Without digital technologies like ERP, Cloud, and AI, pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and Moderna would have taken much longer to trial, produce and critical vaccines to people. Tools and platforms behind these solutions are often hidden from the limelight. We need the right tools to operate, tinker with, connect, and compose new systems, which has created an unprecedented need for skilled IT professionals.

Passive End Users to Shape-Shifters
Around the world, there are roughly 26 million software developers today – same as the population of Australia – who use an array of programming languages, tools, and technologies. However, there are 100+ million professionals – end users – running critical business processes in banks, airlines, hospitals, retail companies, factories, and government agencies.

In the next 10 years, a vast majority is expected to join hands in building, not merely consuming digital solutions. For them to take a leap across the treacherous waters of full-stack programming, many (LCNC) are being made available. It should help trigger their primal instincts to build – to personalise, to restructure business processes, design new apps, construct workflows, and deploy machine learning models on data to make better decisions.

Such LCNC tools result in faster collaboration across teams, reduced cost of innovation, greater automation, and better user experience. This has been the – the Finland based aspiring technology leader in the premium electric motorcycles segment, where a small team created new apps in record time to manage evolving business needs.

However, while greater democratisation of software building occurs, it is not as if code has suddenly become irrelevant. Nor has it removed the need for software engineers. In fact, AI infused tools such as promise a future where tools transform into extensions of a skilled worker.

Systems for the Future
The humble axe remained the longest used tool in human history. It took millions of years in our evolutionary past before we built complex structures. Tools and skills are two sides of the same coin, and we achieved speed and scale by sharing knowledge of tools across communities, across generations.

To build digital systems of the future, we need to bring in the community. are already thinking about investing on better technology platforms. The future of work will need a that enables knowledge workers of varying skillsets to compose new business processes and re-shape their digital worlds.

With the collective intelligence, and better tools, what will we build? Bigger, better, faster, cheaper systems. Perhaps also, different, something unimaginable yet.

Steve Jobs told us in 2007 as an indicator: “In the end, we try to make tools for people, “and we’re constantly surprised with what people do with them.”

This article originally featured on

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On the one hand, new technologies and possibilities generate excitement and a sense of wonder. On the other hand, we feel anxiety when faced with multiple emerging trends, uncertainty, and change.

How can organisations guide employees to navigate a jungle still growing wild? Above all, how can we achieve a sense of inner calm and perform purpose-led, deep-work?

Predict vs Prepare
There is no dearth of predictions about the Future of Work, especially how AI and automation would transform man’s relationship with work and life as such. Even a century ago in 1932, renowned philosopher Bertrand Russel said, “in a soon-to-be automated world, ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting” and even lose their “taste for war”.

Around the same time, John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the early 21st century, we would work only 15 hours per week. Alas, we now know economic prosperity does not necessarily lead to more kindness. Nor that automation has led to less hours of work per day. It serves us well to prepare for the future than to predict it.

Gain Perspective
However, if we are to construct a view of future work and skills landscape, we better step back in time to gain a broader perspective, using the lens of our evolutionary past. James Suzman, through his fascinating book: Work – A History of How We Spend Our Time – takes us back by 300 thousand years to illustrate a strong correlation between work and our evolution.

He explains how for our ancestors, work wasn’t a way to spend energy, rather to capture it from the environment (by mastering fire and cooking). The work they did and tools they created shaped Homo Sapiens physically and neurologically. As a species we “became skilled at acquiring skills”. Another key insight is how we adapted to change by being generalists.

This is relevant for us here and now. David Epstein’s recent book: Range – how Generalists Triumph in a Specialised World – extols the virtues of ” breadth, diverse experience, interdisciplinary thinking, in a world that increasingly incentivises, even demands, hyperspecialisation”. Meta-learning, cross-domain knowledge, curiosity, and grit are essential for the new age worker.

Radar and Navigator
My own radar equipment is my . I pay attention to contemporary best practices and practitioners – books like Tribe of Mentors and podcasts like The Knowledge Podcast. One cannot fail to notice frequent references to neurochemistry, with fresh ideas on personal mastery and peak performance made easily consumable by the likes of Andrew Huberman and Steven Kotler.

To navigate the unknown and uncertain, I leverage my network. Being part of a large and diverse organisation enriches the individual. Reaching out and tapping the collective intelligence has helped me deal with complex situations at work. After all, we are social animals, and we thrive when our peers validate our ideas.

Organisations that facilitate serendipitous networking in teams across boundaries stand to gain in the long term. I particularly remember my earliest trip to the 51·çÁ÷headquarters when my manager made me work out of the coffee area for a week, to nudge me to connect with many team members. SAP’s recent research into this topic includes Network as one of the six drivers for .

In the new age of work, individuals accomplish personal mastery, while the team achieves collective differentiation to stay ahead of time.

Back to the future
In the end, there is no crystal ball to predict what the future of work holds for each of us. Learning from history, we know we are learning machines. And we have the radars and navigators to rely on. With a refined focus and clear vision, possessing the curiosity of a child, let us embrace the new age of work.

William Gibson said, “The Future is already here, it is just not evenly distributed”. It is time to bring everyone, across organisations to be ready for the future. Let us ride along with Marty McFly and Doc Brown, powering up the DeLorean to get Back to the Future.

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The last article in our “Dealing with Disruption” series presented a conceptual architecture for Digital Nudges and demonstrated how it could be applied to improve crisis communications relating to a second-wave outbreak of the Coronavirus. In this companion piece, we seek to demonstrate that governments have ready access to the business applications and technologies required to deliver digital nudges today.

To achieve this, we’ll map our conceptual architecture to 51·çÁ÷products that are generally available and are already in use by governments around the world.

Conceptual Architecture

For reference, our conceptual architecture for digital nudges is depicted below.

Figure 1: A conceptual architecture for digital nudges.

Ěý51·çÁ÷Reference Architecture

Mapping our conceptual architecture to 51·çÁ÷products provides assurance that our conceptual architecture can be delivered in practice.

Figure 2: An example reference architecture for digital nudges.

Note that SAP’s will evolve over time, so this bill of materials should be considered representative rather than prescriptive.

• Predictive Analytics:
  • : enables organizations to analyze the behavior of customers and to generate risk scores and insights.
• Contextualization:
  • : enables organizations to use consent-based marketing and advanced data analytics to engage customers with pinpoint accuracy.
• Experience Management:
  • : enables organizations to gather experience data and combine it with operational data to close experience gaps.

• Analytics:
  • : enables organizations to provide a single source of truth to decision makers about the most important business metrics in real time.
    : enables organizations to combine BI, planning, predictive, and augmented analytics capabilities into one simple cloud environment.
• Intelligent Technologies:
  • : enables organizations to process distributed data and provide users with intelligent, relevant, and contextual insights with integration across the IT landscape.
    : enables organizations to define functions that can be called from within SQLScript procedures to perform analytic algorithms.
• Data Management:
  • : enables organizations to deliver a data warehouse in the cloud to unite multiple data sources in one solution.
    : enables organizations to accelerate data-driven, real-time decision-making and actions via a high-performance in-memory database.
• Application Development & Integration:
  • : enables organizations to model, implement, integrate, and monitor custom process applications and integration scenarios.
  • : enables organizations to accelerate integration, simplify development of application extensions, and expand business value with an open ecosystem.

In presenting this reference architecture, our intent has been to provide a worked example to demonstrate that governments have ready access to the business applications and technologies required to deliver digital nudges today, using business and technology components from SAP.

While other vendors might be able to offer some components of a digital nudge platform, we believe there is a benefit in sourcing the end-to-end solution from a single vendor.

To read more Public Sector content or find out more about SAP’s Public Sector customers and products, visit:

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The first two articles in our “Dealing with Disruption” series looked at how digital technologies might enable governments around the world to nudge citizens towards cooperation and coordinated action in containing COVID-19, and to address issues of hand washing, face touching, self-isolation, collective action, and crisis communication. In this article, the 51·çÁ÷Institute for Digital Government (SIDG) will present a conceptual architecture for Digital Nudges and demonstrate how it could be applied to improve crisis communications relating to a second-wave outbreak of the Coronavirus.

Using digital nudges to support government responses to coronavirus

To demonstrate how our conceptual architecture might be applied, we will consider the scenario of a second-wave outbreak of the Coronavirus, such as was .

Figure 1: The first- and second-wave outbreaks of COVID-19 in Australia.

was identified on 25 January 2020. The number of new cases rapidly increased and peaked nine weeks later, with reported on 28 March. The Australian government responded very successfully with a for flattening the curve, and by mid-April there were a relatively low number of new cases being reported daily. Although the virus had not been eliminated, it appeared to have been suppressed sufficiently for lockdown restrictions to be eased across Australia. Unfortunately, were identified in Melbourne on 20 June, foreshadowing a second-wave and prompting a reinforcement of restrictions to contain the outbreak. Even so, Australia’s second-wave proved more difficult to contain than the first, peaking at reported on 5 August.

Due to the localized nature of the second-wave outbreak, stay-at-home restrictions were reintroduced only in metropolitan . Most notably, in North Melbourne and Flemington were immediately locked-down, with residents of 33 Alfred Street subsequently required to isolate for two weeks. While it was generally agreed that this was a necessary measure, the immediacy of the action combined with various communication challenges resulted in widespread confusion and concern among the 3,000 public housing tenants. captured the sentiment at the time:

• “When I came back home I did see hundreds of cops everywhere, so it was really intimidating.”
• “It’s been getting more and more intense, people are really panicking.”
• “We weren’t told any information, they just shut us down, didn’t let us leave our houses.”
• “I just feel like we’re being treated like criminals.”
• “We do not need 500 officers guarding the nine towers. We need nurses, we need counsellors, we need interpreters.”

In what has been an unprecedented year, the hard lockdown of Melbourne’s public housing towers was an unprecedented action by the Australian government, law enforcement and public health services. To that point, Australian citizens had not experienced a lockdown under guard, except in cases of returned citizens undertaking hotel quarantine.

In special cases such as this, efficient and effective crisis communication is key – not only in ensuring compliance – but in promoting cooperation through credibility, empathy and respect. Behavioral Science can assist by influencing individual decisions towards the most positive outcome, and digital technologies can be used to scale and personalize traditional nudges to improve outcomes for mass cohorts.

Conceptual Architecture for digital nudgesĚý

Figure 2: A conceptual architecture for digital nudges.

Nudging is a delicate process, with significant preparation required to avoid unintended consequences – especially when the stakes are as high as they are in the case of COVID-19. These stakes are raised even higher when the nudges are to be delivered by governments, at scale, using digital technologies. The is to optimize utility and mitigate risk using an iterative process of randomized controlled trials with rapid cycle evaluation. Whether the nudge is to be delivered as part of a trial, or to the population at large, an iteration of the nudging process typically spans:

• Design and contextualize: The nudge is designed to achieve the outcome of interest, based on an exploration of the available data. A key consideration is the situational and social context of the environment in which the nudge is to be deployed. In the case of crisis communications, nudges need to for citizens’ circumstances.
• Simulate and deploy: Randomized controlled trials can be used to simulate the likely response to a given nudge. A variation of this approach would involve using , to enable simulations to be run faster and safer than with human subjects. In the case of crisis communications, these simulations could be aligned to the accepted thresholds of a national or local containment strategy.
• Monitor and measure: Having deployed the nudge, social listening and devices can be employed to monitor the actual response. Although it may be difficult to measure the effectiveness of nudges as a behavioral modifier, a control group who does not receive the nudge may be used. In the case of crisis communications, we might also consider performance against “fake news” as a measure of effectiveness.
• Analyze and improve: Here we distinguish between measurement and analysis, specifically within the context of diagnostics – analyzing why a particular action has been taken or a particular outcome achieved. Based on this analysis, improvements can be made to the design of the nudge, and thus the iteration continues. In the case of crisis communications, certain visualizations (e.g. ) might be published to encourage community cooperation and coordinated action.

Digital nudges: Core capabilities

As described in our first article, predictive analytics, contextualization, and experience management are the core capabilities required to deliver digital nudges. Breaking down these capabilities will enable us to illustrate how they can support policymakers and service agencies, working with behavioral scientists and technology partners, to improve the effectiveness of traditional nudges.

• Predictive Analytics:
  • Behavioral Insights: The ability to detect patterns in citizen behavior, based on transactional and experiential data. For example, based on their prior responses to government requests, we can expect Citizen X to comply with stay-at-home orders.
  • Journey Visualization: The ability to visualize the citizen’s journey over time, including major life events, changes in circumstance, and their interactions with government. For example, based on the healthcare, social services and financial supports they have recently accessed, Citizen X is likely a vulnerable person who will need additional supports.
  • Simulation: The ability to simulate the likely responses to a digital nudge, including the ability to compare alternative approaches. For example, Nudge A will increase compliance with stay-at-home orders by 5%, with 80% confidence.
  • Next Best Action: The ability to recommend the optimal course of action, based on (autonomous) machine learning. For example, Nudge A will be most effective for Citizen X, while Nudge B will be most effective for Citizen Y.

• Contextualization:
  • Profiling: The ability to assemble a digital profile of a citizen, by combining data from multiple sources (as permitted by government regulations). For example, we know that Citizen X is at high risk, since they are over 80 years of age and live in high-density public housing.
  • Segmentation: The ability to create target groups, comprising citizens with similar profiles and needs. For example, Segment A comprises citizens of working age, who are likely concerned about the impact of stay-at-home orders on jobs.
  • Campaigns: The ability to proactively outreach to target groups with nudges tailored to their circumstances. For example, Nudge A will be delivered to citizens of working age, while Nudge B will be delivered to citizens over the age of 65.
  • Preferences: The ability to communicate with citizens via their preferred channel, and at their preferred time and place. For example, Citizen X usually responds promptly to SMS sent around lunchtime.

• Experience Management:
  • Social Listening: The ability to monitor social media to track changes in citizen sentiment over time. For example, citizens under lockdown are complaining that police presence is making them feel like criminals.
  • Surveys: The ability to solicit direct feedback from citizens. For example, Citizen X responded that they couldn’t understand the specifics of the stay-at-home order because English is their second language and no translation service was provided.
  • Measurement: The ability to measure the response to a digital nudge, based on transactional and experiential data. For example, Nudge A increased compliance with stay-at-home orders by 3%, compared with the control group who did not receive the nudge.
  • Diagnostic Analytics: The ability to uncover why certain nudges are, or aren’t, working. For example, Nudge A was widely criticized as being disrespectful, resulting in a lower level of compliance than anticipated.

The underlying business platform supports the design, development, and management of our digital nudges.

• Analytics: The ability to analyze transactional and experiential data. Desirable features include the ability to:
  • surface actionable insights based on predictions;
  • dynamically drill-down into records of interest;
  • visualize citizen journeys over time; and
  • update data and visualizations in real-time.

• Intelligent Technologies: The ability to build, execute and manage machine learning applications. Desirable features include the ability to:
  • process big data holdings to build advanced machine learning models;
  • support profiling and segmentation of data in line with contextualization capabilities;
  • generate predictions and next best action recommendations; and
  • make improvements based on (autonomous) machine learning.

• Data Management: The ability to access and work with big data, in real-time. Desirable features include the ability to:
  • consolidate data from multiple sources;
  • work with transactional data in real-time, without impacting operational systems;
  • work with analytical data in-place, without the need for replication; and
  • ensure the security and privacy of citizen data.

• Application Development & Integration: The ability to develop and integrate business applications. Desirable features include the ability to:
  • accelerate the design and development of advanced machine learning applications;
  • run simulations in support of what-if analysis;
  • support an open ecosystem of development partners; and
  • integrate with external systems (e.g. geographic information systems).

In presenting this conceptual architecture, our intent has been to provide a framework that governments can use to deliver digital nudges. We believe this framework to be general-purpose, while acknowledging that certain scenarios will require additional capabilities. Our chosen use case of crisis communications serves as an illustrative example. Please note that, since this conceptual architecture is vendor-agnostic, the described capabilities could be sourced from any technology provider.

To read more about how digital technology can be used to improve public sector services, visit .

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