Low-code platforms help organisations develop apps and processes rapidly by bringing process mining, workflow, and automation together, writes Vishal Hanjan.

In recent times, private sector leaders joining public sector organisations have brought with them a more customer-focused culture at both a policy and service delivery level and traditional ways of thinking and operating are being replaced with more collaborative approaches.

Historically, a conservative approach to technology investment often saw government departments choose the “safe” option. There was a preference for buying off-the-shelf commercial solutions that weren’t tailored to the needs of citizens.

One example of the dangers of adopting this approach was the Victorian Infringements Enforcement Warrant (VIEW) system. The commercial application that was purchased ended up costing $125 million.

The audit report stated that the rollout failed to meet the expected time, cost, quality, and functionality targets due to the department’s “significant failures.” The report found, “These failures were mainly due to DJCS’s misguided and poorly implemented risk-mitigation strategy to procure a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) system.”

Avoiding costly mistakes

A low-code platform avoids this type of costly mistake.

This is because it requires little to no coding. So instead of using complex programing languages, users work with visual interfaces with basic logic and drag-and-drop capabilities on a unified platform.

Experiencing some failure is inherent in innovation, but a low-code solution allows agencies to try innovative new ideas and, if needed, pivot quickly, inexpensively, and without friction.

Low-Code Platforms helps organisations build apps and workflows rapidly. They bring together process mining, workflow, and automation in a unified low-code platform, enabling users to discover, design, and automate crucial business processes.

At its core, low-code development abstracts away much of the nitty-gritty high-code development requirements. Rather than a developer using Java, HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL and more all within the same project, each team member only needs to know how to use one platform, letting developers focus on the critical  part: solving problems and speeding digital transformation projects.

Low-code has two key benefits:

•  It’s fast – it allows you to create apps by drawing a workflow diagram. So, it’s quick to build, and quick to change. It supercharges your agile development process

• it’s unified – it enables you to include any worker (people, bots, AI, and business rules) or any resource (data and system) into a single workflow. It brings all your assets to bear.

Over recent decades, governments have collected a plethora of disjointed, legacy systems that are inflexible, fragile, and unable to scale to meet the demands of new requirements and an increasing number of users. 

Adopting a value-driven, low-code, robotics/machine learning approach makes overcoming the challenge created by legacy systems more achievable.

Improving citizen engagement

Using low-code as a technology foundation allows government departments to pull data from multiple sources into one unified, actionable citizen record. The best part is that this data can continue to reside in existing systems as long as necessary, even as new capabilities are built.

Low-code can automate and extend existing processes, simplify cloud migration, and has the speed and flexibility to configure scalable solutions for existing and future projects.

Departments can respond to changing citizen demands faster because the development and deployment of apps is delivered 17 times faster with low-code than other technologies.

And from a service delivery point of view, low-code combines Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to deliver a seamless, personalised citizen experience.

Vishal Hanjan is Industry Lead State and Local at Government at Appian.

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