By Tony Moretta
I WAS impressed, as I’m sure were many others, at the speed with which the government and Ports of Jersey stepped in to sort a replacement for the sad loss of Blue Islands. I’m sure a lot of work went into this behind the scenes with ministers, officers, Ports and airline staff working together as a team, and it struck me again that “Team Jersey” works well together in a crisis when we have a clear burning platform to address.
I say “again” because we saw the same during Covid, when the Island pulled together as a team of all our talents to manage our way through the crisis rather than just close the borders and shut up shop like many other locations around the world. We were nimble and agile in the way we prepared our health system, put in place a world-class test-and-trace system, built a temporary hospital, got our education system to work remotely as well as our finance industry, boosted our broadband speeds and ensured access for all, volunteered to help those in need of meals on wheels or just company, and eventually opened up our border to reunite family and friends and restart our visitor economy.
That was a team effort of politicians, civil servants, arms-length bodies, private companies and citizens and the community spirit to work together to manage our way out of a real crisis was deeply impressive. Yes, there were many armchair critics at the time but I hope even they will look back and be proud of our island response overall.
I can say all this from personal experience from my involvement at the time and the work that the Digital Jersey team did, but we were just a small part of a massive effort. It was a real pleasure to see the teamwork across the Island, the long hours put in, the collaboration and quick but evidence-based decision-making.
We proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jersey could be nimble and agile when it needed to be and when we were faced with a clear and present danger to our health and our livelihoods. However, it feels like we’ve forgotten how to work like that or perhaps we don’t always recognise the potential burning platforms even when they’re so obviously smouldering around us.
I’m reminded of a conversation I had with an IT leader in the NHS not long after Covid. He said that his experience during the pandemic was the best of his career. He said he saw the NHS make rapid decisions, prioritise patient health over red tape and pull together. He said he and many others assumed the system would learn lessons. However, even though surely the health of the nation was one of the most urgent challenges facing the UK, the NHS quickly went back to old habits.
I say all this because I fear we have more than a few potentially serious threats ahead of us and if we wait until the fires are burning it may be too late to put them out.
Everywhere we see signs that the traditional Jersey economic model may be under threat. Tourism numbers are down, our visitor experience has perhaps got a bit out of date and expensive, transport links are struggling, we have a growing cost of government, we are seeing redundancies in our finance industry and the increasing offshoring of operations, traditional industries such as agriculture are now a tiny part of our economy and we have an ageing demographic which could make all of the above issues worse.
This is all before we face the impact of AI, which is both an opportunity and a threat as I’ve said in these pages before. No one knows what impact AI will have on jobs but as the saying goes: “We overestimate the impact of technology in the short-term and underestimate the effect in the long run”. So we can’t afford to wait to see what the impact actually is in case it’s then too late to do anything about it.
There are, however, things we can do to prepare for any threat, to make sure we are flexible enough to weather any economic or technological storm which may come our way. We should develop a modernisation agenda for the whole Island, not just government. We should challenge the way we’ve always done things and ask if they are necessary and cost-effective. We should invest in technology to improve our productivity. We should support and attract entrepreneurs to strengthen our existing industries and build new ones. Above all, we should invest in education and skills as a highly skilled workforce is always going to be our best defence against any future shocks.
We have some good examples. We now have a Digital Health Delivery Group – a team effort of the Health Department, GPs, clinicians, family nursing, government IT, Digital Jersey and others working as a team to modernise our health services, improve outcomes and ensure affordability in the long term. The AI Council brings together the finance and digital industries, regulators, the IoD and government to ensure Jersey has a joined-up plan to harness AI, and only this past weekend has seen around 70 people working at the Digital Jersey Hub in an AI Hackathon, developing ideas to help us address our greatest challenges.
However, we need more of this co-operation, across our economy, our public sector and the whole Island, as no one organisation, even government, has all the answers. We also must be honest with ourselves about the risks we face, come up with bold plans to address them and put those into action quickly. We can’t allow complacency and resistance to change to get in the way of doing the right things. We don’t have time. We can smell the smoke. Let’s not wait until we can see the flames.
Tony Moretta is the chief executive of Digital Jersey. He has over 30 years of senior management experience across a wide range of digital industries, including mobile, online, broadcast, payments, advertising and data analytics, using the latest technological innovations to develop new products and services.
