The way local government is changing has encouraged us to look much more closely at how we can work together to improve the way we work.
In the past we’ve tended to look at digital strategy from a very insular point of view. How will a transactional website help my authority’s citizens? How will this database improve the efficiency of my departments? In the past, this has been a fair view to take. One size to fit one local authority has been a good solution to the problems that we’ve had to overcome. But the rewards available for a unified digital vision now require us to work together.
The problem with this vision is who leads it?
Central government, obviously, has the same problem. It also has large budget cuts to deal with as well as the expectation of a public that increasingly wants to interact with services online. The difference, of course, is the Government Digital Service was given £450m to lead the Government’s transition to a digital first view of service provision. Local government has been expected to find its own way along the path to the same goal.
At the end of March the Department for Community and Local Government’s excellent Local Digital Programme was disbanded. Its brief existence saw a lot of genuinely innovative projects, chief of which was the excellent work on the Local Waste Services Standards, which provided a strong argument for standardising parts of waste service provision. The business case, which I highly recommend you read, shows how this relatively straightforward strategic shift can save a great deal of money in efficiencies and the set-up cost of contracts. The prospect of rolling out a similar strategy to other services is a mouth-watering one.
Fortunately, the good work of the Local Digital Programme will not be abandoned. A new federation of organisations has launched. The Local Digital Coalition (LDC) comprises SOLACE, the Local CIO Council, Socitm, LocalGov Digital, iNetwork, iStandUK, Warwickshire CC, Bristol City Council, Leeds City Council, Luton BC and Camden LBC. The LDC has stated aims to continue with the waste standards project as well as well as various other exemplar projects including Warwickshire’s Blue Badge Eligibility Checker and the Integrated Care Record Standards Project.
Most interesting of all is their aim to plan ‘digital collaboration initiatives that could be undertaken once in order to realise collective benefits’. This is the real key to the success of the LDC. If they are able to engage with as many local authorities as possible the sector will, eventually, get access to a single solution across a range of services that will be scaleable across all local authorities. Obviously, we’re a long way from this at the moment, but the fact there’s an organisation with this as one of its core aims is a huge step towards a sector-wide digital solution.
So have we found the people who are able to take on the leadership of the digital issue? They are certainly ahead of the field in many ways. Their action plan makes it clear this will not be a closed shop. They invite all local authorities to join the coalition and endorse their action plan which lays out their objectives for the first year.
It seems like a bold step towards unified solutions, rather than the creation of 432 solutions to the same problem.
Dean Wanless is managing editor of The Municipal Year Book
The MJ and UKAuthority have organised the Digital Authority Forum, a one-day event focusing on digital leadership issues. For more information see: www.digitalauthorityforum.co.uk
