Paul McDonald

Director of Local Public Services @Atos

I bring a rounded view of what local public services can achieve, how they can outperform against their own expectations, and exceed the requirements of stakeholders and citizens. I work with customers to identify and realise the potential of using technology to drive better outcomes. To me it’s not a difficult task since I view Atos as a genuine digital services leader in its work with local authorities. I have a passion for local government – it was the subject of my post-grad diploma and is the focus of my career. Atos has the same passion for the sector. The teams here share a determination to help local authorities improve how they do things. This shows itself in the real feeling that all our customers have that although our size and stature is reassuring, it’s our dedicated people on the ground who make the real difference; developing personal relationships with our customers, sharing their challenges and celebrating together in their successes.Our work with local authorities is defined by outcomes – the processes it improves, the money it saves, the connections it makes, the people it helps. By driving the paperless office, the agile workforce and the joined-up interagency ecosystem, we help local authorities to serve these people more effectively. We also help them use information in a more integrated and single-view fashion to minimise fraudulent benefit claims, and optimise due receipts. The thing I love about being part of the Atos team is that we go out of our way to deliver on any size of project – from point solutions to long-term and visionary digital consultancy. One of the goals we always focus on is to help authorities to make their existing systems work harder before ever committing to new technology, just for the sake of it. As much as transformation is focused unequivocally on the future, I believe there’s always a lot we can learn from, benefit from and take with us from the past.