats should be mitigated by detecting and preventing cyber-attacks with innovative and smart controls.  (Spremić and Šimunic). Thus the organization can reduce chances of threats.