Declaration projects

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Achieving for Children has developed a BeDigital strategy and roadmap over the past 18 months. The current focus is to reduce minute taking time through voice recognition and explore the use of artificial intelligence for preventative work.

Partners: Kingston Council, Richmond Council and the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.

Mission: To use digital solutions such as voice recognition to create savings which can then be reinvested into the services we offer to Children, Young People and Families.

Impact: Our project aims to reduce the need for hand-written notes, minute takers and costs spent on writing case notes up. The savings from this can then be reinvested into front line services.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: OpenCommunity: data standards for local community-based services

Partners: Devon County Council, Buckinghamshire County Council

Mission: We will create an open data standard and fully featured API model for local community service directories. We will conduct research with national and local organisations to establish and publish national standards, approved by key institutions. We will research and design the best approaches to implementation, adoption and management, to make it as easy as possible for organisations and software suppliers to adopt the new standards.

Impact: The project aims to reduce the massive duplication of effort currently involved in the supply and maintenance of community service directory information in local areas. It will provide a model where each local can develop a single maintained service directory which is accessible by API by multiple local systems and services. This will assist a range of local front line services to access the right community provision for service users, and will provide the technical environment for further digital innovation, including self referral.

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Digital identification and support of vulnerable citizens pre-crisis

Partners: Mid Sussex District Council (Kevin Stewart, Business Unit Leader Revenues and Benefits), Reigate and Banstead District Council (Simon Rosser, Revenues, Benefits & Fraud Manager), Adur and Worthing Borough Council (Paul Tonking, Head of Revenues & Benefits), Telljo Digital Application (Dominic Maxwell)

Mission: To use a digital platform within existing data bases across a number of settings and geographies to identify people early within financial difficulties and to identify measures and approaches that work well to reduce their vulnerability and improve their wellbeing. The project aims to discover and learn what works (and does not work) across different populations and teams

Impact: Reducing vulnerability across people through increased support for people
Improved wellbeing for those identified as vulnerable
Savings to the Councils and wider system by catching issues early and mitigating debt problems

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Transformation program

Partners:

Mission: To deliver a number of transformational projects including:-
• free Wi-Fi in town centres
• Lorowan network “the internet of things”
• Replacement of a major planning, building control, housing, environmental health, licensing on premise system with a cloud based platform
• Process Automation

Impact:

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Do IT Online - Delivering a Digital Platform

Partners: Community Planning Partners where appropriate

Mission: To streamline our systems and processes and improve our customer services through the use of a Digital Platform.

Impact: Staff - more time to help customers that need help; more time to support officers in their work
Customers - more accessibility to our services outside of 9 to 5; better feedback on the progress of their requests.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Redesigning our garden waste service end-to-end

Partners: N/A

Mission: We will redesign our application and payment process for garden waste service end-to-end, including digital access (currently there is no digital way to request this service and payment must be completed using a paper mandate or over the phone).

Impact: Increased customer satisfaction

Faster service delivery

Reduction in phone calls regarding garden waste

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digitising customer service to increase customer engagement and experience

Partners:

Mission: We recognise that the digital age has transformed the way our partners and customers interact with us and non-traditional channels of communication are becoming more the norm. Customers want to connect through websites, mobile apps, SMS, online self-service and on social media. We want these different channels of communication to play a pivotal role in building engagement with residents and partners. The purpose is to provide multiple avenues for seamless customer communications through an Omni-Channel approach by removing inconsistencies and increase engagement with residents.

The project will provide the council with an opportunity to better understand our customers and identify their preferred method of contact. We will explore the adoption of Chatbots, live video call, WhatsApp and other technological solutions to improve customer service, so that customers and stakeholders can engage with us whenever, wherever and however they want with the organisation, across all channels.

We will invest in push notifications to notify customers of relevant issues through their preferred touchpoints. In return, this would reduce the number of inbound calls the customer service team receive.

Impact: Ashford is a geographically large borough. This has created a challenge for the council in providing services to communities across the borough. Introducing channels such as video call, alongside other digital channels will help improve the range of ways rural residents can access services.

This will improve the range of choice for the customer as well as provide efficiencies in service delivery for the council.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Exploring how digital can contribute to keeping community facilities open, meaningful and accessible for our communities and support the delivery of public services

Partners: Local Authorities: ASELA (Association of South Essex Local Authorities) comprising Thurrock, Southend, Basildon, Castle Point, Rochford, Brentwood and Essex CCParish Councils:Essex Rural PartnershipActive EssexDigital Essex SELEP

Mission: To demonstrate the value of digital connectivity within community facilities and deliver a sustainable business whereby the access to and delivery of public services can contribute to the development of the village hall and community centre as a sustainable digital hub in our communities.

Impact: 1. Maintain and enhance the important role that community facilities plays in our communities enabled by digital
2. Provide a platform for the delivery of local public services both virtually and in person

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Promoting self-service through tablets in our customer access points.

Partners: Suffolk County Council

Mission: We will be redesigning our customer access point to include self-service tablets, rather than laptops/PC’s.
The tablets will empower our customers to be able to complete high volume transactional queries through tablets, rather than relying on officers scanning information at the customer access point.
This will reduce the requirement for paper-based services, promoting a digital first culture with our customers.

Impact: Increased levels of customer service through being able to quickly and efficiently self-serve.
Ability to provide upskilling support to those customers who may require additional training to use online and digital services.
Provides the starting point for reviewing our online processes and journeys for our customers, from a customer and digital first perspective.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Social progress index and Borough Data Explorer.

Partners: LBBD Data Insight Team, Social Progress Imperative, EMU Analytics

Mission: To create the assets to be able to productionise the Social Progress Index to provide near-real time data insight and to be able to scale the index to work for any number of authorities using cloud services and published APIs.

Impact: It will be possible to improve targeting of services nationally based on a detailed understanding of need and progress at a sub-ward level, also providing the opportunity to understand hot spots of need at or near authority boundaries creating recognition of opportunities for cross-boundary service collaboration and potential for improved outcomes.

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Engaging and communicating with children in social care.The common problem is that we don’t know how children and young people want to interact with councils. Previously, assumptions have been made that because young people use apps like YouTube and Snapchat, that building a social care app would increase participation. In reality these apps have had very low take up and most young people don’t know they exist. We don’t want children using services to feel like this is an extra thing that they have to do, we want them to feel like this will benefit them and help them have a say in how their present and future lives will look like.

Partners: Blackburn with Darwen council, North Somerset council

Mission: Our aim is to empower children and young people known to the local authority and enable them to take better control of their lives. Providing the appropriate channel for young people to voice their concerns and request help or guidance in a way that is comfortable for them would allow local authorities to meet and target specific areas of need and improve the overall well-being of the young people they engage with.
The research findings will include high level personas and user stories. Most importantly it will include research demonstrating how local authorities can better engage with children and young people in care by utilising a service design pattern.

Impact: In relation to children and young people specifically, how they engage with local authorities should feel seamless and natural enough that engagement remains consistent and reliable. This may potentially help bypass barriers to communication that prevent children from true expression.
This research will also prevent councils from spending thousands of pounds on products that claim to capture “the child’s voice” but don’t have the desired take up or engagement.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improve and develop a better online customer portal that helps our residents and customers interact with us.

Partners: Barnet Web Team, Capita Customer Support Group - including customer services call centre and digital customer experience team, Barnet IT and West London Alliance Councils, Barnet customer engagement group

Mission: To provide excellent customer service and design services that keeps the needs our residents and customers at the heart of what we do - We will develop our online customer portal so our residents have a better customer experience from start to finish. So that we can ensure the best customer experience and encourage residents to use the online portal when interacting with us, such as making payments, reporting an issue or applying for something, we will - review the end to end customer journey through the portal. Look what happens when a report is made and how and when the customer receives feedback. Investigate how other Council's use online portals and what new features are available. Review the content and format of our portal. We will use analytics and direct customer feedback to help us with our designs and understand pain points.

Impact: To improve the experience for our residents and customers when interacting with us, to enable them complete their business easily and quickly and therefore encourage them to use the customer online portal and to help us save money with a reduction in calls.

Commitment 2:

Title: Improve and simplify correspondence and email confirmations so that what we say to residents is easily understood.

Partners: Barnet Web Team, Capita Customer Support Group - including customer services call centre and digital customer experience team, Barnet IT, Barnet customer engagement group

Mission: To provide excellent customer service and design services that keeps the needs our residents and customers at the heart of what we do - Our residents have told us they don't always understand our letters, emails or alerts and it is not always understood If they are being asked to do something - what they need to do or not. So that can communicate clearly and be an open organisation for all our residents, we will use correspondence specific heat mapping technology to understand user behaviour, best practice content design principles, and user testing sessions to design the right templates to be used across services and content that meets the users needs.

Impact: Reduce the number follow up calls made when letters are sent out. Improve how we communicate with our residents and be consistent with how we do this across services.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Chatbots to reduce avoidable contact

Partners: Wakefield MDC, Doncaster MBC

Mission: To reduce avoidable customer contact with agents, allowing them to concentrate on added value transactions with citizens

Impact: Allows greater access for those in need, e.g. digitally & financially excluded, by diverting traffic on simple requests. Faster resolution for customers on simple queries. Superior self-service resolutions across all channels.

Commitment 2:

Title: Digital Customer Services Portal

Partners: None yet identified

Mission: Providing citizen access to council services however, wherever, whenever

Impact: Improved digital journey for customers, 24/7 interaction with council services, efficiencies, complementary to all digital channels

Commitment 3:

Title: Adults Social Care First Contact

Partners: Wakefield DMC

Mission: Reduce avoidable telephony contact between health and social care professionals

Impact: Improved information sharing 'cross patch', frees agent capacity to focus on complex needs e.g. safeguarding.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: A Collaborative Process: Working with Essex Police, Basildon aim to create a seamless digital customer journey. The objective is to create environment of shared learning that will generate efficiencies in both process, resources and a much improved customer experience

Partners: Essex Police, other local authorities across Essex.

Mission: Fostering innovation through open-minded collaboration as members of the Essex Online Partnership, Basildon Borough Council and Essex Police have identified a number of opportunities to work together to improve our citizens' digital services experience, namely - creating seamless online services to best meet the needs of our citizens; driving quality services and sharing best practice whilst demonstrating our commitment to ensuring the improvement of cyber security. To date, this has resulted in Essex Police providing our staff with identified training, further resulting in improved employee engagement. This project therefore helps realise the ambition of the declaration and demonstrates our commitment to digital enablement.

Impact: Identified opportunities leading to a targeted outcome, include:

- Creating seamless customer experiences in regards to services provided to citizens by Basildon Borough Council in partnership with Essex Police, such as Anti-Social Behavior (ASB) and the process of licensing a public event.
- Working in partnership to align the definition of what is classified as a vulnerable person and defining the processes to be adopted to ensure citizens consistently receive the required level of support to maintain their wellbeing. This will entail effective use of 3rd sector services to enhance the level of support provided to vulnerable citizens.
- Reviewing digital content with a focus on accessibility in relation to essential information being updated, to include relevant contact details, ensuring plain English and consistency in terms of language used to detail available services and applying prompt fixes to identified or reported broken links. This aims to improve our citizens' online service provision when accessing our services delivered in partnership.
- Creating learning opportunities by sharing knowledge of best practice including the outcomes of research of digital solutions to identify further opportunities to work in collaboration. Learning opportunities are also recognised as developing staff skillsets by providing free digital skills training in collaboration, utilising in-house expertise.

Identified training opportunities to date include cyber security, which provides understanding of the risk online activities pose; how to manage threats and valuable protection advice on how to protect yourself against cyber-crime.

It is the aim of the project is to share the overall outcomes with the Essex Online Partnership group to encourage collective collaboration with all other local authorities across Essex, and Essex police.

Commitment 2:

Title: App Solution

Partners: Essex University

Mission: We are working in partnership with Essex University to develop an App to enable our citizens to access specific services, while providing features to personalise their experience according to their requirements.

Basildon approached the University with a proposal complimenting the curriculum of final year students working towards qualifications in Computer Science and Electronic Engineering.

This App will provide a completely personalised customer experience - an aim of our digital strategy, while also looking to inform, engage and educate our citizens using gamification.

Impact: Basildon Council has ambition to offer a more personalised service for citizens accessing online services which negates a requirement to formally log in.

An app was recognised as the preferred solution. With a drive on value for money, research suggested creating an app to access all our services would not be the preferred solution. We identified a poor return on investment, with limited downloads for Council app’s based on authorities whom adopted this strategy.
So we decided our app will only provide features relating to one service.

Demand and user preference analysis was collated utilising demographic and web analytic data to ensure the app’s features are designed around citizen’s digital interests, their behaviours and demands. By using this data it will ensure a product which best meets the needs of our citizens.

The app will provide specific customised services for each individual customer which aims to result in the formation of new digital habits. It will be used to test the appetite for further Council apps which will include products that aim to create greater levels of engagement and increased awareness of the Council's services (our policies). Implementation will result in a reduction in service failure and demand across more expensive contact channels while also improving levels of satisfaction through personalising the citizen’s individual experience.

Through working in collaboration with Essex University the project represents value for money and provides the Council an opportunity to promote the organisation to students seeking a career in IT following completion of their course. This approach seeks to promote the council as an employer of choice, for the recruitment of IT skilled staff, in what is a competitive market place. The Council would provide students at university or leaving university with the required experience to become more valued in the market place.

The project represents a digital experiment that will be used to establish the levels of demand for Council apps for individual specific services. If successful it will shape enterprise-wide initiatives, driving efficiency and delivering greater value for money.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Developing and rolling out an online and digital service to residents to speed up and improve communication between residents, the council and the waste and recycling service provider

Partners: Hart District Council, Serco, and Whitespace

Mission: To increase the range of online and interactive customer services for waste and recycling to provide a fully integrated “real time” update and enquiry and reporting service. The project involves partnership working between Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, Hart District Council and private sector service suppliers covering multiple services from waste, to fly-tipping to graffiti, animals and trees.

Impact: The waste and recycling service covers all households in both Basingstoke and Deane and Hart District. This project will develop and roll out online and digital communication channels by which residents, the council and the waste and recycling contractor can exchange updates 24/7 rather than only within office hours and exchange information in real time and on the go through social media and smart phones at individual household level. This will improve the responsiveness of the service to individual households and improve the efficiency of the overall service. The service covers over 70,000 contacts per annum and will utilise pro-active communication, end-to end automation and demand management techniques. Aligned to our vision which includes digital inclusion, open data and smart city approaches, staff and customer empowerment and upskilling. The approach is innovative for Basingstoke and Deane and is scalable: it can be transferred to other council services, and the solution shared with other councils and waste and recycling providers.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improving the digitalisation of the planning service

Partners: Chesterfield Borough Council, North East Derbyshire District Council

Mission: To accelerate the adoption of digital tools to inform the Local Plan process and to support wider council planning and regeneration objectives. Specifically, to use digitalisation to rationalise, standardise and automate various elements of the site assessment identification, analysis and selection process.

Impact: This will generate time efficiencies for Council officers, reduce expenditure on external consultants and create a more accessible, transparent and flexible public facing platform for stakeholders and communities engaging in the Local Plan process. It will also facilitate capacity building in-house to support longer term adoption and integration of digital tools and services across the Planning Service and the Council.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improving the user experience when finding local requirements for applying for planning permission, paying for planning permission, and viewing/commenting on planning applications.

Partners: Early discussions held with Pilot Works (https://pilot.works/)

Mission: We will research the user needs for the local requirements for planning applications so that we better understand what our users are trying to do. We will redesign the way people find information on our website about the local requirements for planning applications to meet those user needs and test our assumptions with users.
We will research and improve the way people request and pay for planning advice and guidance.
We will also research the user needs for viewing/commenting on planning applications and redesign the way we meet those needs.

Impact: The project aims to reduce the amount of planning applications that are submitted incorrectly. It also aims to reduce the amount of telephone contact with the service, as well as reducing the amount of paper and email applications that are submitted. We also hope it will encourage more online payments and greater self-service through our website, as well as allowing statutory and other consultees to better manage their preferences for applications that they have an interest in.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improving digital inclusion and providing assisted digital support to help people use Council services online.

Partners: Community Voluntary Service Bedfordshire, Bedford College, Local voluntary and community bodies

Mission: Research to understand how users might struggle to use Council services online and to find out the issues that are stopping users from using Council digital services.

Design Council digital services that work for as many residents as possible and use research and insight to provide the best types of support for all users who might need help, through assisted digital support.

Impact: We are committed to becoming a Council that is digital by default and understand that we must redesign our services to be straightforward and convenient so that all those who can use our digital offer will choose to do so, whilst those who cannot are not excluded.

For many users of our services, our commitment to becoming a Council that is digital by default will make our services easier and more accessible. To improve digital take-up, we will provide the support to improve residents’ confidence in using our online digital services so that as many as possible will be able to make the transition from an assisted digital service to self-service, and incorporate learning so that people can improve their digital skills and be encouraged to self-serve in future. Users of our services who cannot access our digital service independently will be able to access a service through an offer of assisted digital support that provides the best type of support for our service users.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Reducing care calls to improve customer satisfaction

Partners: Worcestershire County Council (Steven Medley), Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council (John Loughead)

Mission: Establish how emerging technologies like Alexa & Chatbots could reduce the need for costly face to face visits and what further enhancement maybe required in order for them to be readily adopted by citizens as a replacement for a physical home care visit. There is still inconclusive evidence to assist LAs to determine which technologies are most effective. Our aim is to
• Identify the appropriate technologies that provide LAs with the confidence that citizens wellbeing and independence could be being maintained within a community setting despite a reduction in number of calls.
• Demonstrate that a reduction of 15-20% in the 6 million hours of Home Support Calls can be achieved as an evidential base for other LAs to adopt and adapt to meet their needs

Impact: Our approach will deliver benefits to Local authority Service Providers/commissioning, citizens, internal and external home care service providers. Within a year we could develop a prototype solution that could be readily scalable across all local authorities and would have secondary benefits to health care providers.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: The design and implementation of a single unified communications technology solution that can be followed by all partners and that can be extended to other public sector organisations wanting to adopt similar technologies / solutions.

Partners: The Leicestershire Information Communication Technology Partnership (LICTP) - shared service council’s include Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, Oadby and Wigston Borough Council, Blaby District Council, Melton Borough Council and the Leicestershire Revenues and Benefits Partnership.

Mission: The project is to design and implement a repeatable installation and adoption strategy that can be followed by all partners and that can be extended to other public sector organisations wanting to adopt similar technologies / solutions.
The solution objectives are:
• Implement one single cloud hosted communications solution system
• Provide one number for each user – to be used seamlessly with desk based phones, mobile phones or softphones
• Offer modern unified communication functionality – offering opportunities/options such as integration with MS Office calendars, instant messaging, video calling and conference calling
• Implement one single contact centre solution – separately configured and implemented for partners as required
• Integrate telephony Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity arrangements
• Adopt one single support contract for all telephony elements (bills, lines, calls, technologies etc)

Impact: Critical success factors focus on providing public sector staff with the opportunity to work in a more flexible way to better facilitate working contact arrangements and engagements with customers from any location, specifically; Single contract and supplier management - Reduced hours spent managing supplier contracts and billing from LICTP Client and each partner authorities Finance Teams. Staff productivity increase via collaboration technology- Efficient working via enhanced collaboration capability. Efficient resource management. Flexible and home working capability. Enhanced citizen service capability and reporting - Increased first time resolution impact less complaint handling, better oversight on resource allocation. Enhanced DR capability - Reduced risk, reduced need for 3rd party DR capability (such as remote site maintenance and DR contracts), enhanced business uptime, consistent resource, sharing council buildings. Single support contract and point of contact - Reduced hours spent managing support issues, and single supplier accountability for support issues. Quicker resolution to issues and frees up technical resources to progress other prioritised work

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Customer Portal

Partners: To be confirmed. We have had early discussions with both suppliers and multiple Councils but have not confirmed any formal partners as yet.

Mission: To provide a scalable, modular system to enable customer and citizen interactions and transactions with the council as well as seamless workflows between council teams. To create a learning system that links to our continuous service improvement as a council.

Impact: 1. A positive impact on citizens in their interactions and transactions with the council.
2. Improving efficiency within the council and delivering best use of public funds.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Resort experience app

Partners: Blackpool Transport Wearebase

Mission: Create a seamless experiences for visitors and residents to park and travel on public transport reducing friction for navigation, payment, arrival at their destination and extending their stay

Impact: Better customer experience and enhance the local economy

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Open Data to improve service delivery

Partners: Data Cymru and other public sector organisations

Mission: To share data to understand citizens needs regionally and locally. To design services that are based on citizen needs and evidence.

Impact: Services will be tailored to citizen need and public resources will be deployed effectively and collaboratively between the public and private sector.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Discovering ways in which we can use AI, Chatbots and IVR technology to provide a seamless and improved customer experience.

Partners: North East Derbyshire District Council

Mission: We would like to research and test AI, Chatbots, voice recognition and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology as ways to provide a seamless customer experience, ensuring calls are dealt with at the first point of contact and to also make better use of available resources.
We aim to have discovered which technology (or combination of) best suits the needs of Local Authorities and their customers and found solutions which provide fast and simple interactions for those customers who contact authorities by telephone.
We will establish how we can accurately direct a caller to the correct person/team/authority from the first point of contact or provide information to the customer, where possible/relevant without the need for a customer advisor. The aim would be to free up customer services advisors' time in order to provide a better, more personal service and give more time to those customers who need to speak to someone by phone or face-to-face.
Using the above technology, we would like to establish how we can put measures in place which will allow authorities to share customer contact resources, when necessary e.g. for business continuity, when services are temporarily unavailable or under-resourced.

Impact: The aim is to find a way to improve customer service whilst also reducing costs, providing a better value service and enabling a better quality service for those requiring face-to-face contact. A solution would allow customers to receive a seamless customer experience, directing them to the appropriate area/person even if their call or query is for a different authority e.g. Parish or County Council. It will also allow a way for authorities to share services therefore enabling business continuity.
Once solutions are researched/found, we would look to implement a solution at the authority.

Commitment 2:

Title: Increasing digital transactions online through the use of AI, Chatbots and robotics to provide a seamless, 24-hour, improved customer experience.

Partners: North East Derbyshire District Council

Mission: We will increase the online services we provide using available technologies to ensure wherever possible that we provide customers with opportunity to contact, transact, report and apply via the authority’s website.

Impact: The aim is to improve customer service and allow a 24/7 service wherever possible through the website. It will allow automatic processing of information and should reduce the number of calls to the contact centre; therefore reduce costs for the authority.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Increase digital skills of our residents and provide guidance about free access points across Bolton2. Improve process for taxi licensing using digital solutions3.Increase digital skills of our staff4.Digital skills development for businesses in Bolton

Partners: Barclays/ IDeA/ Community & Voluntary sector/ Schools and University/ Bolton at Home2. Work with some of the signatories of the DD, to consider adoption of the technology solutions developed by them to support this process3. IDeA, Barclays4.Natwest, GMCA, University, Private sector partners

Mission: To map and promote available free digital skills training provision Bolton and provide guidance to residents on all opportunities. This will enable them to participate fully in our digital world and gain skills to increase their opportunities to work in the growing digital and tech sector.
To develop a map of facilities providing free PC/ internet provision across Bolton and develop a plan to work with partners to address any inequalities in geographical provision.
To build a consolidated picture of who is accessing this training and ensure that we can target those people who are not benefiting from this.

2. To ensure that this process is delivered in the most efficient and effective way, making better use of digital solutions

3.Embed our new values and behaviours in the staff supervision and appraisal process, with a focus on digital skills development and a clearer offer around this, as part of the annual review. We will use learning from other DD signatories and support/ resources available to DD signatories to help develop our offer.

4.Increase the number of digital apprenticeship opportunities available in Bolton, so that we have a suitably skilled workforce to enable the growth of digital and tech industries in Bolton.SME and start ups in Bolton are given advice and guidance to enable them to maximise the benefits of digital to their business building a directory of free tools, advice and support, for example Natwest Accelerator and building on learning from other DD signatories.

Impact: Residents will have consolidated information about free digital skills training available in Bolton and local facilities to access internet. We will work together to maximise these opportunities, working with private sector partners and using learning from other DD signatories.
This will help to address inequalities of access and improve resident ability to live and work in a digital world.

2.The process for payment of licences, identification, verification and issuing of licences is more customer friendly, secure and less resource intensive

3.Our staff will be better able to design and deliver digital services in the future and are also able to act as “Digital Champions” in any work with residents
4.The number of digital apprentices grows and the SME community has a greater digital presence in Bolton, which we know has a positive impact on their business.
4.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Explore digital processes to make services more accessible and responsive for public

Partners: East Lindsey District Council, South Holland District Council

Mission: Improve access to services via website and online forms, streamline digital transactions and integrate directly with back office services, encourage channel shift to cheaper channels

Impact: Members of the public will gain 24x7 access to council services at a reduced cost, helping those in our area affected by rural isolation and the wider public with increased accessibility

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital transformation: establishing the capability to create a single digital service channel from three former councils

Partners: Dorset Council and Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

Mission: To establish a multi skilled project team to facilitate the move from our legacy domains of bournemouth.gov.uk, christchurch.gov.uk and poole.gov.uk into a single user-focused BCP Council service channel: bcpcouncil.gov.uk.

We will develop our digital capability by living the values of the Government Digital Service. Actively engaging with this sector specific group, utilising training and funding opportunities that are available to the signatories of the Local Digital Declaration to maximise development.

Building on these opportunities we will design and develop content based on the experience of our citizens and through the insight we gain from engaging and collaborating with other local authorities.

This will include:

- categorising and redesigning the content of our preceding websites, in a phased approach, into an Alpha website

- examining our existing internal processes to simplify user verification, pay services etc. in order to ‘fix the plumbing’ and implement across our service platforms

- structuring content within an information architecture (IA), developed by another local authority, which is proven to have been a result of customer insight

- recruiting a user group of people who are representative of our citizens to test the IA and newly designed content areas to ensure it meets the needs of our community

- creating a blog to engage internal and external audiences with the unique journey we are embarking on as a new local authority – creating a single digital service channel from three preceding council websites

Impact: This project will result in BCP Council adopting a more agile approach to its digital working and deliver a single digital service channel for its online community. The channel will be created in collaboration with BCP Council's citizens and by implementing best practice solutions identified through engaging with other councils and sharing insight in line with Government Digital Service standards.

Citizens will have an improved user experience, enabling easier access to services, which means they can get to the information they need quickly and complete transactions more simply.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Implementing GOV.UK Pay

Partners: GDS

Mission: To be using GOV.UK Pay to take payments and enable customers to set up direct debits. The new service will provide customers with an easier and more convenient payment experience that meets the Digital Service Standard.

Impact: The project will deliver services that best meet the needs of citizens as the experience of using payment services online will be improved and easier to use. It will also deliver better value for money, by replacing an existing paid for service with a service that is free to use. It will also ensure that the council’s payment experience meets the Digital Service Standard.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Accessibility issues

Partners: Essex On Line Partnership

Mission: To deliver websites that are readable and accessible to all users

Impact: More useful information available to our residents, customers and businesses without the need to call us or write to us

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Creation as multiple online forms to deliver self and assisted service

Partners: Goss Interactive - South Holland District Council - East Lindsey District Council

Mission: The creation of multiple online processes constructed to the BPMN standard. These processes can then be integrated into our Goss digital platform and multiple third party systems all presented to the end user via our Goss forms package

Impact: Once implemented residents will benefit significantly from using these new processes as it will greatly speed up each process by removing manual steps and allow for residents to engage with the Councils at times most convenient to them.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Robotics Process Automation

Partners: Robotics Process Automation software provider and implementation partner (not yet decided)

Mission: RPA provides organisations with an agile digital workforce and interacts with systems in the same way that existing users currently do. With the growing financial pressures faced by local authorities, a digital workforce will improve efficiency, productivity and quality, removing mundane, repetitive tasks and freeing up resources to focus on quality outcomes for customers.

Our aim is to implement Robotics Process Automation and develop of a Centre of Excellence at Brent.

Impact: Increase in staff capacity to enable them to deal with meaningful and complex interactions with customers; better use of talent and skills within our workforce. Automated transactions will be completed on time, eliminating risk of errors, improving quality resulting in Increased customer satisfaction.

Commitment 2:

Title: Thriving Places – Building an evidence base using Mobile Network Data

Partners: We are already running a pilot with Vodafone and CitiLogik. We have been sharing our learning with one of our Digital Shared Service partners, LB Southwark and are looking to work more closely with them in this area.

Mission: Local Authorities need the best possible understanding of how people use the places and services for which they are responsible. Mobile Network Data (MND), coupled with excellent analysis, can contribute to providing answers to some of the key questions we need to understand in order to work with communities to design solutions. We aim to:
- gain an understanding of when MND can be drawn on to inform decision making and share this across different services
- work with a provider to develop a model and methodology to form the basis of data gathering in Brent, and working in partnership, elsewhere
- develop analytical capability around the use of MND so raw data gathered can be presented in a meaningful way to decision makers, including residents and others we work with to co-design solutions

Impact: First and foremost, we hope MND will create a robust evidence base to help design solutions across services which deliver better outcomes from Brent’s residents and businesses. We are currently piloting use of MND in five priority town centre areas. The data gathered is helping us understand who uses the town centres and how they are used. This will help the team develop more targeted interventions to support the regeneration of those areas.

In running the pilot study, we are also looking at how the data can be analysed and presented. We think there are exciting opportunities to provide better information, in a clear and interactive way to those delivering services, but also to residents and partners involved in consultations and co-design.

Commitment 3:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: A 'Digital Tool' for all Planning Functions

Partners: Lead Authority: Southwark Council, Partners involved: Brent Council, Tower Hamlets Council, Lewisham Council, Ealing Council, Westminster City Council, Gateshead Council, Lambeth Council, Waltham Forest Council

Mission: The problem is that the planning service is provided by a number of out of date systems and processes that are not linked together. This provides a confusing, chaotic, opaque system that does not work for service providers and users. There is no tool for this and there is no roadmap or business case for procuring a online tool.

This discovery would look at how to provide a quick, easy to use online tool for the planning service that allows the end user to use and access a simple easy to navigate system that is responsive to different platforms with clear communication using mobile phones, tablets and desk top computers in order to speed up decisions on planning applications and to stimulate more development and house building.

This online tool is not just a website, it is a tool for the back and front end services within planning including searching policy documents without pdfs, data, planning applications, enforcement, maps etc. The concept is stand alone, however this will also explore whether this could be introduced for other councils and services particularly linked services such as environment, highways and land charges.

The discovery phase objectives are to explore what the online tool will look like to provide a comprehensive planning service where every activity can be carried out online, working with partners to ensure broad UX is undertaken and outcomes are considered so that they could be beneficial to all of the partners, the GLA and others.

Impact: This project will benefit all users in a number of different ways. Our bid set out the following key benefits:
The digital online tool financial savings cannot be quantified however the benefits are considerable and the business case will be setting this out from the research. The business case will include user experience research on the following benefits:
1. A more efficient, accessible planning system
2. Clear, easy to find information
3. The impact of incorrect information and data
4. Cost savings for developers, residents, businesses, members in both time and money
5. More development and more homes as this will encourage applying for planning permission, finding out where sites are for development
6. Quicker systems as information is available, less checking, less replication, less costs
7. Agile ways of working meeting user needs based on common and open application data standards, remove supplier lock in, ways of updating easily, stimulate and be a critical component of the future digital planning system
8. Reusable and open planning data with minimal input will create new value propositions
9. Improved communications of planning and development
10. Lack of co-ordinated planning information, data and services with other authorities, services within Councils, strategic organisations etc

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Transforming the customer experience

Partners: Essex Online Partnership (LA's across Essex), Digital Platform providers and Cloud Service providers

Mission: To simplify contact with Brentwood Borough Council by delivery a high quality digital experience so our Residents and Customers know what services are available digitally and can get access to those services or information, how & when they want to.

Impact: The simplification of contact with Brentwood Borough Council will provide custmer focused efficient services so that residents and customers want to do business with us using digital channels.

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Voice assistant delivery for local authorities

Partners: Essex On Line Partnership

Mission: The Essex On Line Partnership is working together to enable citizens alternative means of service delivery through electronic devices.

Impact: Research into and develop "Alexa Skills" for Amazon Echo devices (with the understanding that other Voice assistant devices are available). This is a small path finder project to demonstrate what potential could be achieved. The project will develop 1 skill - missed bins - that can be shared across all partner LA's, with built in intelligence to workout where the location of the request came from and direct the request of to the appropriate dataset from the LA. This allow cost savings as the skill is developed once and shared, and provides a modern services using Artificial Intelligence to provide information to customers at there convenience. This could lead to further developments for supporting vulnerable adults from their homes, and other general services for our customers.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Website code, design and governance collaboration between Brighton & Hove and Croydon councils

Partners: Brighton & Hove City Council, Croydon Digital Service at Croydon Council

Mission: To collaborate with Croydon Council to produce a shared codebase in Drupal 8 for a council website. This would be initially be based on the code for the new Brighton & Hove website which has been in development for the last year. Over time, it would evolve to meet the needs of both councils, ideally finding the common design patterns that would be shared by both councils.

Impact: We anticipate that many of the needs for a local government website will be similar in Brighton & Hove and Croydon. We expect the impact of this project to be threefold:
1. Code sharing: By working together, we can reduce the development costs of new features, and benefit from code review from peers in the two councils, leading to better quality code and a more reliable website. Although needs may not always be identical, we will look for technical solutions that standardise where possible and allow customisation too.
2. Discovery and design patterns: we will work collaboratively on user needs in the discovery phases for new website features. Design patterns and code for new features will benefit from shared review and wider testing across the two sites. We hope to find common solutions to user needs in both authorities.
3. Governance for a shared codebase: While initially a collaboration between two councils, we will look to the future and work together on a lightweight governance model to include change control, roadmap and product management. We will also look into the kind of licensing agreement that should cover a shared codebase, so that support and future development arrangements are clearly understood. We think there will be a lot of learning here for other councils who would want to share code in a similar way, and we will make this learning available to the Local Gov Digital community.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Bristol’s smart city strategy, Connecting Bristol, aims to shape Bristol’s transformation into a fair and inclusive city where everyone can benefit from, participate in and contribute to the social and economic benefits of digital technology. There is a risk that this transformation undermines the benefits we seek to deliver if we do not successfully navigate the ethical, societal and regulatory challenges of digital transformation or fully understand the emerging challenges of trust and public acceptance.

Partners: Other Local Authorities in the region and any other interested Local Authorities.

Mission: A deeper understanding of citizen’s views on smart city technologies along with how, where and when their data should be used. We will use these insights to develop shared ethics, regulatory and governance frameworks that ensure that our digital solutions are transparent, trustworthy, inclusive and citizen-centred.

Impact: Anticipate benefits to a range of users through the following: greater public engagement with the development of digital and smart city technology projects to ensure they meet user needs, address real-world opportunities/problems and deliver better value for money.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Consistent Customer Journey for Planning Applicants across districts.

Partners: South Norfolk Council

Mission: Identify where we can generate efficiencies through digital integration and sharing of data across multiple districts. Design a digital service model and principles which could be adapted to other councils. Produce ideal state customer journey maps for a solution to be considered for development in the next stage.

Impact: Improve customer experience and offer an online streamlined and simplified end to end customer journey (from pre-application to discharge of conditions) for planning applicants regardless of district boundaries and independent back office systems.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: We want to better understand how, when, and why our customers want to engage with us electronically and how new technologies such as chatbots and Artificial Intelligence could help to facilitate timely and accurate signposting to council services for our customers 24/7 whilst also improving back office efficiencies.We are taking part in the Local Digital Fund with a discovery project called “Common Approach To Chatbots and AI Development” in partnership with other councils listed below.

Partners: Oxford City Council, Hertsmere District Council, Cheltenham Borough Council, Doncaster Council, Preston City Council, North East Derbyshire District Council, Bolsover District Council, Calderdale Council, and Rotherham MBC.

Mission: Within the next year we hope to achieve within the scope of the discovery project :
• a framework for evaluating the suitability or otherwise of a particular application for developing into a chatbot or AI product
• a research base to assist local authorities developing their individual business cases to save time and resource rather than duplicating research
• a summary of the potential technology solutions that are available with their individual advantages and disadvantages of each, and their applicability to different circumstances
• a set of case studies drawn from participating councils in how the framework can be applied

In pursuing this it will also;

• explore the feasibility of adopting or developing a common, open source platform for local government to use to develop chatbot/AI solutions
• determine governance and ongoing maintenance of the research base to remain relevant for future
• for the participating councils, deliver a set of recommendations on how to proceed with their use cases to alpha stage
• for the case studies, develop early models/prototypes of the solutions that could be used

Impact: The impact of our mission will be an evidence-based approach to the use of technology to improve engagement with all our customers at a time that suits them wherever they may be by providing to them accurate guidance and information.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Open standards for community services data - OpenReferral UK

Partners: Adur & Worthing Council, Devon County Council, Croydon Council, Leeds City Council

Mission: To improve the usefulness of data about community services. This data is often held across multiple service directories and does not adhere to a common data standard. We are working together to develop a common standard https://openreferraluk.org/

Impact: To improve the usefulness, quality and reach of community services data.

Commitment 2:

Title: An open source family information system, including the council's directory of local offer services.

Partners: We have had early conversations with council's in the UK who are keen to formally partner when the live service is launched in the Autumn 2020.

Mission: To design and build a modular and open source platform for managing the council's family information services, including the find a childcare place service.

Impact: To move from a legacy IT system provider, improve the user experience, improve the staff experience and create an open source platform for the benefit of councils in the UK.

Commitment 3:

Title: An open source directory of services to support people during the coronavirus crisis

Partners: Camden Council, Hackney Council, Essex County Council

Mission: To quickly develop and iterate an open source directory of coronavirus support services.

Impact: Launched quickly and shared with other councils in the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis. The directories helped residents find services near them that offered support during self-isolation.

Commitment 4:

Title: Design and build an open source web publishing platform for a new unitary council

Partners: Buckinghamshire County Council, Aylesbury Vale District Council, Chiltern District Council, South Bucks District Council, Wycombe District Council

Mission: Before the new unitary district council was created the partner councils collaborated on the user-focussed development of a new content management system, website, content strategy and design system for the new Buckinghamshire Council

Impact: A consistent user experience across the new and old council websites and the development of a modern and extensible publishing platform.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Exploring Cloud based Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to remove the barriers to end to end digital citizen service information captured via digital methods automatically flowing into back office systems.

Partners: Liberata UK

Mission: To enable RPA between commonly used local government line of business systems.

Impact: The outcome we want to achieve is to enable online service requests/information submitted by customers to be automatically extracted via RPA and then fed into systems where we currently need to manually input information thereby reducing data input time, cost and error.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital and Social Care

Partners: To be confirmed, but potentially Wakefield Council

Mission: We want to complete a discovery project with a local authority partner (potentially Wakefield Council), in collaboration with Leeds Beckett University, to investigate whether tele-care and sensor tech can be used to help keep a range of groups (e.g. adults with learning disabilities, adults with dementia, etc.) living at home independently for longer.

Impact: We hope that residents of Calderdale will be able to live independently at home, enjoying a good quality of life, for as long as possible.

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Simplifying Identity Verification

Partners: To be identified, but other local authorities

Mission: For many council services, residents are repeatedly asked to verify their identity. This results in unnecessary duplication and service delays, not only for the customer but also for the staff carrying out the checks. We would like to identify (potentially through an IdP) a way to improve our identity assurance process, through a discovery project.

Impact: Once we have identified the appropriat IdP, this can be implemented and then customers will have a much simpler, streamlined experience when accessing our services through their customer account.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Development of an online reporting mechanism for “Streets” and “Grounds” services using our new online customer portal technology.

Partners: Huntingdonshire District Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council and Cambridge City Council will work with their IT Shared Service (3C Shared Services) and 2C Shared Waste Partnership to develop the solution. We will have the solution tested by Kent based SDS http://smarterdigital.info/.

Mission: Our shared IT service is in the process of delivering a standard back office application for Streets and Grounds processes across the three councils. Each council is also developing an online customer portal to link in with their existing websites. Whilst each council will retain their own separate Streets and Grounds services, we plan to develop a consistent set of eforms, back office processes, and a customer portal that delivers proactive customer status indicators and notifications, while our services deal with requests. The solution will extend into our customer service departments, ensuring a holistic view of the status of each request.

Impact: Reduction in customers having to chase. Other similar councils have seen circa 25% reduction in calls and face-to-face visits through implementation of a similar system.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Work With Me – Striving to help people with Learning Disabilities and / or additional needs gain and maintain employment

Partners: Peterborough City Council, Peterborough City College, Thera, Speak out council, Papworth Trust, Princes Trust, Switch Now

Mission: Cambridgeshire County Council are part of a consortium or partners working together to help people with learning disabilities access meaningful pathways after finishing education so that they can live a fulfilling life and gain paid employment, which we know can drastically improve the health and wellbeing of people with learning disabilities. We also know that by helping people with LD be more independent, they need less services from the council and therefore, the LD social care bill reduces. Within a year, the consortium hopes to:
• Have conducted user research with employers to find out what their perceptions are of people with LD and what the barriers are to employing people with LD and what support they might need
• Created content, tools and resources for people with LD and their support network to help them understand what options are available to them and how they access them
• Resources for support networks to help them learn how to empower their loved one with LD so that they can help them be independent
• Created an on-line platform in collaboration with partners and users for people to discover what their options are and pursue an independent life

Impact: We know that confident people with LD who feel secure in their abilities and have the right support and adjustments can flourish in a workplace. Both councils work hard to build confidence and independence in people with LD to help them become work-ready. We know that people with LD who gain paid employment gain a great sense of confidence, independence and improved well-being. People who are in paid employment rely less on social care packages and on welfare which creates financial savings for local authorities and central government.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Title: Web Programme for Camden Camden’s investment in LifeRay DXP, a horizontal platform technology that provides a Content Management System, an Account Portal (for residents and businesses) and eForm technology. The ambition is to provide a more seamless and personal customer experience for our users, across channels, thereby creating a single online customer footprint.

Partners: PFIKS – LifeRay Technical Delivery Partner

Mission: To deliver a newly branded and structured Camden website, that uses ‘out the box’ personalisation components to provide more relevant and specific web content for our online users.

Impact: The programme will benefit the website user, the account user, our residents and businesses, and those users who wish to transact with the Council through our online offering. They will begin to see content on the website that is more relevant to them, (based on their browsing history), so that key services and information that would be useful for them is easier to find.To create an experience that makes the user’s account part of the overall web journey.
To bring the multiple different flavours of legacy microsites currently in Camden, under the same LifeRay DXP infrastructure, whereby savings and efficiencies can start to be realised for the Council.
To have created a cloud-based infrastructure with scalability in mind, that is capable of supporting the online web channel and account experience for multiple authorities.
Thus creating a community of authorities who all use the same LifeRay DXP infrastructure, for CMS, Account Portal and simple eforms, which could result in wider efficiencies

Commitment 2:

Title: Wiring Estates, rolling out full fibre networks and driving social value

Partners: Developing in conjunction with LB Hackney and partnering with fibre providers such as Community Fibre, Hyperoptic, Virgin Media, Openreach

Mission: Targetting our worst served estates to raise quality of internet service to next gen levels, a proposed social values programme which would encourage employment for the rollout from within the boroughs, engagement with our apprenticeship scheme, a tailored digital inclusion programme and a specific low cost tariff for social landlord tenants

Impact: Expected benefits are initially for our social landlord tenants and will include improved internet services, delivery of social value projects and digital inclusion support, all of which are intended to improve skills, knowledge and capability

Commitment 3:

Title: Helping LA Personal Finance teams to manage Universal Credit claimants

Partners: Local Authorities - Hackney Council’s ASC Personal Finance Team have already reached out to their Camden colleagues and expressed an interest in what we are doing. We believe this is an issue for a number of councils , and could potentially generate a lot of interest from other local authorities

Mission: A requirement for claiming Universal Credit is that the claimant registers with the UC portal using a unique email address. Like many authorities Camden Council provides a chargeable Personal Finance Management service to some residents, some of whom are entitled to government benefits. In order to manage benefits on behalf of UC clients the PFM team need a process to set up a unique email address for each client and a way of forwarding all email to a central mailbox so the team can manage it all from one place. Other authorities are managing this using corporate or freemail addresses, but both of these solutions come with issues around cost, scale, complexity and security. Camden are investigating other solutions, including the possibility of standing up our own mailserver and domain and developing an open source front-end that will allow our PFM team to set up and close down email addresses to manage turnover of clients. The goal is a low-maintenance process for managing universal credit benefit claims which can be used for as long as necessary, with a simple migration path in the event that the DWP develop a centralised solution to the problem.

Impact: ASC Personal Finance staff will be able to manage Universal Credit accounts from a single, central mailbox. They will have a straightforward process for turnover of email addresses that required a minimal amount of support and maintenance

Commitment 4:

Title: Secure access to the SystmOne clinical system from Local Authority devices

Partners: Local Authorities, NHS Health providers using SystmOne as their primary clinical system

Mission: Solving a longstanding issue with access to Clinical data in the SystmOne application. TPP’s SystmOne cannot provide feeds to shared integrated digital records in its standard configuration, and Camden have spent many years unsuccessfully trying to facilitate access to Clinical data through the CIDR platform. Speaking to Hammersmith and Fulham, we discovered that they have a solution that allows them to access CNWL’s SystmOne application directly from their Local Authority laptops, while Ealing have a similar solution for the SystmOne implementation in CLCH. We will attempt to replicate this in Camden, and are happy to share technical and design information, as well as general information about our experience. With SystmOne widely used nationally by Health bodies, we believe this information will help deliver better outcomes for integrated Health and Social Care teams across the UK.

Impact: Family Support Workers and Social Care professionals who need to share data as part of the requirement for STP and integrated services will be able to see clinical information on residents in their care. Health Visitors and NHS staff working from Council locations will be able to use Local Authority IT equipment to view and update their clinical systems of record.

Commitment 5:

Title: Online Self-Service Parking Online Suspensions Solution

Partners: Jointly working with Westminster City Council – Parking Service, to develop this solution

Mission: To deliver a suspensions solution that serves the needs of Camden and Westminster parking services, and its residents/business users, which can also be used as a framework for other authorities

Impact: The benefits of the project are to deliver a self-service online solution that enables residents, businesses and internal departments to select a parking bay/space they wish to suspend, make a payment and make amendments without the need to call the back-office. The solution will also produce the work list of Advance Warning Signs for the Parking officers to go out and place on street. The solution also enables those larger organisations that need to request regular parking suspensions, such as utility companies and Filming services, to manage multiple suspensions, including BACS payments and invoicing.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Local Maps

Partners: Stafford Borough Council

Mission: To provide the local community with a holistic view of local amenities, local plans and issues.

Impact: It is our intention to develop the local digital information via electronic maps to better inform the communities of the plans that could affect them. We intend to collate digital information into a single, easily accessible view.

We have been working on a pilot to draw together digital information from our planning systems, building control systems, land charges system, Council tax database, grounds maintenance, and waste collection information. We intend to import data from external agencies to supplement our own data.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: ANPR Off Street Parking:Using technology to create an end-to-end, automated and paperless car parking experience for customers

Partners: Private Sector parking software and hardware supplier, District Councils in east Kent

Mission: We will create a new, self-serve model for off street parking that:
- uses personas to create user cases for car parks
- removes the need for proactive enforcement
- enables a fully digital journey from entry to exit for customers
- allows concessionary access at reduced rates

Impact: Customer:
- improved satisfaction with off street car parking experience
- reduction in number of Penalty Charge Notices (PCN)
- improved parking information to help manage customer flow and parking choices
- pay on return for time used, rather than pay in advance for time assumed

Financial:
- increased income through 100% parking act capture
- reduction in enforcement requirement for off street car parks
- integration in back office systems to speed up finance reconciliation

Operational:
- improved operational information on car parking activity
- data-driven charging policies to maximise income
- reduction in staffing costs associated with managing open car parks
- increased parking durations, creating positive impact on local economy/retailers

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Collaborative working across Welsh Local Authorities

Partners: All Welsh local authorities and latterley potentially other Welsh public sector organisations and beyond

Mission: Creation of a new central team with the mandate to drive Digital collaborative, co-operative and co-production across Welsh local authorities

Impact: Better sharing of scarce skills, less duplication of effort, more rapid adoption and deployment of industry best practice, better delivery for our citizens

This has been by and large achieved. We worked with Welsh Government to champion a new Chief Digital Officer role and team to cover all local authorities in place and the CDO has been appointed an the team is being formed. As part of that a new Centre for Digital Public Services has also been created in Wales with £4.9m funding this year to drive digital collaboration across the whole Welsh public sector.
So although still bedding these in we have almost achieved our declaration

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Cardiff's Smart City Roadmap, aims to make Cardiff a 'data-driven' city - A city that uses data to improve decision-making, provide better services and increase innovation.

Partners: Local Authorities in UK who have similar ambitions.

Mission: Cardiff's aims to become a 'data-driven' City. A City that:
- Uses data more effectively
- Invests in and develops data skills
- Makes data more openly available
- Develops public trust in the sharing and use of data

Impact: Being better with data will have a huge impact on Wales and the Capital. It will allow us to create more efficent services, meet citizens needs and provide a wide range of benefits to the people who live, work and visit the city.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Increase accuracy of financial forecasting

Partners: None identified

Mission: Identify the most appropriate technology, such as machine learning and predictive analytics, and data model to predict trends and behaviour patterns in expenditure.

Impact: Redirect as much of the council's budget as possible to delivering its priorities. This will benefit all the people and businesses of the city.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Council Tax Arrears Collection

Partners: Barnsley Metropolitan Borough CouncilBirmingham City CouncilBolton CouncilBradford Metropolitan District CouncilBrighton & Hove City CouncilCarmarthenshire County CouncilCornwall CouncilEaling CouncilIslington CouncilEastbourne Borough CouncilKirklees CouncilLewes District CouncilManchester City CouncilMedway CouncilNewham London Borough CouncilNorth Hertfordshire District CouncilRotherham Metropolitan Borough CouncilSalford City CouncilSouthwark CouncilRoyal Borough of Kensington & ChelseaWakefield CouncilWealden District Council

Mission: Our mission is to collect more council tax in a fair way to maximise funding for local services, thus benefiting local residents, whilst identifying those who are vulnerable and in need of assistance.

Impact: Our business case supports an approach which we believe can increase collection rates for all councils across the country. The increase in collection will help to negate cuts to annual funding and limit reductions in key service areas, where it matters most.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digitising Planning Data

Partners: The Local Digital Declaration provides a distinctive opportunity to reinforce our commitment to resident-centric services, explore the use of innovative technologies, challenge current practices, seek improvements to optimise value for money and, openly provide the information and data that residents need. This joint initiative by the UK Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities (DLUHC) and the Government Digital Service (GDS), aligns perfectly with our vision for a digitally empowered future and provides a small but strong starting point for change. We will Also be working with Essex County Council – Place Services to provide the technical expertise and knowledge to assist in driving this project forwards.

Mission: Currently the authority as a whole has a lot of paper-based information which is neither easily or readily accessible to residents and therefore when information is requested or required by residents, a significant amount of time is spent searching through the archived information to find what is required. Furthermore, the information that is already available digitally to residents is neither easy to find, navigate or use. This is not conducive to providing high quality services or open and transparent information to residents and is time consuming for both residents and the local authority. The modern, internet focused era offers the opportunity for unprecedented collaboration possibilities, efficiency gains and data insights. The Local Digital Declaration positions us to harness these advantages, delivering services seamlessly across the borough be learning from and contributing to best practice. Through this focus on collaboration, data driven decision-making, and efficiency, we consider that we will be able to reshape our public services for the benefit of the boroughs communities as a whole.

Impact: Whilst we are signing the Local Digital Declaration following an application to the Digital Planning Improvement Fund to digitise and make accessible four datasets held by the Planning Service (Article 4 Directions, Listen Buildings, Conservation Areas and Tree Preservation Orders), this forms only a small part of what we are aiming to achieve and would be the beginning of a much wider project within the Planning Service. Digital Transformation is already occurring in other sectors of the authority with a successful start made in Revenues and Benefits through providing more information and services online, in a way that can be easily understood by residents. In the round we are aiming across the authority to drive a digitisation of all our services so that residents can quickly and easily find the right information, in the right format, when they need it through the use of technology. Where services that our residents require are not under our control, we are also targeting providing the information they need to correctly direct them to our relevant partner organisations or other authorities, Essex County Council being one such example. Castle Point Borough Council aspires to provide, based on its own initiative and learnings from best practice, local public services where technology acts as an enabler rather than a barrier. Embracing the principles of the Local Digital Declaration, we commit to redesigning services around resident needs, adopting modular open-sourced approaches, ensuring safe information sharing, demonstrating digital leadership and fostering an open culture that values digital ways of working. It is our aim to learn as much as possible about how we can improve our current offerings to residents and how we can implement this whilst contributing back to the Local Digital Declaration community our own findings, best practices and approaches to contribute to a circular feedback and development loop. By signing the Local Digital Declaration, Castle Point Borough Council strongly aligns itself with a national initiative which promotes innovation, efficiency, and resident-centric service delivery. This commitment already aligns with the Councils aims and objectives when it comes to digital and technological inclusive development and ensures that our community receives the best possible services and information possible in the internet age. We want to seize this opportunity to be part of the development of better technologies and practices where these can enhance rather than hinder the well-being of our residents. We are excited for the possibilities that digital transformation offers us as a local authority in providing resident-centric approaches which can significantly contribute to the well-being and satisfaction of the borough’s residents. This represents an ongoing effort to actively implement strategies that reflect our drive towards digital innovation and resident satisfaction.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improving Data Exchange between Local Authorities, Partners and the VCS

Partners: Bedfordshire Local Resilience Forum (BLRF) comprising Police, Fire, Ambulance, CCG, Public Health, Luton Borough Council, Bedford Borough Council, and the Voluntary sectorLondon Borough of Camden (and Age UK Camden)The London Office of Technology InnovationThe Greater London AuthorityLondon Plus

Mission: Our vision is to enable a federated response across LAs, Partners and the VCS to quickly and effectively support residents whose needs have changed during COVID-19. A key barrier to achieving this is the lack of easy data exchange processes between councils and VCS organisations.

Impact: This project will see LAs and VCS partners in Central Bedfordshire and London develop and test better ways of exchanging data that are secure, reliable and scalable, ensuring more effective ways of working and better resident support during COVID-19 and beyond.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digitally transforming the customer experience

Partners: Essex Online Partnership members (other local authorities and public sector organisations)

Mission: To create a single golden record that gives us the ability to build a customer portal that our residents, businesses and staff can use to service any interaction with the council and other authorities.

Impact: Allowing the customer to access their data at a time that suits them. Reduce fraud and data duplication across all systems. Supports initiatives such as tell us once, digital by design and allows quick and efficient processing of new contact. It will also help us with our GDPR and SAR obligations.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital modernisation programme

Partners: Local authority shared service companies (Publica Group Limited and Ubico); other organisations such as the University of Gloucestershire

Mission: Cheltenham Borough Council wants to provide the best possible services to customers in the most efficient way. Our modernisation programme has been designed to recognise the digital age we live in and how we can make the best use of technology for the benefit of our customers, partners and employees. The purpose is to ensure services are delivered in the most suitable way investing, where appropriate, in both technology and other capabilities to support our organisational modernisation and deliver a positive customer experience.

This programme will:
• Identify and implement digital transformation solutions to improve and enhance the ways services are delivered to our residents and communities in line with their raised expectations
• Enable and empower our people to make better decisions through improved use of data to support better use of resources
• Achieve cash and non-cash savings over the medium term financial strategy period
• Explore how new technologies can be used to reduce customer demand and improve customer experience

A team has been formed with Executive Leadership Team Sponsorship. This transformation will be delivered over the next three years.

Cheltenham Borough Council has a track record of successful partnership working and shared services arrangements and will be working collaboratively with these organisations, which includes two local authority shared service companies: Publica Group Limited and Ubico. In addition to these organisations, Cheltenham Borough Council will be also draw upon the expertise of other organisations such as the University of Gloucestershire. All of our partners will be used to add value and to ensure that transformation improvements are sustainable in the long-term through capacity building and knowledge transfer.

Within a year of signing the declaration, Cheltenham Borough Council will have
• Baselined its ‘as is’ state – through organisational discovery work
• Identified potential opportunities and efficiencies
• Developed a ‘to be’ state including a new target operating model
• Mobilised all stakeholders to share user experiences
• Created capacity through organisational and people development
• Defined and prioritised key projects
• Established Dashboard reporting to monitor and measure improvements made

Impact: The modernisation programme will benefit users and stakeholders in the following ways:
• Services and information will be more easily accessed by residents and communities
• Cash and non-cash savings will be realised that will allow additional resources to be allocated to community based work
• The Council will be stronger and smarter with the way it uses data to influence and inform decisions and priorities

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Cherwell Digital Future - Unlocking our data to improve the way we deliver our services to all our citizens by reducing demand on our staff, enabling us to become an even more proactive organisation.

Partners: Microsoft, Jadu, DEF, Midlands HR, Oxfordshire County Council and growing.

Mission: By unlocking our data and augmenting it with other available data sources, will enable us to create previously unavailable customer insight, which we will use to help shape and deliver our services.
We are also looking to make this data (where permissible) available to all. This will lead to fewer Freedom of Information Requests and a much improved self-service portal fronted by AI and ML bots.
We aim to have a single view of customers across all platforms, leading to a greater first-call resolve rate and assisting with understanding "the customer journey".
We also aim to automate as many manual system-related tasks as possible.
We plan to achieve this through multiple proofs of concepts, starting small and growing as we unlock our data.

Impact: Reduce demand on staff
Automated processing will drive down response time
Provide self-service FOI and Subject Access Requests
Improve overall performance through the effective use of data
Proactively offer council services to qualifying residents

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Share2Care

Partners: Share2Care is a collaborative programme between Cheshire and Merseyside (C&M STP) and the Lancashire & South Cumbria Sustainability and TransformationPartnerships (L&SC STP) to deliver electronic shared health and care records.

Mission: Shared health and care records have been identified as a key transformational enabler by our combined STP leadership. They are a key deliverable for both Local
Digital Roadmaps and form a foundation layer towards our ambition to harness the power of our data for predictive analytics and population health management.

Together, these capabilities underpin our new models of care, disease prevention, the shift to out of hospital care and our drive towards system-wide sustainability.

Share2Care will draw on our wealth of expertise gained over recent 10 years deploying shared care records including the Cheshire Care Record, the Local Person
Record Exchange Service (LPRES), the ILINKS programme and the Wirral Care Record.
Together, we will accelerate the maturity of the wholesystem; supporting localities just starting on their interoperability journey and addressing long-standing record access issues for inter-regional services, such as the North West Ambulance Service (NWAS). Our collaboration will create a scalable solution that will fulfil the ambitions of the national Local Health and Care Record Exemplar (LHACRE) programme.

The programme is underpinned by our digital roadmap which supports the Cheshire and Merseyside Digit@ll strategy. Innovation bids will enable our mission.

Impact: Share2Care will augment, improve, and support our transformational journey. The programme will drive adoption of digital services and make accessibility to real-time shared information the ‘norm’.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Highways Applications and Processing: Cheshire West and Chester’s Highways Service’s Case Management System

Partners: Cheshire East Council, Qwest

Mission: Cheshire West and Chester’s Highways Service’s Case Management System does not contain the ability to build integrated online forms, and therefore there is currently no ability for customers to contact the service or make an application for the following services online:

- Vehicle Crossing
- Temporary Road Closures
- Street Furniture and Planter Licenses
- Stopping Up Order
- Skip Licenses
- Scaffold Licenses
- Marker Post
- Alfresco Licenses (new and renewals)
- Lateral Extents

This means that all application packs must be requested via email or by telephone and these are either printed and posted to the customers or sent via email. Furthermore, payments cannot be made online as this has not been integrated with the Council’s new online payment platform so payments are currently taken over the phone once the application is received or paid via cash or cheque.

Once received the information from the forms needs to be manually entered into the service’s Case Management System for processing.

We will develop, test, launch and roll out online application forms built in the Council’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System that are integrated with the service’s Case Management System, allowing the data captured to be automatically populated into the system ready for processing.

The forms will also be integrated with the Council’s online payment platform which will ensure that customers can make the required payment online at the point of application. This will minimise the need for the customer to call the Council to make a payment over the telephone, visit the Council to make the payment or post a cheque payment.

We will carry out the work to integrate these online forms with both the service’s Case Management System and the Council’s online payment platform.

The approach includes workshops to establish the business rules that will be required in the new forms, production of prototypes to gain feedback from the service before the build process starts and carrying out a comprehensive testing process before the new forms go live.

We are hoping to have the new forms in place by no later than January 2019.

Cheshire West and Chester Council recognise that progress towards digital solutions in often done in partnership, and this is central towards our approach. The Council’s ICT is delivered through a shared service with Cheshire East Council, supporting a common approach, and emphasising the importance of effective relationships.

For this initiative, the Council’s Digital Programme Team, which includes the Digital Transformation Team from our Joint Venture Company Qwest, are working with staff from within the Highways service to develop the new online forms in our Customer Relationship Management System Firmstep. We are pleased to be working with Qwest (a joint venture between Cheshire West and Chester, and Engie) to develop this initiative.

Impact: We believe that this work will bring a number of benefits, including:

- A more convenient end to end online process for customers when making a Highways application;
- A reduction in the time spent manually loading the data from the emailed / paper application form into the service’s case management system;
- Less money spent on posting paper application forms to customers and storing the completed paper forms;
- A reduction in the time spent processing cash and cheque payments.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Building Waste Management capability into the Salesforce platform.

Partners: Rutland County Council, Folkestone Council, Salesforce

Mission: We aim to replace our legacy waste management system with the Salesforce digital platform, integrating into our Customer Relationship Management system and our online resident and business accounts which will launch in 2020.

Impact: Project benefits include
- improved customer service offer and increased customer satisfaction
- reducing the number of legacy suppliers we work with
- reducing operational costs
- break down silos and development of a golden customer record
- development of a more efficient and effective workforce

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital Transformation

Partners: Local authorities, public sector bodies, and suppliers.

Mission: Our Digital objectives:

• Evidence-based decision making to inform service redesign and digital transformation

• To enable customers to access useful and usable council services by maximising digital technology

• To utilise digital technology for staff and councillors to work flexibly and make the most of the technology to deliver services.

• For digital technology to support transformation of services whilst creating efficient ways of working

Impact: To ensure all our digital services are customer focused, increase self-service and boost channel shift.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Reduce the number of residents in the borough who don’t have basic digital skills

Partners: Citizens Advice Bureau (Lancashire West), Lancashire Adult Learning, Preston College, Google Digital Garage, Lancashire Constabulary, Jobskilla as well as local charities and housing schemes such as AgeUK and PlacesforPeople

Mission: To continue to provide and increase basic digital skills support and training across the borough for residents that genuinely need it. This includes providing outreach support in the more rural areas of the borough as well as support for the elderly, vulnerable, unemployed and residents with physical and mental disabilities.

This work will include working with local learning providers as well as upskilling a bank of digital volunteers to allow digital skills training to become sustainable and a beneficial community resource in community venues across the borough.

Impact: The benefits of such projects would include social benefits for residents who would be able to use digital skills to be able to keep in touch with friends and family who they may be out of touch with without having digital skills and capabilities.

Providing basic digital skills training will benefit residents who are unemployed and claiming universal credit. Due to the service now being online many residents will struggle to keep on top of their universal credit account without basic digital skills. By providing beginners sessions claimants will be able to feel more confident to use online services as well as completing online job searches and applications.

Sessions delivered would include online safety and social media safety for vulnerable groups for example residents with learning difficulties to ensure they are safe whilst they are using the internet and social media.

Sessions delivered will continue to provide digital skills regarding public services and health online; including the Council’s website, NHS choices and online doctors’ appointments and prescriptions, these kinds of support sessions will allow residents to access beneficial services at a time and place that suits them. Work on providing skills so residents are able to access online doctors’ appointments and repeat prescriptions will be undertaken in partnerships with local GP surgeries in the borough.

Commitment 2:

Title: Redesign and redevelop our external-facing website to improve the site and online services as a whole

Partners: Capita, Civica, LCC and others

Mission: To create an external-facing website that does more to meet the needs of the customer. To ensure that our online services are easy to access at a time and place that suits our customers.

We aim to ensure that our website is accessible to all, secure and responsive on all types of devices. We aim to redevelop our website to allow customers to easily access the services they require at the first point of contact, reducing the need for more expensive channels such as face-to-face and telephone contact.

We aim to create a top class user experience meaning that our customers prefer to access services online rather than other channels. Our digital services should be simple and intuitive enough that users succeed first time, unaided, as people will only choose to use our services digitally if they are far more straightforward and convenient.

Impact: By redeveloping and redesigning the external-facing website it will allow customers to access information they require more easily, at a time and place that suits them, increasing their satisfaction with the Council. By increasing the use of our online services and allowing customers to self-serve in the council offices, it will allow us to free up staff time, which will enable us to focus our resources to those who need them most and where they could make the most difference; for example helping unemployed residents find work or supporting our more vulnerable residents.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To help transition Bradford as a community and place into the future where it has integrated the best of digital and smart technologies. To help improve the lives of the citizens of Bradford District and support the District’s priorities.

Partners: Central government, Digital Skills Partnership Programme, UK City of Culture 2025, WYCA, AI Innovation Partnership, Leeds City Region, Primary Care Networks, Community Partnerships, Born in Bradford (BiB), Act Early, University of Bradford, Voluntary, Social Enterprise, Health Partners, CTE Partnership Boards, Digital Makers initiative, working with industry and academia.

Mission: A meaningful contribution to the Council's Measures of Success by 2027 which include: 1. Whole district coverage of affordable gigabit capable connectivity. 2. All our citizens have the skills to success. 3. Economy growth faster than UK average 4. Established at least 10 start-ups or scale-ups through Innovation Partnership 5. Moved from promising IoT tech pilots to delivering real world citizen value at scale in at least 10 key use cases 6. Bradford recognised as a global centre for research, attracting significant inward investment

Impact: We need to make sure our citizens see and experience the benefits of digital and smart technologies and that we are able to meet the technological expectations of our community. This cannot happen if sections of our communities feel left behind – we need to work with all our communities to ensure a digital future is for everyone. We will achieve this together, relying on partnerships with all communities, industry and government. To work in unison with the Mayor of West Yorkshire and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority to achieve these goals.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Extending 'online first' to other services

Partners: North Kesteven DC, Lincolnshire County Council

Mission: Our Customer Experience Strategy has an aim of ‘Online first’. We have had significant success and increased take-up of online services and want to extend this success into other areas of the Council including housing and environmental services.

Additional services will be available, creating efficiencies and increasing customer satisfaction.

We work closely with North Kesteven DC through our shared service arrangements and are looking to enhance two-tier working with Lincolnshire County Council.

Impact: We aim to improve services for customers who wish to access services online, and also for vulnerable people by making access to services more efficient and customer-focused.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Creating a Smart and Secure City of London enhancing the capability for data collection and supporting a strategy for the use of IoT in the CIty of London for the benefit of our communities.

Partners: Private Sector Organisations - Agilisys, BT and OpernreachPublic Sector - TFL, Office the Mayor of London, City of London Police and Businesses across the City of London

Mission: Within a year we will expect to have delivered:
- augmented Smart Ciy Infrastructure to enable collection of useful data and widen the capability for use of Internet of Things solutions through a Mesh network;
- Greater use of digital workspaces on the go enhancing the mobility experience of our workforce;
- Creating a Smart city environment using Smart City lighting to aid the prevention of anti-social behaviour and reduce accidents whist saving energy.

Impact: * Our communities will benefit from the information collected and analysed though greater deployment of Smart City Sensors;
* Our Communities will benefit from the use of a gigabit wifi network and deployment of superfast fibre connections;
* Our Communities will benefit from improved decision making from officers who can acesss analyse vast sets of data;
* Our Officers will benefit from the infrastructure that enables more agile and collaborative working on joined up digital infrastructure.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: City of Wolverhampton membership of the West Midlands Open Data Forum

Partners: West Midlands Open Data ForumLocal authorities in the West Midlands West Midlands Combined Authority

Mission: The City of Wolverhampton will actively engage in the West Midlands Open Data Forum

Impact: To work collaboratively with others in promoting the open data agenda

Commitment 2:

Title: Application for Discovery project funding: developing community led information platforms

Partners: Walsall Council

Mission: To seek funding to discover how we reduce demand on the public sector by developing community led digital platforms to connect local people, to each other, activities, information and assets.

Impact: Our project aims to rethink how we use technology to connect communities to information, advice and assets using a strengths-based approach. We want to work with citizens to better understand what information and advice they currently access and how, the potential gaps in this mapping and prototype digital solutions to improve how communities connect to the support they need.

We will articulate the saving to the public sector by co-producing with local people digital solutions that transform the way that community services are accessed, and public services provided.

Commitment 3:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Council Tax Arrears Collection

Partners: Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, Birmingham City Council, Bolton Council, Bradford Metropolitan District Council, Brighton & Hove City Council, Cornwall Council, Ealing Council, Islington Council, Eastbourne Borough Council, Kirklees Council, Lewes District Council, Manchester City Council, Medway Council, Newham London Borough Council, North Hertfordshire District Council, Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, Salford City Council, Southwark Council, Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, Wakefield Council, Wealden District Council, Carmarthenshire Council, Coventry City Council, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, Walsall Council

Mission: At 31 March 2018, the total amount of council tax outstanding in England amounted to £3 billion (cumulative from the introduction of council tax in 1993
For 2017/18, Local authorities in England collected £27.5 billion, with arrears of £818 million, approximately 3% uncollected.
Our mission is to collect more council tax to maximise funding for local services, thus benefiting local residents. It will help ensure that those able to pay do not avoid their responsibility whilst identifying those who cant pay or are vulnerable and in need of assistance.

Impact: Our business case supports an approach which we believe can increase collection rates for all councils across the country as well as reduce the amount of unpaid Council Tax outstanding from previous years. The increase in collection will help increase resources available to Councils and limit reductions in key service areas, where it matters most.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improve how incoming digital project work is identified and scheduled

Partners: Share all research to all organisations as well as publishing any code as open source.

Mission: We will research, design and commission a method to identify a way to list systems, processes and contracts that pose a legacy or contractual risk. This will help by providing a single register of entries that need to be investigated to whether they need actioning, showing their importance and the urgency for a replacement. This will allow services to be able to provide information on when systems will go out of date and whether a new system will need to replace them.

We will use agile methods to design the solution iteratively, capturing user needs through research.

Impact: The register will reduce the number of projects that have to be completed in short notice, allowing for the opportunity to schedule project work in a more structured way.

The system will alert digital project teams and service areas to when a system is due to be replaced so that there is enough opportunity to plan for an appropriate replacement.

The intention is that the register will be based on an open API so that information can easily be integrated with other platforms.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: We are looking to eliminate old outdated legacy systems with new custom built, cloud based software using a platform as a service based approach. We are looking to drive business process efficiency through the development of new digital processes, using customer led service re-design principles and customer insight and data analysis.

Partners: Basildon Borough Council, Chelmsford City Council, Brentwood Borough Council, Castle Point Borough Council

Mission: Within a year, we hope to have developed solutions to address some of the problems outlined above. This includes a move to new enterprise platforms from old legacy systems for the following council services; planning, building control, regulatory services, public sector housing and waste and environmental health. We will also be developing services in house using an enterprise system which allows us the flexibility and freedom to build new processes and re-engineer services.

Impact: We are introducing more online self service functionality allowing customers to access services at a time that is convenient to them. By using data and customer feedback in the design process we are also ensuring the design is led by customer needs and preferences. Better and more advanced online processes enable us to reduce the burden on our Contact Centre, allowing them to spend more time working with our more vulnerable residents and those with complex queries.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Collaborative working across Welsh Local Authorities

Partners: All Welsh Local Authorities and latterly potentially other Welsh public sector organisations and beyond.

Mission: Creation of a new central team with the mandate to drive Digital collaborative, co-operative and co-production across Welsh local authorities

Impact: Better sharing of scarce skills, less duplication of effort, more rapid adoption and deployment of industry best practice, better delivery for our citizens

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: FOI Process Improvement Project

Partners: My Society, London Borough of Hackney + other Local Authorities

Mission: To look at developing a more tailored made system for local authorities (to cover both FOI and SARs) in terms of request submission and automatic publication of FOI responses (rather than the manual uploading/checking we need to do at present).

Impact: An improvement in Customer Experience from quicker responses to FOI's & SARs + process efficiencies through automation of as much of the process as possible.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Moving to a new Customer Digital Platform across multiple local authorities and organisations

Partners: Cheltenham Borough Council / Forest of Dean District Council / West Oxfordshire District Council / Cotswold District Council / Ubico Limited / Publica Group Limited

Mission: We will commence a programme of redesigning and moving all our low complexity, high volume services to a new digital platform to start to build a single view of the customer and ensure all initial customer contact is managed through a single access point regardless of channel. Initially the programme will start with migration of services currently handles through legacy CRM systems but will move onto reimagining and redesigning other services and moving them to the platform.

The platform will facilitate a single customer contact record which is shared across Publica’s partner councils and this will test the ability to build a scalable and flexible data model to manage customers across geographical boundaries where they deal with more than one Council.
Further phased work during Summer 2019 will extend the solution to facilitate easy to use and accessible web self service with the ability to track a case progress online.

Impact: * Increased customer satisfaction through improved feedback loops and visibility of case progress
* Ability to offer consistent levels of service regardless of customer channel choice
* Automation of low complexity tasks and case routing
* Ability to design and develop a single platform to cater for the distinctive local policies set by each of the partner councils
* Reduction in the number of systems that customer service agents have to log into to respond to a query.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Council Tax Arrears Collection

Partners: Barnsley Metropolitan Borough CouncilBirmingham City CouncilBolton CouncilBradford Metropolitan District CouncilBrighton & Hove City CouncilCornwall CouncilEaling CouncilIslington CouncilEastbourne Borough CouncilKirklees CouncilLewes District CouncilManchester City CouncilMedway CouncilNewham London Borough CouncilNorth Hertfordshire District CouncilRotherham Metropolitan Borough CouncilSalford City CouncilSouthwark CouncilRoyal Borough of Kensington & ChelseaWakefield CouncilWealden District Council

Mission: As at 31 March 2018, the total amount of council tax outstanding in England amounted to £3 billion (cumulative from the introduction of council tax in 1993. For 2017/18, Local authorities in England collected £27.5 billion, with arrears of £818 million, approximately 3% uncollected. Our mission is to collect more council tax in a fair way to maximise funding for local services, thus benefiting local residents, whilst identifying those who are vulnerable and in need of assistance.

Impact: Our business case supports an approach which we believe can increase collection rates for all councils across the country. The increase in collection will help to negate cuts to annual funding and limit reductions in key service areas, where it matters most.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Creating a new Alpha website with consistent and accessible design patterns that can be used for all user-facing services

Partners: Other local authorities doing the same work (eg Brighton & Hove City Council, other London Boroughs tbc), accessibility agency (procuring shortly), government design community

Mission: We will create, test and iterate page templates and components for our most important user journeys (approx 10-15 transactions). All work will be a delight to look at, will achieve WCAG AA or better, and accept multi-lingual content if required. Everything will be freely shared for anyone to use. We hope that other councils will want to join us on this journey, and we can create assets together.

Impact: This project will benefit all residents and businesses in the London Borough of Croydon by providing a website that's straightforward to navigate and a pleasure to use. By sharing our work and findings, it should benefit many other public bodies and save us all having to reinvent the wheel.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Customer self-serve and automation of Tip Permits.

Partners: Stockton Borough Council

Mission: We will create fully automated end to end processes enabling customers to order, pay for and use tip permits

Impact: The project aims to improve the Customer experience by providing options for self-serve and automation for the application and use of tip permits and to reduce Council costs by redesigning the current manual processes.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Use web analytics tools to confirm a set of the most frequently visited pages in order to identify and target a range of improvements and initiatives on content and tools.

Partners: None initially as the primary focus is on our own website ( www.dartford.gov.uk )

Mission: We will conduct an analytics exercise in order to establish a definitive set of the most heavily visited pages on our main website. Using the output of that exercise we will scrutinise the content of those pages in order to maximise compliance with accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1) and ensure that readability is optimised. We will also look at opportunities to introduce live chat and/or other AI solutions where applicable.

Impact: The project aims to provide an improved website experience for our residents, as not only will they enjoy higher quality content, but their digital interaction with the Council may also be enhanced with advanced tools.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Simple and seamless authentication process across multiple case management systems.

Partners: Wirral Council; Durham County Council; Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council; Hillingdon Council; Brighton & Hove Council; Waltham Forest Council; Rugby Council; Calderdale Council; Kirklees Council; Hambleton; North Devon; Cheshire East.

Mission: 'One Front Door' providing fully Digital by Default services and fulfillment to the citizens of Derby, improving customer experience while reducing operational cost to the Council. "Providing digital services so good that people prefer to use them, while not excluding those who can't"

Impact: This should allow us to interact with our customers digitally with direct feeds into the back office systems and speed up service delivery, and maximize the re-use of existing assets and investment.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improving Customer Service through Citizen’s assist: AI assistant

Partners: ICS. Ai and our parent organisation, Derby City Council

Mission: From April 2023, Derby Homes is introducing a smart webchat solution for its customers. Chatbots and webchat systems can diversify how customers contact an organisation. They can help customers find the information they need 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, increasing options for our customers. The AI assistant will be accessible for customers on the website during phase one of it’s implementation as a webbot, moving to automation over the phone and finishing with a live webchat within the year. Through working with the Council to implement the bot, we are improving customer services and providing clarity by linking up our services.

Impact: There are several benefits we will achieve through the implementation of the webbot: Quick and multilingual responses Personalised responses Increased out of hours response options Collect useful data for how we can improve our services and highest demand areas Reach a wider audience In addition to the above, the introduction of the chatbot has improved existing website content and the organisation’s understanding of our customer journey. This is because we have adapted our services for the webbot to improve navigation, content and the search functionality of the website.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: OpenCommunity: exploring common digital service patterns and data standards for accessing local community services

Partners: Devon CC Adur and Worthing Buckinghamshire County Council iStand UK Community Works (Adur & Worthing / Brighton) Other to be confirmed

Mission: Our project wishes to bring joined-up digital thinking to the challenging problem of directory-based information. Every local authority, health organisation, police force, together with other voluntary sector partners are attempting to maintain some form of directory-based information. Aside from the basic fact that this is difficult information to curate in an accurate and meaningful manner, typically there is little join-up, no data standards, quality assurance and little in the way of automated data harvesting via APIs. 
 
Our conversations with different partners in Devon and wider afield, including health, police and the voluntary sector have convinced us that there is considerable merit in undertaking discovery work to understand what a 'directory as a service' could and should look like in 2018. This is based on several years of trying to maintain such a directory (current iteration at https://www.pinpointdevon.co.uk/). 
 
The discovery work will focus on developing: 
the first iteration of a data standard for directory-based information 
A portfolio of basic service patterns for systems (and users) to make best use of that data. This would likely include interfaces such as: administration and curation of records; provider record administration; public interface; social proscribing referral service; data harvest function 
any ancilarry products/standards such as taxonomy, quality assurance, metrics 
specifying what appropriate API endpoints should look like to meet needs of partners, third parties. 
 
By pooling resources around curating a single directory, built on a common data standard, with best of breed APIs, any single partner, GP practice or any third party can build an interface to sit on top that suits their audience. This could include social prescribing, NHS Directory of Services and 111, and aligns with the broad requirement for all public sector agencies to support prevention strategies and signpost to community-based help and support. It also supports statutory duties around the provision of, by way of example, child care information, the universal information offer around Care Act, the Local Offer etc. 
 
Such an approach offers the potential to provide an intelligence function to identify which communities are lacking certain forms of support, or lacking investment. 

Impact: A common data standard will enable organisations to develop and share directory-based data in a significantly more efficient manner. 
This will improve the quality and quantity of data available to end-users. 
By modelling service patterns any local authority or organisation will be able to implement an appropriate interface to facilitate their application or interface, whether that be social proscribing, a local GP surgery developing a patient portal, or a public-facing directory triaging information against needs. 
By undertaking this work on behalf of local government and other public sector agencies, we can start to define a common approach that – through data sharing – will facilitate innovation, opportunity and fundamentally better information and user experience that will benefit people in local communities. 

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital Action Norfolk Digital exclusion

Partners: All - government, third sectors, statutory body's and more

Mission: Digital Action Norfolk is a charitable organisation which has been set up to support and maintain a person’s wellbeing by information technology and the interactive arts. Digital Action Norfolk Offers tailored support to individuals, groups and organisations, and is based in the centre of Fakenham, Norfolk.
Our priorities are to bring people and organisations together and to build strong relationships in and across communities. Digital Action Norfolk will enable more people to fulfil their potential by working to address inequalities at the earliest possible stage.
Our mission is to assist people in Norfolk by providing the tools and knowledge to access the world of Information Technology. With the ever-ongoing expansion of IT affecting both home and business through social interaction and essential informational services which are becoming increasingly more important to modern life.

Impact: Being unable to take advantage of this digital technology puts many at a disadvantage and aiding peoples' ability to use IT is a process which is empowering and will enhance lives.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Doncaster Integrated People Solution

Partners: Doncaster Council, Doncaster Children’s Services Trust, Doncaster Clinical Commissioning Group, Social Care Providers.

Mission: To implement an integrated social care and education case management solution that replaces numerous disparate systems ensuring best-practice business processes, migrated data from multiple systems, trained staff from a number of agencies on optimum use of the solution and integration with key systems using open standards.

Impact: The aim of the solution is to create a ‘single version of the truth’, creating one record for people who need support so they do not get lost in transition between services or in different phases of their life. It will support citizens and clients, providing the ability to adopt a ‘tell us once’ approach across all required services and agencies. The solution will also support accurate evidence-based commissioning across all people-based services.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Developing digital skills

Partners: Dorset Councils Partnership

Mission: Commitment 1: Reducing digital inclusion in Dorset

Partners: Dorset County Council, East Dorset District Council, North Dorset District Council, Purbeck District Council, West Dorset District Council and Weymouth and Portland Borough Council, CCG, Poole Housing Partnership, Skills & Learning, Volunteer Centre

Mission: In Dorset we are committed to improving outcomes and making a difference to our citizens, we see digital design and technology as a key part of achieving this. We have prioritised the importance of developing digital skills across our workforce and communities as a key enabler for change. We have a number of initiatives to help with the development of digital skills in Dorset: Digital Academy, M365 digital champions, a local digital network for public sector organisations to share and learn, the use of Google Garage to support digital skills in SME’s, along with digital champions in the community.

Impact: We will continue to support our Routes to Inclusion Partnership who have created a network of 41 digital champions in the community, and using work recently completed by citizens online will be able to target effort and further improve our offer. This will enable us to support the development of basic digital skills of residents (targeting the 21-23% offline) to reduce exclusion, and the broader digital agenda of the council enabling people to access and use more services online.

Impact:

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Using Geographic Information System (GIS) tools to improve the events process

Partners: Emergency Services, Statutory Consultees

Mission: We will create a step-by-step guide that any local authority could use to streamline the events process for customers, consultees and staff.

We are investigating using our existing GIS software to implement this project, instead of going out and purchasing new software.

The project will be of benefit internally, as it is manually intensive. It will also be of benefit to external partners involved in the process and customers who apply for the events process.

It will be a new online service.

If we are successful in utilising the software, we will be the first authority who use this product to do so.

We are hoping to complete the project by the first part of the new year - if successful.

Impact: The project aims to reduce the number of steps and processes it takes to carry out the events process - which is the same for all England Local Authorities.
Customers - ease in which to apply for events
Staff - Reduce admin times
General Benefits - More automation, GDPR compliance

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Implementing a modern digitally-enabled platform and online account allowing citizens to customise their website experience and build an ongoing online dialogue and relationship with the Council.

Partners: Ashton Court Group Ltd

Mission: Through the use of technology enable a customer-focused approach to deliver a customer experience that is seamless, consistent and personalised.

Impact: A self-service portal allows customers to manage their account with the Council, and by doing so enables the Council to better manage customer expectations. By logging into their account, customers can perform a variety of tasks, such as:
• Request service and schedule appointments 24/7
• Track services and requests, as well as appointment details and status
• Send messages directly to the council
• Review their service and contact history
• Find self-help tips and information
• Learn about services and issues that may impact on services
• View account information and manage payments
• Get support for services and product questions
A portal that allows customers to see their services can build trust in the Council through improved transparency, while real-time customer updates, e.g. email or mobile alerts show customers that we value their time.

Commitment 2:

Title: We will create a transaction-first website, primarily designed for mobile users and with a focus on improved customer journeys, while remaining accessible to the widest possible audience by making use of assistive technologies.

Partners: Fat Media

Mission: The creation of well-designed web services that provide customers with personalised information and enable them to request services, report issues and undertake transactions online simply and quickly.
Ensuring that the website can be used by people using assistive technologies to achieve the same results as users who do not need these technologies.

Impact: To meet customer expectations of multi-device, personalised, 24/7 access to information and transactions.
To increase take-up of online services, thereby increasing customer choice, opportunity and service quality.
Provision of clear, accurate, and timely information to the widest possible audience.

Commitment 3:

Title: Implement in-cab technology into the refuse, trade waste, recycling and green waste vehicles to ensure delivery of a more efficient and cost effective waste collection service and easy access to risk assessment data for drivers.

Partners: TBC

Mission: To install in-cab technology into refuse, trade waste, recycling and green waste vehicles to provide real time information to the back office service team, the Council’s contact centre (Dudley Council Plus) and customers.
To ensure risk assessment data is highlighted in vehicles e.g. narrow access, reverse only, overhead cables, schools, road works, violent customers etc., in accordance with HSE requirements.
To enable crews to report any issues and concerns live whilst on rounds from a menu of exceptions e.g. bin not out, contaminated bin, side waste etc and to record completion of rounds, providing a more efficient response to collection enquiries.
To provide real time data for waste collection services to improve performance management and route optimisation.

Impact: • Provision of clear, accurate, and timely information on the collections to the back office service teams and the Council’s contact centre, therefore improving information and the service to customers.
• Improved crew performance
• Improved performance and route planning data, crews will have more up to date route information and risks (HSE recommendation)
• Ability to automatically publish collection information to the website keeping customers up to date with developments linked to scheduled collections, e.g. weather conditions, vehicle breakdowns etc.
• Operatives can accurately record whether a bin has been placed out at the correct time on the correct collection day, thereby reducing unwarranted resource time spent returning for erroneous missed collections with associated costs.
• Enabling the Council to send automatically generated targeted correspondence to customers with regard to recycling contamination as an example, once live feedback has been received from the collection crew the automatic generation of information can be sent to a household explaining which material can and cannot be placed in the recycling bins.

Commitment 4:

Title: Council Tax Arrears Collection

Partners: Barnsley Metropolitan Borough CouncilBirmingham City CouncilBolton CouncilBradford Metropolitan District CouncilBrighton & Hove City CouncilCornwall CouncilEaling CouncilIslington CouncilEastbourne Borough CouncilKirklees CouncilLewes District CouncilManchester City CouncilMedway CouncilNewham London Borough CouncilNorth Hertfordshire District CouncilRotherham Metropolitan Borough CouncilSalford City CouncilSouthwark CouncilRoyal Borough of Kensington & ChelseaWakefield CouncilWealden District CouncilCarmarthenshire CouncilCity of WolverhamptonCoventry City CouncilDudley Metropolitan Borough CouncilSandwell Metropolitan Borough CouncilSolihull Metropolitan Borough CouncilWalsall Council

Mission: At 31 March 2018, the total amount of council tax outstanding in England amounted to £3 billion (cumulative from the introduction of council tax in 1993
For 2017/18, Local authorities in England collected £27.5 billion, with arrears of £818 million, approximately 3% uncollected.
Our mission is to collect more council tax to maximise funding for local services, thus benefiting local residents. It will help ensure that those able to pay do not avoid their responsibility whilst identifying those who cant pay or are vulnerable and in need of assistance.

Impact: Our business case supports an approach which we believe can increase collection rates for all councils across the country as well as reduce the amount of unpaid Council Tax outstanding from previous years. The increase in collection will help increase resources available to Councils and limit reductions in key service areas, where it matters most.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Member’s Portal – Improving Digital Access and Information for Councillors

Partners: Wirral Council

Mission: A Member’s portal developed collectively with Councillors that:
• Enables Councillors to electronically report issues on behalf of constituents
• Informs members of progress of reports and enables them to feedback to customers
• Provides improved access to information relating to their electoral division to understand issues and help represent their area
• Enables them to conduct frequent administrative activities digitally
• Enhances digital communication and providing greater awareness and understanding of Council activity.

Impact: Councillors are the voice of the people, and as such, perform a vital role ensuring that Council activity is focussed on priority and need. The portal will provide Members with the digital capability, insight and knowledge to enhance the customer journey. Benefits to Councillors, Customers and the Council are substantial and include:

Members:
• The ability to report issues on line and understand progress and what action has been taken.
• Keep their customer informed.
• Receive text messages direct to their phone with regards to service provision in their electoral division e.g. if inclement weather had prevented the schedule of bin collections
• Understand the current issues that are frequently reported in their electoral division and larger geographical areas
• Improved communication between the services, front line and Members
• Raises awareness and enables Members to leverage additional opportunities including training and development.

Customers
• Automated feedback and updates on issues raised with their Councillor
• An improved customer journey and satisfaction

Council
• Requests that are automated and get from the initial request to the front time delivery team efficiently and effectively
• Improved intelligence and understanding of key issues

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To automate the process of the production of EHCPs including the use of AI and Analytics to produce plan outlines.

Partners: Neighbouring and Remote Borough Councils, Service Blueprint and Cloud Computing Consultant

Mission: From the completion of a digital discovery and service blueprinting exercise with our partner. We have identified a number of challenges and ‘pain points’ in the preparation of Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) for children with Special Education Needs. As well as identifying that current providers do not have systems that meet service user needs.

We will create an ‘alpha’ cloud based system that can be used by all parties involved in the production of EHCPs for Special Education Needs. The system will allow remote access for the completion of the assessment allowing qualitative and quantitative comments, by using AI and analytics propose outline plans for adjustment by the professionals, allow parent access throughout the process and allow electronic voting on plan acceptance. This will allow the development of an outcomes dashboard that shows the current level of attainment, proposed attainment through the plan and ultimately the performance at the end of the plan.

Impact: The use of cloud-based computing will free up resources that currently do substantial amounts of administration and preparation for EHCP panels to do value-added liaison and relationship-building. This will enable us to work with parents and schools so that we can focus on service improvement and build upon the plans for better outcomes.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: build Eyes and Ears programme which is trying to increase communities understanding of major issues (such as modern day slavery, child abuse, and domestic Abuse, as well as dementia, loneliness and potential fire and trip hazards), how to recognise if someone is in need of help, and then who they should contact for that help or advice.

Partners: Fire and Rescue, Council, Police, Housing, Health, Schools

Mission: Understand it!
Recognise it!
Report it!

Impact: To reduce financial burden to the Public Purse and services.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Enterprise Content Management / Enterprise Information Management

Partners: Exeter City CouncilTeignbridge District CouncilStrata Service Solutions Ltd

Mission: Enterprise Content Management systems (ECM) or Enterprise Information Management (EIM) systems, enable the effective management of multiple data stores across an organisation / or multiple organisations under one centralised platform.
The primary outcome of the Electronic Content Mgt project is to deliver efficiency savings through more effective access to multiple data and content sources via a single front end application. We are in the process of developing a detailed business case, to perform research, to identify benefits and to produce pricing for an alpha project.

Impact: • Version Control of documents- i.e. one version of the truth, rather than multiple version of the same document
• Ease of information discovery – search and find information across a multitude of information stores in one go
• Contextualised information. i.e. when I want to find information on “Java” – the EIM will understand that it’s Java the coffee bean I’m interested in, not the country or programming language.
• Better Security – know what information has been accessed, when and by whom, and have more controls on restricting data access
• GDPR – search for all information on individuals across the whole organisations in one place.
• Data archiving and retention – manage data retention in one place
• Collaborate – multiple users can contribute to a single document in a managed and co-ordinated way
• Workflow – management of the flow of information through an organisation, leading to greater efficiencies in information usage
• Business Process Mapping – links with improving managing key and departmental business processes
Improved organisational efficiency and the customer an improved customer experience with availability of customer information for mobile officers working in the field and less duplication (eg provision of ID data)

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Data driven service re-design across the sector

Partners: East Hampshire and Havant Councils

Mission: The utilisation of data and intelligence to inform operational and digital service design in terms of the appropriate level of provision, the mechanism of delivery and the technologies to be deployed. The focus in the first 12 months will be within regulatory services across the Council, initially in liaison with East Hampshire Borough Council.

To openly share data to inform public sector service design beyond our own organisation

Actively engage with partners to pool data and intelligence to enhance our understanding of challenges for the sector, with the objective of improve outcomes – we call this enablement ‘Council as a Platform’ under the banner of our transformation programme – Shaping our Future

Impact: Organisationally:
• Evidence-based service redesign and digital transformation
• Measurable understanding of the impact of transformation
Partners and Agencies:
• Improved use of resources through joint working and shared intelligence
• Access to data to inform service design within the sector
For the Customer:
• Services delivery is informed by evidence including user experience resulting in targeted offerings according to need

Update – The Councils have implemented a new building control solution as part of the first phase of transforming their regulatory services. This has also triggered opportunities to enhance flexible working and share additional services across the Councils. As part of our transformation programme – Shaping our Future, a design review is underway to define our future target operating model; and as part of this, case management solutions will be explored and implemented – having regard for our commitment to be an enabling force – ‘Council as a Platform’

Commitment 2:

Title: Embed a digital first approach to service delivery aided by a digital mindset

Partners: Havant Borough Council and East Hampshire District Council

Mission: Understand the behaviours, skills and work styles required to successfully transform public service delivery and deliver best in class in terms of digital design

Establish an evidence base to inform the design and development of appropriate resources, schemes and tools to secure a shift in organisational culture, which we believe is a critical success factor to our transformation programme – Shaping Our Future.

Impact: Organisationally:
• Reduced resistance to change enabling the delivery of our radical re-think of public service delivery
• Readiness to grasp service redesign opportunities from a digital perspective
• An increase in confidence amongst staff to work digitally
For the Customer:
• Services designed in line with expectations; where our customers are already accustomed to the rapid growth in technical solutions and offerings in their day to day lives
• More efficient services, making better use of public funds

Update: Shaping our Future represents a major re-think of public services. This programme is currently working through a series of agile iterations through the work of 5 workstreams, one of which is Digital Redesign. This phase of innovation and design will continue into the autumn, following which the Councils will have created the conditions for success.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital Innovation Zone

Partners: Harlow, Broxbourne, Epping Forest, Essex County, Uttlesford, Hertfordshire County, NHS/CCG, CVS, KAO data, LSCC, New City College, Herts Regional College

Mission: To be the best connected place of its type in the UK. A place of innovation and inclusion. A place where the benefits of digital investment are harnessed, maximised and shared across residents, commuters, businesses and borders.

Impact: Design in the Public Sector, Open Data Source, Common Asset Register, Town Centre Free WiFi

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Integrations with systems

Partners: Potentially Stevenage Council

Mission: We are looking to integrate systems in order to ensure we can maximise efficiency. For example, we would like to integrate idox into our website for forms submitted feed straight into idox rather than receiving forms and manually adding them

Impact: This should have a huge impact on time spent doing tasks

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title:

Partners: Kingston upon Hull City Council, North East Lincolnshire Council, North Lincolnshire Council, and the University of Hull

Mission: East Riding of Yorkshire Council wants to work with its partners to transform the delivery of day services in the region. To support this an application is being made to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s Local Digital Fund. If this application is successful a planned Alpha project will be initiated, initially focussed on transforming service delivery for service users with learning disabilities in Hull, with a view to rolling out to service users in the partner Local Authority areas as part of a proposed larger Beta project.

This transformation in service delivery will be delivered through improving physical activity levels and associated health outcomes in service users with learning disabilities and their families and carers. This will be done by implementing the use of mobile technology, in the form of a smartphone app, to facilitate the delivery of accessible personalised exercise programmes at day centres. The smartphone app will also enable carers and families to exercise with those they care for during sessions at day centres and in their own homes. The project plans to utilise an app which has already been developed by researchers in Sport, Health and Exercise Science at the University of Hull, with a view to optimising the app for this particular user group.

Impact: The mobile technology to be used as part of this proposed Alpha project has evolved from a significant body of previous work undertaken in Sport, Health and Exercise Science at the University of Hull. This has produced a range of outputs around service user impact which are summarised below:
• Functional fitness and ability to undertake activities of daily living
• Strength
• Power
• Fitness
• Movement quality
• Confidence, feelings of wellbeing, and quality of life
This project will also aim to improve digital literacy levels among service users and their carers, by promoting the use of mobile technology.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Warm Homes Healthy People Project - create a new digital application process for the WHHP initiative

Partners: Suffolk Coastal District Council, Waveney District Council, Ipswich Borough Council, Babergh District Council, St Edmundsbury Borough Council, Forest Heath District Council, Suffolk County Council.

Mission: To design and implement a digital mobile working solution which will enable surveyors to complete all necessary data capture and the application process on a single visit. This will consist of an intelligent online form which integrates with the WHHP database working from an android tablet device. It will be used to collect the following:

- technical data about the property, including photographs
- personal data about the home occupier, including information about their health and their income
- photographs of original, personal documents
- the written signature of the home-occupier to give consent to the WHHP Statement, and confirm the accuracy of the data collected

Impact: The project will deliver a generic solution which better supports the application process. Specific outcomes will include:

- reduction in costs and improved efficiency & accuracy because the new process is paperless and eliminates duplication of manual data entry
- assurance of compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
- facilitation of ‘joined up’ working for a team formed from multiple councils, working across Suffolk.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To explore in Proof of Concept, a Chatbot to support the Blue Badge application process. To test the relative benefit of a commercial product against parallel internally developed capability and extrapolate learning from the experience. Testing the scope of financial and resident benefits and ongoing support implications.

Partners: Orbis partners - Surrey County Council, Brighton and Hove City Council, East Sussex County Council. (Surrey are also already collaborating with Oxford City Council.)

Mission: In implementing the Blue Badge National System change, the volume and repetitive nature of frequently asked questions that this service attracts was noted. Given that the process has been recently refreshed and the range of questions can be reasonably anticipated, this service has been identified corporately as an ideal candidate for automation. The project will implement a Proof of Concept commercial product and be reviewed against similar inhouse development to determine the pros and cons of each. The aim being to understand the skills and capabilities required to affect a successful implementation, evaluate the resulting user experience, consider ongoing support implications and evaluate the relative value and benefit of the product to the organisation. This learning is to be used to develop an approach that can be applied to further services and be shared with partners. Staff working collaboratively across teams will experience the development first hand, gain insight, knowledge and share in lessons learnt from the start. This will help create a fundamental understanding of the approach needed for a successful outcome and inform how the model should be constructed to be sustainable and scalable for further implementations.

Impact: The project aims to create capacity by using automation tools to relieve the pressure of answering frequently asked questions to free up the time of professional staff to target their valuable skills more impactfully. Also to assess the impact on user experience.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Homelessness prevention

Partners: Ascendant Solutions Ltd

Mission: A platform that can identify and assess financial vulnerability and other tenancy issues in order to provide early intervention and mitigate the risk of a tenant becoming homeless

Impact: Reduction in the number of homeless residents - Local Authorities and tenant(s)
Reduction in Emergency Accommodation costs to the Local Authority

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improving our single view of the customer and how we interact with them.

Partners: Various

Mission: To provide a robust and integrated platform that supports our customer journeys and interactions.

Impact: Tangible improvement in the way the council's customers engage and improved customer insight.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Designing and implementing back office case management in ICT and Environmental Services

Partners: Granicus (as a beta tester for their case viewer product), and other councils looking to share learning.

Mission: Elmbridge has made good progress in increasing the number of customer transactions submitted online, however back office teams in some areas are still processing them manually. We will work with colleagues in ICT and Environmental Services to implement case management workflows for mobile device agreements and parking suspension applications. This will include mapping out current processes and looking at legislative requirements, as well as considering what information customers need from us. We’ll use this information to design a workflow that guides the user through the process and makes use of automated notifications and approval requests.

Impact: The aim is to reduce the time spent by officers administering these jobs as calculations and notifications will be automated. The customer will receive a better service as they are kept up to date throughout and can view the history and progress of their request. We will use these areas as pilots before rolling out the same features to other teams, enabling them to move towards paperless working. We also expect that working collaboratively with service areas will help develop their skills in process mapping and service improvement.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improving digital access to vulnerable customers for housing services in a post COVID environment

Partners: Parents Engagement Network, Advice Aid, North London Housing Partnership

Mission: We will develop a service model that any local authority can use to ensure vulnerable customers get access to critical services which are now digital, reflecting the move to online as a result of COVID-19 and face to face engagement being significantly reduced. We will work with residents and service providers to understand barriers and deliver new ways of working to access services. We will prioritise vulnerable groups; those with mental health, learning disabilities, victims of domestic abuse, hard of hearing, deaf, where English is not a first language. We will co-create a new approach to service delivery that supports digital and ensures everyone is supported.

Impact: This will increase the number of vulnerable customers who can access support, it will reduce the numbers who need crisis interventions and the digital literacy and confidence of vulnerable customers will increase. This will also set a precedent for how you deliver channel shift in an inclusive way.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Common Asset Register to map all public sector estate and assets for the deployment of technology and connectivity initiatives and approaches

Partners: Essex + Herts Digital Innovation Zone (DIZ), Broxbourne Borough Council, East Herts District Council, Harlow Council, Uttlesford District Council, Essex County Council. We will also hope as the project develops to involve our partners on the DIZ from the health, education and community and voluntary sectors as appropriate.

Mission: All of the partner authorities are founder members of the Essex + Herts Digital Innovation Zone (DIZ). A key recommendation of the DIZ Digital Innovation Strategy is to establish a baseline register of the public sector fixed assets across the DIZ geography to underpin bidding for external funding and provide a physical enabler upon which infrastructure providers might ‘hang’ new connectivity initiatives and networks, in addition supporting a 'One Public Estate' model of delivery. Our plans and work to date are focused on establishing this baseline within the year and then working closely with potential technology and organisational partners to work out how this can best be used to support future tech initiatives, IoT projects etc.
Working with the interested parties will enable the DIZ to understand the demand for the data and asset base, refine the data available, format, quantity, quality, scope etc and understand the public benefit or digital dividend that might arise for our residents and businesses through the mapping project.

Impact: Making the public sector estate available to tech companies as a supportive environment in which they feel able to experiment as well as potentially making it available at zero cost will hopefully encourage tech innovators that are able to bring forward a socially beneficial project. Enabling them to prove their concept within the DIZ will not only benefit the DIZ but could help develop models of delivery that could be scaled elsewhere.
We would hope that schemes coming forward would benefit residents through a better understanding of their environment eg. IoT air quality monitors or parking availability but also potentially increasing levels of connectivity through public wifi to raise levels of digital inclusion and make areas of the DIZ more attractive to more people.
The revenue potential of this data in circumstances where purely commercial infrastructure providers wish to access the maps or data could be explored at a later date.

Commitment 2:

Title: Digital Inclusion Project

Partners: Essex + Herts Digital Innovation Zone; Digital Inclusion Network led by Epping Forest District Council partnered by over 30 public sector and voluntary organisations however at this stage they are yet to formally sign up.

Mission: To upskill, co-ordinate, complement and maximise the effectiveness of the resources of all partners in providing digital skills training and awareness to residents and users of services across the district. This will be achieved by consolidating of our Digital Buddies network following a training programme aimed at delivering digital skills to the different needs of our community eg. elderly, working age on the Universal Credit journey etc. There will be the delivery of further events building on previous work which brings together a Digital Inclusion Network with organisations in our District from the public and voluntary sector. The involvement of the partner network is critical to the delivery of the project and a focus on digital inclusion at a new Multi-Agency Centre in Waltham Abbey (an area identified as at high risk of digital inclusion) is an example of this. The Multi-agency includes the Council, DWP, CA and other organisations which comes together periodically to provide cross-agency support in a single location targeted at potentially vulnerable residents. The integration of SELEP’s digital skills programme into the Digital Inclusion Network will further solidify the support available to residents.

Impact: The aim is to increase residents life skills, employability and social inclusion through the use of digital platforms.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improving inclusion, efficiency and transparency of planning and wider services.

Partners: The Future Fox, Inovem, Idox, DLUHC

Mission: Within a year of this declaration we will have:

1) Delivered a new masterplan for our town centre informed by the highest level of public engagement that we have ever seen, enabled through innovative digital consultation methods.

2) Subject to national government planning reform, conducted the most inclusive consultation on our draft Local Plan yet, also enabled through digital consultation methods.

3) Improved efficiency of our Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) process for applicants, and transparency for the community, through investing in new specialist software.

4) Improved efficiency and transparency of development management through investing in improvements to our back office development management systems.

Impact: As well meeting at least 4 of our corporate objectives on digital transformation, strategically, these deliverables will help our local authority overcome barriers to sustainable growth, by widening participation for traditionally excluded groups (such as young people) in conversations about planning and “place making”. We will be making the discourse about planning more democratic, and help the community at large navigate its way through some of the biggest growth challenges the borough has ever faced. The deliverables will overcome disincentives that landowners and developers currently face navigating the complexities of development management and the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL). In streamlining and ensuring more consistency in processes, they will be freed up to engage more constructively with the council on other matters, such as exploring how they can better align their aspirations with the council’s sensitive sustainable growth policies.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Headless-CMS website platform

Partners: Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

Mission: Local Government organisations use a broad range of website platforms to provide information and online services to local citizens and businesses. Many of these platforms are limited by proprietary formats, vendor lock-ins and legacy functionality which cannot easily adapt to change. This can reduce opportunities for channel shift, and can also limit opportunities for end-to-end service redesign and open collaboration.

This lack of flexibility also makes it hard for local authorities to use content more creatively to meet the needs of citizens in a connected world - and to embrace emerging technologies such as voice and AI which can make a significant impact on the lives of some of our most expensive and hard to reach service users.

We are working closely with Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council to reuse their open source headless-CMS website platform to create a renewed essex.gov.uk platform for public services in Essex. Through the Essex Online Partnership (which has representation from Essex's 12 district and borough councils) we are exploring how we can join up our information and platforms to improve people's experience of interacting with public sector information and services in Essex.

Our vision for the new essex.gov.uk platform is "one site for Essex, that meets the needs of citizens and delivers the best possible content and public services".

The headless CMS project will lay the foundations for an exemplar low cost, future-proof and flexible website platform solution, owned by and tailored to the needs of local government.

Impact: The work we are undertaking with Stockport MBC will support wider reuse of an open-source website platform for local government.

Key areas of focus from the essex.gov.uk project will include:
- A set of brand neutral front end website templates
- A set of content types to meet the needs of local government
- Improvements to breadcrumbs, URLs, taxonomy and nested content
- Documentation of the above
- Simplifying use of and documentation for existing Contentful API implementation.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: ICT transformation, optimisation and digital enhancement

Partners: Essex County Council, Essex Online Partnership

Mission: To Have transformed aged infrastructure, Digitise as far as possible and to optimise the use of ICT within the Service

Impact: Effective use of ICT within the Service to enable optimisation and effective cost effective use of ICT services

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Enterprise Content Management / Enterprise Information Management

Partners: Exeter City CouncilEast Devon District CouncilTeignbridge District CouncilStrata Solutions Ltd

Mission: Enterprise Content Management systems (ECM) or Enterprise Information Management (EIM) systems, enable the effective management of multiple data stores across an organisation / or multiple organisations under one centralised platform.
The primary outcome of the Electronic Content Mgt project is to deliver efficiency savings through more effective access to multiple data and content sources via a single front end application. We are in the process of developing a detailed business case, to perform research, to identify benefits and to produce pricing for an alpha project.

Impact: • Version Control of documents- i.e. one version of the truth, rather than multiple version of the same document
• Ease of information discovery – search and find information across a multitude of information stores in one go
• Contextualised information. i.e. when I want to find information on “Java” – the EIM will understand that it’s Java the coffee bean I’m interested in, not the country or programming language.
• Better Security – know what information has been accessed, when and by whom, and have more controls on restricting data access
• GDPR – search for all information on individuals across the whole organisations in one place.
• Data archiving and retention – manage data retention in one place
• Collaborate – multiple users can contribute to a single document in a managed and co-ordinated way
• Workflow – management of the flow of information through an organisation, leading to greater efficiencies in information usage
• Business Process Mapping – links with improving managing key and departmental business processes
Improved organisational efficiency and the customer an improved customer experience with availability of customer information for mobile officers working in the field and less duplication (eg provision of ID data)

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: More efficient monitoring of existing and new affordable homes.

Partners: London Borough of Southwark

Mission: An understanding of whether there is potential to reduce officer time and increase efficiency in understanding affordable housing delivery and retention, including whether systems could allow for a more automated anomaly detection to understand when affordable housing is not being used as intended or by who it is intended for. Ideally a solution that can be easily used by other organisations. We will input our understanding of current difficulties and issues, and provide feedback and input on potential solutions.

Impact: Should a new system be able to be developed to deliver on the objectives it could save officer time and also lead to a more consistent and efficient monitoring system that could potentially apply and be useable by Local Authorities and other relevant organisations across the country. Not only would it save officer time but it will potentially highlight and allow anomalies in affordable housing use to be tackled, thereby increasing the affordable stock nationwide for those households that need it most.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: We are developing a new way of operating across the public sector system in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough for providing services and creating community resilience, called Think Communities. This new way of thinking puts people, places and system at the core - focusing on resilience, connectedness and unity. This is where cross-sector and place-based services match need, are responsive, creatively co-designed, simple and accessible.

Partners: Cambridgeshire County Council, Huntingdonshire District Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council, East Cambridgeshire District Council, Fenland District Council, Cambridge City Council, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority plus emergency services partners, health and the voluntary sector.

Mission: Our collective mission is to put community resilience at the heart of how we work and redesign services around the needs of the people using them. We will prioritise citizen and user needs above professional, organisational and technological silos.
• People: Resilient communities across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough where people feel safe, healthy, connected and able to help themselves and each other
• Places: New and established communities that are integrated, offer a sense of place, and which support the resilience of their residents
• System: A system-wide approach in which partners listen, engage and align with communities and with each other, to deliver public service and support community-led activity

The Think Communities movement will demonstrate digital leadership, creating conditions for genuine organisational transformation to happen. We will embed an open culture that values digital ways of working such as working in the open, sharing our plans and experience, working collaboratively with other organisations and reusing good practice.
The end result of this movement will result in a mind-set shift of the way the public sector delivers services and a change in the relationship between citizen, community and service. The movement will see more place-based relational working and much more co-design of solutions and services.

The priorities for Think Communities over the next year include:
· place based commissioning
· food poverty

We aim to work with communities to understand their world, their situation, their strengths and their needs and co-produce solutions. This will involve timely, meaningful, appropriate, safe, secure, useful and flexible data sharing and analysis and co-designed solutions and digital tools.

Impact: The cost of services are increasing and yet outcomes and KPIs are not being met. We believe that by working in the Think Communities way, we can ensure that services are local and relevant and build on the strengths of communities. In the short term, communities will see a change in the way public sector bodies relate to them which will increase trust and engagement.

Place based commissioning will result in citizens and communities co-producing what services and support they have access to in their area, ensuring that services are engaging, relevant and sustainable. Ensuring that people have access to the right services in their place means that better outcomes for citizens, families and communities will be achieved and the public sector bodies will be collectively targeting our resources effectively.

This movement will help residents of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough find and access the right support they need when they need it; locally and painlessly.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Implementation of a new Customer Relationship Management system and customer self-service hub

Partners: Arcus Global Ltd

Mission: To provide citizens with the means to transact a whole range of council services via a digital solution with minimal officer engagement at a time and place that suits the customer whether they be residential or business

Impact: Our customers will be able to access a wide range of council services and information whether that be reporting something, applying for something of looking up information without having to contact the council in many cases at a time that suits them.

They will be able to update their own information by interacting directly with back office systems and check their own information such as account balances.

Improved workflow will keep customers updated with the progress of their requests for service automatically, greatly reducing the need for them to contact the council for such updates.

Customer service staff will be freed up to deal with more complex enquiries or those where customers have specific needs or are unable to transact digitally.

A number of legacy back office systems will be migrated onto the same CRM platform providing a more seamless customer experience and help to create the golden record of the customer rather than dealing with a number of disparate systems

This in turn over time will reduce the amount of systems that have to be supported and maintained and by making use of cloud technology will eventually reduce the requirement to maintain on premise ICT with hosted technology that is more resilient and secure. This will allow savings to be made on ICT support costs in the medium term.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Register a food business

Partners: All local authorities

Mission: To create a streamlined digital service for new food businesses to register with their local authority; we are building a simpler process for new businesses, making sure they see the right supporting information at each stage, and enabling us to collect the optimum data for both the local authority and the agency to discharge our responsibilities effectively.

Impact:

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Moving to a new Customer Digital Platform across multiple local authorities and organisations

Partners: Publica Group Ltd, Cotswold District Council, West Oxfordshire District Council, Forest of Dean District Council

Mission: We will commence a programme of redesigning and moving all our low complexity, high volume services to a new digital platform to start to build a single view of the customer and ensure all initial customer contact is managed through a single access point regardless of channel. Initially the programme will start with migration of services currently handles through legacy CRM systems but will move onto reimagining and redesigning other services and moving them to the platform.

The platform will facilitate a single customer contact record which is shared across Publica’s partner councils and this will test the ability to build a scalable and flexible data model to manage customers across geographical boundaries where they deal with more than one Council.
Further phased work during Summer 2019 will extend the solution to facilitate easy to use and accessible web self service with the ability to track a case progress online.

Impact: * Increased customer satisfaction through improved feedback loops and visibility of case progress
* Ability to offer consistent levels of service regardless of customer channel choice
* Automation of low complexity tasks and case routing
* Ability to design and develop a single platform to cater for the distinctive local policies set by each of the partner councils
* Reduction in the number of systems that customer service agents have to log into to respond to a query.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Brownfield and 'Permission in Principle’ (PiP) register

Partners: London Borough of Southwark, Future Cities Catapult.

Mission: Following a discovery in partnership with Future Cities Catapult the council wants to develop a digital solution that structures Local Planning Authority and other public data sources to provide small developers with a clearer understanding of the risk and requirements associated with any small site in their boundary. In the next year we want to build upon the findings of discovery into a solution that meets the principles of the Declaration.

Impact: We expect that this solution will support small and medium developers the time and providing them with new information to assess the viability of sites. We expect will benefit all local planning authorities.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Moving to a new Customer Digital Platform

Partners: Any, but particular benefit to those organisations working with the same online platform GovService (was Firmstep).

Mission: The Council embarked on a wide-ranging transformation journey in 2017, called Together Gloucester. One aspect of this was a process redesign workstream. Over an 18 month period, the Council is moving some 140 of the most commonly requested service requests onto an online channel. The process redesign would look to ELIMINATE unnecessary processes, STREAMLINE OR SIMPLIFY processes where necessary and AUTOMATE where possible. Also to create a single customer account system so that each customer can track any of their service requests or interactions with the Council. The Council is currently part way through this project.
For our commitment and contribution to the collective, the Council is willing to share all of its process redesign maps with other organisations signed up to the declaration. This will be particularly of benefit to those working with the same online platform GovService (was Firmstep).

Impact: The channel shift project will deliver a number of benefits: more efficient business processes, better use of resources, improved channel mix and higher customer satisfaction.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Support the development of baseline knowledge sheets

Partners: GCS, GCC, GRFS, GHT, CCG

Mission: To develop baseline knowledge sheets that explain to frontline staff the product, usage and implications to consider when prescribing kit

Impact: This will improve the understanding of the 1600 assessors registered who use the equipment database meaning more appropriate referral and selection of kit, these sheets will form the basis of the training to frontline staff that will be rolled out to all partner organisations.

Commitment 2:

Title: Communication with frontline Health Staff

Partners: GHT, GCS, GCC, GRFS

Mission: To develop a monthly newsletter that will be sent to all equipment registered staff to update on training, progress, items available and with a case study per newsletter.

Impact: To show the development of the project to frontline staff, generate interest and ‘buy in’ and raise awareness of the types of products available to support staff over and above the existing offer.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Transform our paper-based Licensing service to be a complete online channel, allowing applications, renewals and payments to be taken online.

Partners: Medway Council

Mission: We will look for best practice examples of how to transform a completely paper-based service to be an online solution that customers want to use time and time again. We'll work with taxi drivers and private hire operators to understand what they want from our service and develop based on their needs. Where possible, we will integrate with the existing back office system to negate the need to re-key data.

Impact: The project aims to improve the digital offer for our Licensing service which will not only improve the customer experience, but will save the council money in staff time and printing/postage costs. We're currently moving to a shared licensing service and this will be an ideal opportunity to collaborate with a neighbouring authority to build better digital services.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Online transactional forms with backend functionality

Partners: Great Yarmouth Borough Council, GOSS Interactive

Mission: Improved customer journey via digital/online transactions.
More responsive resident services.

Impact: Improved customer journey.
Cost savings in back office processing.
Efficient delivery of service requests.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI). Help solve the common barriers to digital collaboration: Inconsistent digital leadership and capability; Limited collaboration infrastructure; Limited shared evidence base; Inconsistent foundations; Fragmentation

Partners: London Councils, All London Boroughs

Mission: LOTI is a new city-wide function which will build common capability and opportunity to collaborate and scale digital and smart technology across London's public services.

Impact: For the public:
Improved public services​
Increased citizen participation in service design​

For boroughs and other delivery organisations:
Workforce with enhanced digital skills​

Increased productivity of staff​
Reduced costs (incl. economies of scale)​

For the wider ecosystem:
Wide dissemination of best practice​
Research more focused on user needs​
Shift smart city market place to become more city needs-led than supplier-led​

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: A common data model for children’s services to streamline statutory reporting and improve data analysis.

Partners: GMCA, Manchester City Council, Stockport Council, Wigan Council

Mission: We want to improve the statutory return process by giving Children’s Services Departments access to comparable, data on children in care (eg, needs, services, outcomes, etc) which will in turn enable them to make better, more appropriate commissioning decisions so that vulnerable children achieve the best outcomes possible. We will focus on developing a standardized reporting approach for the SSDA903 statutory returns, and identifying what the unmet data needs stemming from the current process are, with an eye to creating solutions that meet those needs.

Impact: Preparing comparable datasets on vulnerable children currently costs each LA around £50k, amounting to £7.6million nationally. Budgets for CSDs are being cut, yet demand is going up. Giving CSDs access to the data they need to complete statutory returns quickly and in appropriate formats will enable better operational, commissioning, and strategic decisions. Other LAs have successfully implemented common data models, that have created positive social and financial impact. Our ambition is to streamline this reporting process so that we can unlock analyst time to drive deeper insights into service delivery, and commissioning – ultimately leading to better decisions for children and families.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Exploring a digital future for the housing repairs and maintenance service

Partners: The Royal Borough of GreenwichDG CitiesThe London Borough of Southwark

Mission: The Royal Borough of Greenwich's housing maintenance and repairs service are committed to improving the service offered to customers through utilisation of the latest digital technologies. Over the next 12 months, the intention is to explore how digital approaches and the latest technologies can support this aspiration, learn from and work with others, and set out a high level road map for the implementation of a digital housing repairs and maintenance service.

Impact: Setting out a high level road map for a digital housing repairs and maintenance service will allow the Royal Borough to deliver the following benefits:
- The provision of an easy to use, customer focused, and widely accessible online service where residents can raise a repair
- The ability to gather data on service patterns, integrate different systems, and combine data from various sources, to deliver useful insights on assets and services
- Future proofed and intelligent buildings

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Evolving the Pipeline service as a platform for local government collaboration

Partners: LocalGov Digital, Greater London Authority, Rainmaker Solutions

Mission: We are working with our partners to evolve the Pipeline alpha that was developed by LocalGov Digital and extend the platform so that it can be used to help councils surface opportunities for collaboration on digital projects, track progress and find project products that can be shared and reused. We hope that this will be a catalyst to significantly scale digital collaboration across the sector.

Impact: Teams across local government will be able to use the service (https://pipeline.localgov.digital/) to identify where other councils / organisations are exploring and delivering similar ideas. This will help connect innovators well beyond established geographical groupings and help catalyse the collaboration that the Local Digital Declaration aims to achieve.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Council Tax, Business Rates and Housing Benefits front to back office digital streamlining processing

Partners: Kirklees (Leading authority), Harrogate, Cheshire East Councils work together with Firmstep and GovTech

Mission: A solution that would be reusable in other Councils that will automate 90% of manual administration and use workflow and task management to complete transactions.

Impact: Free up significant resource, saving time and money along with ensuring data is accurate from the point of contact to the back-office data systems. Resources could then be refocused on higher value tasks.

Commitment 2:

Title: Provide a simple and seamless authentication process across multiple systems

Partners: Durham (Leading authority), Kirklees, Derby and North Devon Councils

Mission: Develop a simple sign-on solution for general public utilising local government platforms.

Impact: Simplified sign-in experience for general public to access local government services.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Co-produce services that best meet the needs of our residents, businesses and visitors

Partners: We're working with the London Boroughs of Haringey, Islington, Brent, Havering and Lewisham, to develop functionality into the new ‘Shield and Community Aid Network CRM’ (aka Vulnerable Residents Hub), which was developed by Hitachi Solutions in partnership with Local Authorities. Hitachi has assessed the viability of developing and implementing a solution and confirm this is possible within the short timescales we need.The solution will be built using Microsoft’s PowerPlatform and could be deployed for any other council with an Office 365 tenant. More specifically the solution is designed to work in concert with the ‘Shield and CAN CRM’ (aka Vulnerable Residents Hub) which H&F and 17 other councils have already deployed. Both the Volunteer Hub and the associated BI dashboards will be made available to any Council who wants to deploy the solution.

Mission: The ‘Shield and Community Aid Network CRM’ (aka Vulnerable Residents Hub) is a CRM system developed by Hitachi to record residents in the borough and their needs (e.g. loneliness support, food packages). This project will produce a complimentary application that will allow those needs to be matched to volunteers and organisations that can satisfy them. The Volunteers Hub can also be used as a standalone product for Councils who do not have the CAN/Shield CRM.

The H&F Business Intelligence (BI) Service will develop a series of Power BI dashboards which will be connected to the Power App allowing users to effectively manage their service and get essential insight from their data to support their residents.

Impact: The new system will allow us to understand our immediate residents’ needs in terms of eg food packages, loneliness support, other support, and to match those efficiently with our network of volunteers and voluntary organisations. The system will enable us to track tasks through to completion and it will gather feedback from our residents to help us understand how effectively we are supporting them and what we can improve.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: An independent, interactive, one-stop-shop of local authority, social & healthcare services

Partners: Portsmouth City CouncilGosport Borough Council

Mission: An interactive digital platform, with a social media feel, genuinely user-led to allow self-serve across a huge range of service providers, both statutory & voluntary sector, and potentially 3rd party suppliers as well.

Impact: Putting the user in control of their own social & healthcare needs. Linking multiple agencies, staff, volunteers, carers and their families across the region and potentially scaleable to a national level.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Shared Pattern and Process library for local government

Partners: We’ll work with other organisation currently working on the Patterns and Processes Library (led by Southwark Council and several other Local Authority partners)

Mission: We would have developed a solution to share patterns and processes (how our services are seen and delivered) that is managed by local government, for local government. This will help prevent duplication and give councils a blueprint with which to start their service redesign, speeding up the process and reducing cost in every council.

Impact: • Management will benefit by reduced need for expensive consultants. If another Council already has a great application process or customer strategy that we can adapt, this work is much more likely to be achievable in house.
• Project Managers will benefit with increased quality control of documentation
• Staff will benefit by having extra purpose and incentive. If they do, and share, excellent work, they will be a part of growing body of knowledge that helps multiple Local Authorities support its residents

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Re-development of the corporate website and Intranet

Partners: Main provider to be decided but will link with our self-service portal and CRM provided by Firmstep.

Mission: The Harlow Council website no longer meets the needs of our users. It is difficult to access information, cluttered and hard to read. We need a website that is accessible to all Harlow residents, structured clearly and designed as mobile-first.

Impact: The aim is that customers can access services using whatever device they choose, wherever and whenever they choose which are as good as, if not better, than either face to face or by telephone. It will also ensure that as new technology or best practice evolves, the website can be easily developed to ensure it constantly improves the customer experience.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Intuitive and responsive customer portal to enhance access to services and engagement in democracy

Partners: Private sector service providers, other local authorities, central government agencies

Mission: The London Borough of Harrow has already achieved high levels of digitisation of customer engagement and automation of back-end processes and is an exemplar in the sector that other authorities come to for advice and experience. 88.9% of customer contact is now through online transactions and the face-to-face and telephone contact centre staffing has reduced from 150 to 65.

We seek to reduce that further by completing our digital offering, funding ways to get digital inputs from other government agencies, digitising and automating the less frequently used processes that are still manual, and redeveloping our customer portal to be even more flexible and accessible.

Impact: Improved customer portal providing personalised content that directs each user to the content they most need.

Digital capture of planning applications from the government Planning Portal so that the processing can be automated

Digitisation and automation of lesser used processes to further reduce telephone contact

Ensuring we meet latest standards for accessibility and finding ways to engage the most vulnerable in digital access.

Commitment 2:

Title: Digital enhancement of frontline services

Partners: Private sector service providers, other local authorities, other sector partners

Mission: The London Borough of Harrow has already achieved high levels of digitisation of customer engagement and automation of back-end processes and is an exemplar in the sector that other authorities come to for advice and experience.

We will explore opportunities for digitising service delivery in frontline services such as adults' and children’s social care, empowering our professionals with the tools they need to focus on engagement with service users, providing digital services to users to supplement what the professionals can offer and bridge the time between direct personal contacts, and providing adults and their carers with the means to self-assess claims allowing the authority’s social work professionals to focus on those with most need.

We have begun to introduce digital in the public realm with automated street lighting, cashless parking and using sensors and to support the vulnerable in their homes and will continue to explore what the Internet of Things offers, ensuring the Borough has the infrastructure to support and integrate those new technologies.

Impact: Professionals have tools to support them out in the Borough, engaged with their service users

Service users can get easier access to help online and clearer guidance on what services they are entitled to

Solutions are developed that use social media and similar technologies to enhance the support given to children in or on the edge of care, young offenders, and other vulnerable young people.

Agree platforms for delivering IoT solutions and explore increased use of that technology

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Implement building blocks for the provision of "digital infrastructure" that will enable the council to develop and deploy a digital strategy

Partners: Shared Service Local Authority partners and other third party services

Mission: To deliver a number of base changes that enable the council to build on in its development of a digital strategy using already available functionality. This includes videoconferencing, secure mail changes, improvements to Active Directory and a redesign of the council's intranet / filestore.

Impact: The council will be better placed to prepare for the implementation of further digital improvements and alternate ways of working as it develops and deploys a digital strategy

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digitisation of the Contact Centre

Partners: Neighbouring authorities

Mission: We will digitise our corporate Contact Centre to provide an enhanced online offer for our residents and customers.

Impact: Residents and customers will be able to access Council services at a time and location to suit personal preference. Internal efficiencies will be realised through the development of digital approaches.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital First – increasing channel shift through accelerating all services to the most appropriate digital channel.

Partners: Local Authority partners include Rother District Council, Wealden District Council and East Sussex County Council on a range of initiatives and are working to further digital sharing.

Mission: To make digital the easiest and preferred option for our citizen’s, businesses and visitors to interact with the Council. Reduce inefficiencies and provide direct cost savings.

Impact: The Digital First programme builds on the success of the wider Transformation Digital by Design programme that started in April 2015 when we implemented with Firmstep (now Granicus) to completely revolutionise how we communicated with our customers by completely revising our website and developing out My Hastings platform.
Our mission through the new Digital First project over the next two years is to migrate a further identified 74 additional forms and processes through mini-service reviews. These have been prioritised and time-scales allocated for process mapping, designing, building and going live on the most appropriate digital platform by April 2021. In addition we will be working with Northgate Public Services to implement Citizens Access for Benefits, Revenues and Landlords.
We anticipate that the impact of this will increase the number of self-service interactions to over 80% per month and make further ongoing efficiency savings of £200K per annum.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Data driven service re-design across the sector

Partners: East Hampshire and Havant Councils

Mission: The utilisation of data and intelligence to inform operational and digital service design in terms of the appropriate level of provision, the mechanism of delivery and the technologies to be deployed. The focus in the first 12 months will be within regulatory services across the Council, initially in liaison with East Hampshire Borough Council.

To openly share data to inform public sector service design beyond our own organisation

Actively engage with partners to pool data and intelligence to enhance our understanding of challenges for the sector, with the objective of improve outcomes – we call this enablement ‘Council as a Platform’ under the banner of our transformation programme – Shaping our Future

Impact: Organisationally:
• Evidence-based service redesign and digital transformation
• Measurable understanding of the impact of transformation
Partners and Agencies:
• Improved use of resources through joint working and shared intelligence
• Access to data to inform service design within the sector
For the Customer:
• Services delivery is informed by evidence including user experience resulting in targeted offerings according to need

Update – The Councils have implemented a new building control solution as part of the first phase of transforming their regulatory services. This has also triggered opportunities to enhance flexible working and share additional services across the Councils. As part of our transformation programme – Shaping our Future, a design review is underway to define our future target operating model; and as part of this, case management solutions will be explored and implemented – having regard for our commitment to be an enabling force – ‘Council as a Platform’

Commitment 2:

Title: Embed a digital first approach to service delivery aided by a digital mindset

Partners: Havant Borough Council and East Hampshire District Council

Mission: Understand the behaviours, skills and work styles required to successfully transform public service delivery and deliver best in class in terms of digital design

Establish an evidence base to inform the design and development of appropriate resources, schemes and tools to secure a shift in organisational culture, which we believe is a critical success factor to our transformation programme – Shaping Our Future.

Impact: Organisationally:
• Reduced resistance to change enabling the delivery of our radical re-think of public service delivery
• Readiness to grasp service redesign opportunities from a digital perspective
• An increase in confidence amongst staff to work digitally
For the Customer:
• Services designed in line with expectations; where our customers are already accustomed to the rapid growth in technical solutions and offerings in their day to day lives
• More efficient services, making better use of public funds

Update: Shaping our Future represents a major re-think of public services. This programme is currently working through a series of agile iterations through the work of 5 workstreams, one of which is Digital Redesign. This phase of innovation and design will continue into the autumn, following which the Councils will have created the conditions for success.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Data-Led Digital Discharge - Support, Enable, Empower, to prevent Re-entry

Partners: London Borough of NewhamLondon Borough of Barking and Dagenham London Borough of RedbridgeLondon Borough of CroydonLondon Borough of CamdenLondon Borough of Waltham ForestLondon Borough of Hackney

Mission: Given the enormous impacts facing Local Gov and Health budgets as the over 65 population increases its trajectory our bid is aimed to reduce hospital admissions and re-admissions through providing citizens with tech enabled digital discharge support. These digital discharge support offers remote technology-enabled monitoring through an IoT ecosystem , thereby reducing demand on local care providers and the NHS.

The solution is based around Alcove’s intelligent care technology and through the use of sensors, wearables, Alexa and a touchscreen communication aid with artificial intelligence and an easy-to-use dashboard and mobile app – it supports independent living for older and disabled adults in their homes whilst giving carers and family members the reassurance and peace of mind. This is specifically (but not exclusively) aimed at post hospital discharge

Impact: It is a well known fact that the demographic timebomb created by our ageing population is causing severe strain to already creaking Council budgets. This project will be critical in helping our and partner Councils to manage future demand and pressure on Adult Social Care services. Enabling people to live longer in their own homes would save each Council on average £38k per person per year. Furthermore, our solution will reduce hospital admissions and prevent readmissions. One in three people end up leaving their own home and moving to long-term care with a hip fracture, the financial impact based on current activity is costing one Council approximately £3.2m each year

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Exploring pre-population for birth registration for greater convenience and more efficient appointments.

Partners: Local Authorities and Central Government Bodies

Mission: This proposal focuses on a new online life event registration service where customers registering a birth will be able to pre populate key event information online, with a reduced face-to-face personal appointment with the registrar for verification and certificate production

Impact: The main benefit of this proposition includes savings for Local Authorities and a more user friendly experience for the customer.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital Transformation

Partners: Local authorities, public sector bodies and suppliers

Mission: Digital strategy objectives:
Customer access – to enable users to access council services with ease by maximising digital technology.
• Empowered workforce – to utilise digital technology for staff and councillors to work flexibly, responsively and making the most of the technology to deliver services.
• Innovation and efficiency – for digital technology to support transformation of services whilst creating efficient ways of working including with partners.
• Protected and planned – to ensure the systems, policies and procedures are put
in place to protect the council from cyberattacks, keep information secure and plan
for future delivery.

Impact: See Digital Strategy: https://www.herefordshire.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/14672/digital_strategy_2018-23.pdf

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: 10 Digital steps for success - Adoption of our 10 digital steps for success to help organisations create and run great digital services.

Partners: Hertfordshire district and borough councils, fire and police services.

Mission: Embed the 10 steps for digital success we have developed from the Local Government digital service standard, in order to help the organisation create and run great digital services. Using service assessments to measure how successfully we have embedded the 10 steps for digital success in the partner organisations in Hertfordshire. Using the assessments to provide examples to our partner organisations, how we have used the 10 steps for digital success to improve services and generate savings.
We are going to create the assessment and complete it ourselves to act as an example. Then we are going to request that another service in our organisation completes it, before rolling out to other services within our organisation and other partner organisations. The assessment will be improved upon in iterations as it is rolled out. The assessment will likely act as a reminder to follow the 10 steps, highlight areas for improvement and provide us with a focus to assist them to improve.

Impact: Improved digital services for users of public services in Hertfordshire.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Can chatbots and AI help solve service design problems?

Partners: Oxford City Council Cheltenham Borough CouncilHertsmere Borough CouncilDoncaster CouncilPreston City CouncilNorth East Derbyshire District CouncilBolsover District CouncilCalderdale CouncilRotherham Metropolitan Borough CouncilBromsgrove District CouncilRedditch Borough Council

Mission: There is a drive amongst local authorities to embrace the potential opportunities provided by AI and chatbots as a means to improve service to their customers, solve complex issues in service delivery and release efficiencies through reduced staff resource requirements.

However, there are problems for local authorities looking to adopt these solutions;
•There is no shared understanding of the technology and its advantages/disadvantages as a solution to key issues. For example, what type of application is it best suited to in order to ensure the best return on investment

•There are a variety of products and platforms that already exist on the market, but no objective evaluation of each to identify the most appropriate to use.

•There is a risk of duplicating effort, wasting time and resource in the discovery phase to arrive at the same conclusions that others have already reached

•Without a sound evidence base, there is a risk of inappropriate chatbot/AI projects being pursued that have poor prospects of meeting their objectives, wasting further time and resource

Impact: As a collection of councils we have differing levels of experience of working using Agile techniques, and none have knowledge of using chatbots or AI for solving service issues.

We will use the Digital Marketplace Outcomes and Specialists framework to find a digital agency partner with suitable knowledge and experience to help guide the project, ensure a consistency of approach across the partner councils, guide the user research and undertake background research.

Specifically, the successful agency will;
•Work with partner councils in setting expectations and principles for the project as a whole

•Instruct the partner councils in how to approach their user research (data to collect, methods to use, ways to capture and share findings)

•explore the feasibility of adopting or developing a common, open source platform for local government to use to develop chatbot/AI solutions

•Compile the user research and publishing the findings

•Develop and publish a business case for analysing the findings

•Producing a summary report and recommendations

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improve our customer experience to help our residents interact with us

Partners: Hillingdon council services, suppliers i.e. AWS, MS, partners, other local authorities and West London Alliance Councils

Mission: To provide an excellent customer experience that keeps the needs our residents at the heart of what we do. We will develop our online customer services so our residents have a better customer experience from start to finish. We want residents to be able to access their information about council services via our MyAccount function and the Hillingdon First Card. Residents will be able to carry out simple transactions quickly and easily, with a more joined up approach ensuring they only need to make contact once, whether for information or transactional services, without needing help. We will improve what we do by analysing customer feedback, and we will use analytics and direct customer feedback to help us with our designs and understand pain points. We will also investigate how other Council's utilise MyAccount and Hilllingdon First Card, and what new features are available. Finally, we will look to focus on those that need our support the most.

Impact: To improve the experience for our residents when interacting with us, to enable them to complete their business easily and quickly and therefore encourage them to use the online services and to help us save money with a reduction in calls.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: The design and implementation of a single unified communications technology solution that can be followed by all partners and that can be extended to other public sector organisations wanting to adopt similar technologies / solutions.

Partners: The Leicestershire Information Communication Technology Partnership (LICTP) - shared service councils include Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, Oadby and Wigston Borough Council, Blaby District Council, Melton Mowbray Borough Council and the Leicestershire Revenues and Benefits Partnership.

Mission: The project is to design and implement a repeatable installation and adoption strategy that can be followed by all partners and that can be extended to other public sector organisations wanting to adopt similar technologies / solutions.
The solution objectives are:
• Implement one single cloud hosted communications solution system
• Provide one number for each user – to be used seamlessly with desk based phones, mobile phones or softphones
• Offer modern unified communication functionality – offering opportunities/options such as integration with MS Office calendars, instant messaging, video calling and conference calling
• Implement one single contact centre solution – separately configured and implemented for partners as required
• Integrate telephony Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity arrangements
• Adopt one single support contract for all telephony elements (bills, lines, calls, technologies etc)

Impact: Critical success factors focus on providing public sector staff with the opportunity to work in a more flexible way to better facilitate working contact arrangements and engagements with customers from any location, specifically; Single contract and supplier management - Reduced hours spent managing supplier contracts and billing from LICTP Client and each partner authorities Finance Teams. Staff productivity increase via collaboration technology- Efficient working via enhanced collaboration capability. Efficient resource management. Flexible and home working capability. Enhanced citizen service capability and reporting - Increased first time resolution impact less complaint handling, better oversight on resource allocation. Enhanced DR capability - Reduced risk, reduced need for 3rd party DR capability (such as remote site maintenance and DR contracts), enhanced business uptime, consistent resource, sharing council buildings. Single support contract and point of contact - Reduced hours spent managing support issues, and single supplier accountability for support issues. Quicker resolution to issues and frees up technical resources to progress other prioritised work

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: The Community App - Solving communication issues, breaking down barriers, increasing accessibility to services and promoting community cohesion.

Partners: London Borough of Hillingdon (prospective), London Borough of Brent (prospective), London Borough of Ealing (prospective)

Mission: To revolutionise service delivery and accessibility by developing a mobile community app which will allow Residents to access all Council services from their mobile devices. The vision is that the mobile app will not only give Residents access to report and request services, make payments, send photographic evidence, pinpoint locations etc but it will also be a hub of information, allowing residents to access information on absolutely everything from recycling to employment.

Impact: The Community App will promote community cohesion and will allow the council to communicate in real time with our residents.

The app will significantly streamline service delivery and thus will result in substantial efficiency savings.

The Community App will bring LAs in to the modern world where we can communicate with our Residents in a way which is relevant to them. In turn this will make services much more accessible to a large proportion of residents who we are unable to reach by traditional means, including some of our most vulnerable Residents.

The Community App would also promote local services and businesses thus boosting the local economy and will encourage the community to thrive.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Development of an online reporting mechanism for “Streets” and “Grounds” services using our new online customer portal technology.

Partners: Huntingdonshire District Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council and Cambridge City Council will work with their IT Shared Service (3C Shared Services) and 2C Shared Waste Partnership to develop the solution. We will have the solution tested by Kent-based SDS http://smarterdigital.info/.

Mission: Our shared IT service is in the process of delivering a standard back office application for Streets and Grounds processes across the three councils. Each council is also developing an online customer portal to link in with their existing websites. Whilst each council will retain their own separate Streets and Grounds services, we plan to develop a consistent set of eforms, back office processes, and a customer portal that delivers proactive customer status indicators and notifications, while our services deal with requests. The solution will extend into our customer service departments, ensuring a holistic view of the status of each request.

Impact: Reduction in customers having to chase. Other similar councils have seen circa 25% reduction in calls and face-to-face visits through implementation of a similar system.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To update our public ICT offer across our 60 libraries and at Nottinghamshire Archives

Partners: Nottinghamshire County Council Nottingham City Council

Mission: To Inspire people to read, lean and enjoy culture. To create knowledge and skills through access to leaning, information, technology and heritage

Impact: People - achieve their learning potential - are better informed and more knowledgeable -can be part of supportive, safe and thriving communities - can participate in increased economic growth and employment

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To become actively involved in the open digital planning programme to pursue an improved planning customer experience.

Partners: Open Digital Planning programme, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

Mission: For the planning service team, transformational and ICT colleagues to review the Open Digital Planning services open source product thus far and decide if useful and relevant to improve processes, integration and access to underlying planning data. To take part in the monthly Show and Tells to become familiar with the programme and progress the partner councils are going on and to feedback on their activities.

Impact: The project aims to review the potential long-term replacement of the current planning system offering compared to what the programme is producing. This is in a bid to save the council money by wasting less on a planning system for which there is very little alternative in the market place and to allow faster and simpler processes. Innovations and improvements from working in collaboration will also be gained.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Development of shared IT & Digital services supporting Health and Social Care on the Isle of Wight

Partners: Isle of Wight CCGIsle of Wight NHS

Mission: To establish joint services maximising IT and Digital resource to support transformation of integrated health and social care services on the Isle of Wight.

Impact: Greater resilience in IT and Digital Services, more effective use of resources across the public sector. Capacity released to support wider range of transformation projects.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Council Tax Arrears Collection

Partners: Barnsley Metropolitan Borough CouncilBirmingham City CouncilBolton CouncilBradford Metropolitan District CouncilBrighton & Hove City CouncilCornwall CouncilEaling CouncilIslington CouncilEastbourne Borough CouncilKirklees CouncilLewes District CouncilManchester City CouncilMedway CouncilNewham London Borough CouncilNorth Hertfordshire District CouncilRotherham Metropolitan Borough CouncilSalford City CouncilSouthwark CouncilRoyal Borough of Kensington & ChelseaWakefield CouncilWealden District Council

Mission: At 31 March 2018, the total amount of council tax outstanding in England amounted to £3 billion (cumulative from the introduction of council tax in 1993)

For 2017/18, Local authorities in England collected £27.5 billion, with arrears of £818 million, approximately 3% uncollected.

Our mission is to collect more council tax in a fair way to maximise funding for local services, thus benefiting local residents, whilst identifying those who are vulnerable and in need of assistance.

Impact: Our business case supports an approach which we believe can increase collection rates for all councils across the country. The increase in collection will help to negate cuts to annual funding and limit reductions in key service areas, where it matters most.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Creating a digital tool to determine affordability and availability of properties in the private rented sector.

Partners: London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham.

Mission: To design a digital tool to assist council staff and clients to determine affordability for private rented properties based on income information.
This system would match clients to properties available on commercial sites and to properties procured directly by the local authority.

Impact: The aim of the project is to provide a visual tool to manage clients expectations about where they may be able to afford to reside at the outset.
It will also assist council staff to understand welfare benefits, the benefit cap and how this impacts households sin respect to affordability.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital Accessibility

Partners: Kent Connects Partnership: made up of Borough and District Councils, Universities and Emergency services from across Kent

Mission: To improve knowledge/understanding of Digital Accessibility so that we can build Inclusive services from the ground up, as well as help KCC & its partners be fully compliant with the new Regulations.

Impact: KCC has managed to improve its Accessibility compliance year on year (as evidence by our 'Better Connected' results) but now is the time to help our Partners across Kent and beyond do the same.

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Contract Management

Partners:

Mission: To create a single assessment methodology across all regulated services to have oversight of provider performance and be have early notifications of provider issues.

Impact: * Enhanced oversight of provider performance and early notification of provider issues, early commissioner response leading to improvements in service delivery.
* Enhanced market oversight with up-to-date intelligence from a variety of sources bringing together quality assessment.
* More efficient oversight of provider care delivery.
* Improved service user satisfaction levels.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Support co-ordinated delivery of Smart Digital Working across the Public Sector in Hull by facilitating a citywide structure for procurement activity

Partners: Work together with ICT Leads across the Humber Estuary to co-ordinate planning of available public resource toward shared objectives

Mission: Work together with Authorities across Yorkshire and the Humber to develop a shared approach to Information Sharing, in particular through the single Care Record

Impact:

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Packaging a Social Prescribing Model and Modular Digital Tool

Partners: Sutton Council

Mission: To succeed in the creation of a social prescribing programme there are some key components required. We aim to package these up into easily accessible modules that can be easily applied to any programme no matter how far developed. These modules are not co-dependent so organisations can mix and match as required.

Impact: Success in this project will allow other organisations set up a model for social prescribing or even a local digital list of services without the need for a brand new discovery phase. Extending access to our open source digital directory and referral tool will also allow other services to benefit from the work done from our Trailblazer at no cost (beyond local hosting).

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Connected Kingston - early intervention and social prescribing

Partners: Kingston Voluntary Action, Kingston CCG

Mission: A change in culture, training model and platform to support a raised awareness of services and activities available within the borough.

Impact: Enabling residents of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames to build and maintain resilience to stay healthy, happy and socially active and to promote/support their access to (and where needed facilitate their journey through) local services.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Councillor Casework Management and Dashboard

Partners: From the work undertaken to-date, we’ve seen a lot on interest in our Councillor Casework management system and Councillor dashboard. This is something we’re building in partnership with officers and elected members and are keen to make this available to over 150 councils using the Firmstep platform.

Mission: We want to provide our elected members with convenient access to report, track and manage citizen enquiries and cases, inclusive of consent to share in line with GDPR regulations, a responsive single front-door, where elected members have access to relevant information to support them in their day to day, and on the go. We want to provide them with personal visual intelligence about performance and their casework, as well as issues such as; street scene reports, in their respective wards. We want councillors and their constituents to receive the best service they can from the council, to make available status tracking, escalation and visual performance metrics and look at how we manage those interactions through the council.

Through this work and other transformation work, we want to raise the awareness of digital with decision makers so they can lead the change and help with the transformation of the organisation.

Impact: Councillors are able to deal with their constituents issues and concerns in an easy and managed way, with automatic update notifications to constituents throughout. Information is collated in a central place, providing opportunity for performance monitoring and management. Improved process should lead to more time being made available for councillors to deal with other constituent matters and speed up response times.

A by-product of this engagement is to for leaders to be seen to be advocates, to embrace technology and change the way services are delivered to meet the changing demands of citizens.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Home-to-School transport

Partners: Wirral Borough Council

Mission: We will create and implement an online solution that improves the way home-to-school transport provision is managed for parents, transport providers and local authorities.

Impact: The application will reduce the amount of time it takes to apply for and approve home to school transport provision. It will also significantly reduce the amount of paper involved in the process by handling all communication and evidence electronically.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Optimising Data Usage to Improve Services to Our Communities

Partners: Leicester City Council, Milton Keynes Council, Canterbury City Council

Mission: Councils across the UK hold an incredible wealth of data but have been slow to mirror the private sector in optimising this data as a strategic and operational tool to anticipate customer demands, target scarce resources to not so obvious areas in critical need, predict and prevent future adverse events and maximise opportunities as they emerge. Reviews of several high profile and tragic events across the UK including child fatalities have concluded that Councils together with other public sector partners had all along been in possession of the information needed to prevent or mitigate such events but were not aware of it or had not used it.

This project seeks to review the use of data within councils, using different service areas across five councils as case studies/proofs of concept. The objective is to develop a roadmap/toolkit for how data can be optimised, starting from the different multiple entry points into the organisation through to how it is validated and processed up to where it is stored and analysed to the point it could be used to predict customer trends, inform decision-making, service design and delivery and prevent or mitigate adverse events. Not only will it be of significant benefit to other local authorities, the principles can be applied to other public sector organisations.

Impact: We intend to produce a business case highlighting the scale of the problem across local government in the UK. This will include documented issues, quantitative and qualitative costs and benefits, all within the context of customer expectations.

The user research report/section will highlight issues and challenges internal business areas and external customers (residents, businesses, partners etc.) face due to a lack of good, useable or analysed data.

The final report will detail the areas chosen, the difficulties and how they were overcome, the user research undertaken and the outcomes. Case studies will be included to illustrate methodologies alongside the risks and challenges encountered as well as the achievements. If the project leaves any questions unanswered or identifies new ones, these will be detailed in the report.

We believe that the intelligence arising from this project will serve to focus strategic thinking in different authorities regarding the use and benefits of data as a tool in customer-centric service design, delivery, appraisal and improvement.

It is clear to us that this project could potentially lead to several alpha projects covering how the data is subsequently used. It could be used to dynamically populate an open data platform leading to collaboration with private sector start-ups, larger organisations and charities. It could be used in predictive analysis and modelling to improve performance and resource allocation. Next phase projects could also be set up around the security, privacy and potential for implicit bias of machine learning/predictive modelling. These are all concerns within local authorities and the industry would benefit from further work along these lines.

Commitment 2:

Title: Digital Planning Service

Partners: Brent Council, Tower Hamlets Council, Lewisham Council, Ealing Council, Westminster City Council, Gateshead Council, Lambeth Council, Waltham Forest Council

Mission: To create an easy to use online tool for the planning service that allows the end user to access an easy to navigate system that is responsive to different platforms with clear communication using mobile phones, tablets and desk top computers in order to speed up decisions on planning applications and to stimulate more development and house building.

Impact: The project aims to make the online planning information clear and easy to find, better navigation and accessibility, and easier to search and interrogate by council staff, Councillors, residents, businesses, developers and others.

Will also seek to address the following

1. potential applicants giving up,
2. FOI’s,
3. an opaque service,
4. increasing emails,
5. incorrect planning applications and data (both to increase submission of valid applications and to reduce subsequent refusals)
6. lack of trust and understanding of planning policies.
7. would make that information more intuitive and useful for the user
8. that information can be pulled into digital services; so it comes to the user, instead of the user needing to find it

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital Discharge

Partners: The partners for this bid are the local authorities of Lancashire County Council, Blackburn with Darwen Unitary Authority, Blackpool Unitary Authority and Cumbria County Council. The acute trusts are Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, East Lancashire Hospital Trust, Blackpool Teaching Hospitals, University Hospitals Morecambe Bay and Southport and Ormskirk Hospital.

Mission: Our Pathfinder product aims to scale up and share the earlier success of the Digital Discharge project which was implemented between Lancashire County Council and Lancashire Teaching Hospitals in July 2019. This project sought to improve the discharge process for staff and patients/customers through the electronic transmission and sharing of Assessment, Discharge and Withdrawal Notices (ADW) used during the discharge process.

In Pathfinder we will look to expand this approach and share the ADW product across the four local authorities and five acute trusts in the north west region by transferring ADW Notices directly from hospital Patient Record Systems (PRS) (or equivalent) and importing directly into social care case recording systems. This scaling up will cover the Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care System and at its boundary Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care System

Impact: • Realising the strategic ambition of the Shared Care Record by utilising the investment made in Lancashire Patient Record Exchange(LPRES)
• Improving the customer experience through reducing delays in the transfer process
• Improving outcomes for citizens for example by quicker discharge supporting early pick up of packages of care and reducing the rate of hospital acquired infection
• Ensuring Care Act compliance supported by using National Standards
• Processing efficiencies leading to productivity increases
• Improving staff satisfaction

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital Display Screens – utilising the eCampus software developed by Lancaster University as a communications tool, and to advertise Council services and local organisations who provide support to residents or receive council funding and support to help them operate.

Partners: Lancaster University, who have developed the system; and local charities, social enterprises and other not-for-profit organisations who will benefit from increased visibility.

Mission: We hope to have deployed a number of screens in internal areas across our staffed sites which can be used to share news and other information, particularly to those officers who do not have access to network resources like emails and the intranet. Screens will be deployed in customer facing areas showing information about how to access services the council provides, but also information from other agencies such as food banks, social enterprises offering employment support and other suitable agencies. This will both signpost residents to these services and encourage others to offer support to the services.

Impact: For officers, there will be an increased awareness of internal news and events; this will particularly be the case in services that have historically been difficult to share information with due to the lack of technology available to them. This will support cultural change within the organisation.

For council services, we hope to see an increase in users. This will benefit the district’s health and wellbeing as we can promote events across our sites; both cultural events run at our museums and arts sites, and health events at our parks. It will also advertise services we offer such as pest control and trade waste services to improve income generation and allow the council to use extra funds to offer more services.

For vulnerable residents, signposting them to services such as foodbanks and homelessness support agencies will provide them with information of what help is available to them which they may be currently unaware of.

For the service providers, we hope to increase awareness of the good work they do to encourage community support. By sharing information about things such as fundraisers and drop-off points we hope to encourage donations and volunteering time.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Raise digital awareness of decision-makers so they can lead significant change which will help transform the organisation.

Partners: Experienced partners e.g. NHS Digital, DWP, GDS Team, Universities, other local authorities etc.

Mission: Within a year of signing the Declaration we will have decision-makers more engaged in the use of digital to improve service delivery, have increased usage of digital channels for service requests and reduced costs based on the delivery of successful digital projects. Examples of projects and initiatives we look to deliver within the first year include a digital coaching scheme, a directory of digital innovation, developing a digital skills for leaders learning offer and the exploration of a regional digital Innovation event.

Impact: The projects and initiatives mentioned above will ensure we have decision-makers who can embrace technology and change the way services are delivered to meet the changing demands of citizens. These projects and initiatives will also ensure that decision-makers consider the change in skill sets needed from staff in the future and have suitable development plans to retain our employees.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Optimising data usage to improve services to our communities

Partners: Milton Keynes CouncilCanterbury City CouncilLambeth London Borough Council

Mission: This project seeks to review the use of data within local authorities, using different service areas across four councils as case studies / proofs of concept.

Councils across the UK hold an incredible wealth of data but have been slow to mirror the private sector in optimising this data and reviews of several high profile and tragic events across the UK including child fatalities have concluded that councils together with other public sector partners had all along been in possession of the information needed to prevent or mitigate such events but were not aware of it or had not used it.

Starting from the multiple points where data is captured by the organisation, the project will examine how data is validated, processed, stored, analysed and then how it could be used to inform decision making and service design and delivery, predict customer trends and prevent or mitigate adverse events.

Impact: The objective is to develop a roadmap / toolkit for how data can be used as a strategic and operational tool to anticipate customer demands, target scarce resources to not so obvious areas in critical need, predict and prevent future adverse events and maximise opportunities as they emerge.

The project will illustrate the potential of data and enable councils to review how they use it as well as help them assess their own data infrastructure requirements. These are fundamental steps necessary to becoming a data driven organisation and the roadmap will play a key role in assisting local authorities to achieve this.

Not only will it be of significant benefit to other local authorities, the principles can be applied to other public sector organisations.

Commitment 2:

Title: Leicester City Council’s current digital landscape is expansive as we know to be commensurate in other authorities. The dependency on third party solutions has created many often-duplicate lines of business applications with multiple entry portals for citizens, all incurring on-going support and maintenance costs. The result is wasted investment in digital and large-scale inefficiencies across the organisation. The culture of Services buying parochially without a broader consideration of value has resulted in core and customer-facing systems being provided by proprietary vendors. This results in any implementation or replacement being a major undertaking. In addition, inherent vendor lock-in results in prohibitive costs for integration and/or additional functionality. Further opportunities to manage transactions across systems, share data and deliver a single shared view of a Customer are minimised. As a public body, the council is delivering services to the public, not to the council (in the vast majority of cases). Therefore, it follows that the user experience and services should be designed around the needs of the user, taking account of accessibility, literacy and digital maturity. However, in many cases, selection of technology has focussed largely on functionality for the council’s staff over the end user experience, leading to a fragmented user experience and an undesirable digital offering. The Council currently has little control over the current digital landscape. The aim is to strive towards a more flexible and scalable architecture and hence influence over shifting culturally and practically toward common platforms with user-centricity at the core of requirements, whilst also rationalising and consolidating multiple legacy applications. We are seeking to provide the Council with platforms that provide an opportunity to introduce user-centric products which give the Council greater freedom to pursue ‘build’ alongside ‘buy’. We have the in-house capability to develop products in-house ideally supported by “accelerators” from suppliers or other Authorities who have already started this journey using open low-code platforms.

Partners: Leicester City Council are not yet aligned with any other Local Authorities although we would hope other organisations might be interested in collaborating if our project intentions are shared more widely. We are also fully in support ensuring that any development undertaken by any provider appointed to support was offered to others as a 2minimum viable product” or “accelerator” at a reasonable cost without development to take advantage of, or if delivered by our in house development team, that is was open for other authorities to use with detailed guidance on how to develop and implement the iterations of the solution in their own tenant/ environment.

Mission: Leicester City Council needs to move toward a new model of delivering products. Our mission is to:
1. Culture
• Shift the current culture mindset towards user centricity which will push the Council to rethink how technology is used to deliver superior experiences.
• Redesigning services around the needs of the users by taking an experience-led architectural approach.
• Establishing trust in the right functions to help move the council towards the right user experience and the right architecture
2. Data
• Redefining how data is used in defining and designing seamless user journeys, as well as leveraging data in the right way to enrich interactions.
• Establishing an enterprise data model with data organised into the optimum structure for use in onsite interactions and reporting.
• Organising and centralising data wherever possible to remove duplicate data sources and slowly consolidate the council’s digital landscape.
3. Technology
• Establishing technology as an enabler and not the director. The user experience is the starting point and technology should facilitate the service.
• Moving the council away from rigid and inflexible systems and technologies to establish a decoupled architecture where systems work in unison.
• Driving rationalisation and consolidation efforts by establishing commonalities and embedding the concept of shared services and technologies.
4. Process and Business Model
• Establishing functions and processes that put the user at the heart of decision-making, ensuring that investment is worthwhile and smart.
• Establishing functions that can provide the necessary governance to move towards the future-state architecture.
• Embedding functions and processes to actively, and continuously, improve the council’s digital landscape, without compromising on a superior experience. Practically, at this early stage this means we must break the model of services buying solutions in isolation. This continually introduces technical debt and “hairball architecture” as internal Development teams attempt to integrate multiple systems using bespoke methods. With the assistance of a third-party we have assembled a programme of work to deliver a number of technological improvements which would ultimately introduce the opportunity for cultural change across Council Services The overall programme includes the introduction of several major enabling technology platforms:
• Product-development platforms that allow our internal teams to ‘Build’ rather than ‘Buy’.
• A common orchestration/Enterprise Service Bus Layer and Presentation Layer to allow us to break into the silos of the proprietary systems.
• Enhance and further develop our Data Warehouse toward data lakes that may be accessed by service areas using off-the-shelf reporting tools to provide insights. For the purpose of this fund our requirements are on the surface modest, but fundamentally transformational and set out the very building block needed to transition to this model. We are seeking funds to assist us in our first minimum viable product “MVP” build which is developing a Complaints and Enquiries Management system for use by the citizens of Leicester and various services across the Council, notably Customer Services The Product backlog would then include further iterations to deliver enhancements for Councillors, and on board Property Services and Housing to manage their complaints away from their main systems. Leicester City Council deals with a wide demographic, with each citizen engaging with the council for a variety of reasons. As it stands, there is currently no automated system to collect complaints or enquiries from members of the public. For the council , this not only significantly limits visibility of the types of complaints and enquiries being received, it also hinders any overview of if they are being dealt with by the relevant service provision and the member of the public being kept informed on progress or a resolve. Each service provision runs a different entry point, be that a form, portal, or simple email to a generic account and often officers are individually contacted. For our citizens it presents nothing but confusion, there is not a single entry point to how they should report complaints and make enquiries of any nature to us and as the user journey is so poor and fragmented, very often more than not, they get no response or updates by return. For many of these users, their emotional state is often negative triggered by a letter they have received, burdened by external pressures, etc. This emotional state influences their online behaviour and the negatives highlighted below deliver a sub-par experience that is exacerbated because of their emotional state. This does not facilitate real-time tracking and visibility by the complainant nor the service responsible. We intend using the Microsoft Dynamics Low-Code platform which is a technology we have knowledge of having used an accelerator made available to authorities as a Minimum viable product to undertake Track and Trace during COVID. We wish to build a foundational Complaints and Enquiries product that gathers all enquiries & complaints that automatically triages them to the relevant services, whilst holding a central view within Customer Services. This would enable the member of public to have , consistent messaging, real time updates, view the status and any replies against their case and timelines For the Council it would give them full transparency on what is being received, with full reporting on type, relative to which service, response times. It would also enable Customer Services to ensure other services are dealing with the ones triaged to them under a per agreed SLA. It would enable one overview of what’s being reported for the Council to identify if there is a consistent problem early on and make provisions to resolve early. For the Councillors It would enable the visibility to see what is being reported within their own ward to support the constituents. As our citizens have a wide mix of digital capability and maturity, we will ensure this is considered in the design of this case management iteration and associated presentation layer, and that we deliver the experience expected. As part of this project we would need to appoint external developers to assist in the design, however as part of this we would ensure that there was a knowledge transfer to our own internal teams and provide training to develop an internal centre of excellence on the product for any iteration moving forward, that could also support other authorities. Longer term, we will continue with reiterations of the same using the same methodology and under our four main mission statements whilst rationalising and consolidating the legacy applications currently in place. Functionality will be centralised (irrespective of department) and smaller, discreet applications will be introduced to meet specific needs.

Impact: The initial Complaints Management Product will be of immediate benefit to various Service areas and the Citizens of Leicester. The new Complaints and Enquiries Management product would provide immediate feedback to those raising cases and direct the case to the correct team. Progress would be updated and available to Customers and Services. SLA’s would be implemented which could be reported upon. Data could be examined to provide insights into complaints and enquiries to allow a targeted response Customer & stakeholder journey will be improved vastly, with full visibility of enquiries and responses in a timely manner. Senior officer time will be saved by the one point of contact approach as they will only deal with enquiries that they should be. A fully automated approach will improve reporting to the Director/Head of Service to provide full visibility of type of enquiry which will allow for issues to be identified and remedied. This product would allow us to begin building a single view of our Customers and provide an embryonic Enterprise Data Model. Our view is this product would be of value to a number of other Councils who use the Dynamics low-code platform. The success would be measurable through KPIs.
These would include for example:
• time to respond to complaints and enquiries.
• time to resolve complaints and enquiries.
• number of Service Level Target breaches.
• number of service referrals.
• number of repeat complaints.
Once the Dynamics platform and the Case management MVP is in place via the Complaints and Enquiries Product, we would then intend building a CRM Product based on key functions that would need to be implemented as part of the first-stage product. Establishing a new CRM is a fundamental objective to support our Customer Services Department and out Citizens. At present they are reliant upon eForms which do not have the appropriate CRM functionality nor integrations with other systems. As a result, there are disjointed user journeys.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Investing in Innovation: creating ‘zero touch’ customer-friendly services

Partners: Firmstep; Inform Communications

Mission: As part of our 3i ‘investing in innovation’ programme, we are launching agile teams to drive rapid delivery of digital services.

These incubation teams are deployed onto business problems and draw on multiple disciplines including IT & digital, transformation, customer service and business areas.

Our initial focus for these teams are customer transactions which have the scope to disrupt the existing process, automate manual processing and simplify customer journeys. This will improve service and reduce costs.

Our first incubation teams will work on resident parking permits and blue badge processes using our third party technology provided by Firmstep. We will seek to digitise as much of the process as possible, shrinking the processing time and improving service.

A further innovation project will pilot the use of chatbots for customer enquiries relating to environment and transport. We are working with Inform 360 on deploying this technology.
This activity will deliver discrete benefits as well as inform and drive the development of a wider work programme of digital transformation.

Impact: This initiative will:

• Improve customer service – reducing the wait time for enquiries and requests, and offering a channel which suits customers

• Increase accuracy – reducing manual handling of information

• Reduce cost of service – decreasing the need for manual processing, data entry and duplication

If the model is proven, it can be deployed out onto other business processes, driving a programme of digital delivery at pace.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Council Tax Arrears Collection

Partners: Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council Birmingham City Council Bolton Council Bradford Metropolitan District Council Brighton & Hove City Council Carmarthenshire Council City of Wolverhampton Cornwall Council Coventry City CouncilDudley Metropolitan Borough Council Ealing Council Eastbourne Borough Council Islington Council Kirklees Council Lewes District Council Manchester City Council Medway Council Newham London Borough Council North Hertfordshire District Council Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Salford City Council Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council Southwark Council Wakefield Council Walsall Council Wealden District Council

Mission: At 31 March 2018, the total amount of council tax outstanding in England amounted to £3 billion (cumulative from the introduction of council tax in 1993

For 2017/18, Local authorities in England collected £27.5 billion, with arrears of £818 million, approximately 3% uncollected.

Our mission is to collect more council tax to maximise funding for local services, thus benefiting local residents. It will help ensure that those able to pay do not avoid their responsibility whilst identifying those who cant pay or are vulnerable and in need of assistance.

Impact: Our business case supports an approach which we believe can increase collection rates for all councils across the country as well as reduce the amount of unpaid Council Tax outstanding from previous years. The increase in collection will help increase resources available to Councils and limit reductions in key service areas, where it matters most.

Commitment 2:

Title: National business intelligence database to protect the public purse

Partners: Mid Sussex District Council & Ascendant Solutions

Mission: Providing a national business intelligence database to protect the public purse

Impact: Maximise Local Authority Income and protect the public purse against fraud

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Explore whether a digital tool can be developed that uses open source data to support people to find suitable accommodation in the private rented sector

Partners: Partnerships are currently being explored.

Mission: Effectively empowering clients to take independent actions that resolve their housing problems by using key household data, establishing the location of affordable accommodation and linking the client to the accommodation directly. The tool would also offer guidance and support for households as they seek to find PRS accommodation.

Impact: The solution would be particularly applicable to an increasing number of people who are digitally literate and whose primary cause of homelessness is income and affordability.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Migration from legacy housing management system to modern technology platform

Partners: LB Lewisham, also likely to reuse code from LB Hackney and LB Southwark. Submitting a joint bid to local digital fund with LB Southwark, City of Lincoln Council and Gravesham Council. We will also work with agencies on certain projects.

Mission: Redesigned services for lettings, changes of tenancy, ASB resolution, temporary accommodation, tenancy sustainment and repairs. Begin migration to a new digital architecture separating out applications from data.

Impact: Improved services for residents, reducing failure demand.
Improved systems for staff, available both in the office and remotely, enabling them to spend more time on our estates with residents.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Integrated access to Council Tax and Benefits systems.

Partners: Jadu and Northgate

Mission: To provide a seamless single account where residents can access information about their Council Tax and Benefits information along with a wide range of other council services.

Impact: A better customer focused experience providing relevant information at a time, place and device of their choice as opposed to relying on traditional post and telephony.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Simplify access to local government

Partners: City of Lincoln Council

Mission: To provide citizens with a common interface to access services from the "Council" - irrespective if that service is provided by the County Council or the City council - as to the citizen we are one in the same

Impact: To streamline access to services rather than re-pointing, linking or directing Citizens to each other's websites.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: The development of the Liverpool Digital Champions scheme designed to address the digital skills gap across the city.

Partners: Barclays PLC

Mission: Our mission is to address the digital skills gap in Liverpool City Council and the wider community. Working with Barclays, we have designed a Digital Champions programme aimed at recruiting and training Champions with the requisite skills needed to support their colleagues and residents. The Champions will help colleagues and residents gain day-to-day digital skills through bite-size training opportunities.
These Champions will also be given the opportunity to identify council services that could benefit from digital transformation, as well as the training to enable them to produce an initial business case outlining the identified problem and potential improvements.

Impact: The aim of the Digital Champions project is to improve the basic digital skills of all people across Liverpool. Residents will be offered support with digital skills in their local area with a particular focus on how to engage with the council digitally, learning day-to-day digital skills and bite size training opportunities designed to encourage digital take up.
The Champions offer council colleagues a resource that will provide support and digital expertise in their workplace or service area. They will share in-depth knowledge of service specific systems, teach skills that will enable staff to resolve basic digital and ICT queries, and provide insights into potential areas for digital improvement.
This will lead to more services being transferred online and expanding the council-wide digital transformation programme.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Enabling a best practice and cohesive approach to Digitalisation across LBB

Partners:

Mission: To enable a fully inclusive digital service to residents, digital change must be embraced by communities and the local authorities that service them. Recent events such as Covid have spurred a step-change in attitudes to working and living, which in turn alters demand and pressure on services. While technological changes to lifestyle are largely viewed as a good disruption, a template for managing the introduction of new trends is required to ensure the change is inclusive, sustainable and is implemented with the right governance in place. We will use our Digital Strategy to act as a framework for enabling a best practice and cohesive approach to Digitalisation across organisations. Our next step is to start implementing the digital framework and look at the Digital Roadmap as enable for change.

Impact: In this way, our authority can underpin success for businesses, communities and individuals engaging in the theatre of ‘Digital’.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Reducing confusion, frustration and waiting time for the financial assessment processes carried out by the council

Partners: Barnsley Council (and others via a collaboration network set up by the industry partner - Agilisys)

Mission: Creating a better, seamless user experience by placing our customers, officers and collaborators at the heart of our digital project design and delivery; starting with the financial assessment in Adult Social Care, through the application of robotic process automation (RPA).

Impact: 1. We will create a welcoming and customer friendly service when the residents and service users contact us. Communicate with them in an optimal fashion, across a range of channels, starting with the web.
2. We will aim to resolve their enquiry and answer their questions at the first go. Keeping them up to date and putting the customers at the heart of the Merton services.
3. We are committed to reduce the unnecessary hours spent on mundane and repetitive tasks, such as (re) key-in data, moving data between systems and manual report manipulation, as much as possible.
4. As a result, we will create a data culture where it is 'intelligence first', which will help Merton to be connected to its stakeholders/collaborator and become responsive to our residents, customers and community.
5. We will be brave and embrace digital solutions and automate processes as much as possible, thus enabling our officers to be empowered, and be a part of the coalition to provide world class services to our customers/service users

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Establishing the London Office of Technology and Innovation

Partners: London Councils, GLA, Brent, Camden, Croydon, Ealing, Greenwich, Hackney, Kensington & Chelsea, Kingston, Lambeth, Sutton, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Westminster.

Mission: We will build a shared capability with our Core LOTI membership, to improve London’s capacity to experiment, collaborate on digital and data innovation and to scale the application of successful innovation across London’s public services. We aim to help all London Local Authorities lead, promote, learn from and replicate digital innovation across the capital.

Impact: The project aims to deliver benefits to its members and the wider London Local Authority family through 7 workstreams:
1. Digital leadership skills: upskilling senior and middle managers
2. Collective knowledge: documenting impact and sharing best practice, and supporting market-shaping
3. Sharing & re-using: better digital networking and systematic sharing
4. Shared endeavour: better collaboration with GovTech, Tech for Good, and universities
5. Embedding standards: including the Local Government Digital Service Standard, supporting London Local Authorities’ capacity to benefit from digital transformation
6. Data analytics coordination: project management for collaborative analytics initiatives
7. Special Projects: One off opportunities for collaboration (e.g. Govroam WiFi)

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Transferring incident data between emergency services control rooms in London

Partners: Metropolitan Police and London Ambulance Service principally, but with the option to transfer data to other services, e.g the Maritime and Coastguard Agency or any emergency service in the country as they adopt the same approach.

Mission: We will be able to transfer incident data between fire, police and ambulance control rooms in London using a common data transfer protocol regardless of the Command and Control systems in place in each organisation. We will use an open data standard called the Multi Agency Incident Transfer or MAIT for short. It will improve the speed of response by cutting down the time taken to receive the call information and then mobilise to the emergency incident, providing a faster response to citizens.

Impact: Control room staff will benefit from being able to quickly send information about incidents to partner services using data rather than voice, which improves accuracy and timeliness at times when every second counts. There will be improvements in data matching as incidents will use a unique reference number that applies across all control rooms, making it easier to track an incident as part of a data quality and assurance process.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Reducing vendor lock-in in low-code platforms

Partners: Kirklees Council plus any other council willing to be involved. We are working with many already and believe interest in this would be strong.

Mission: Looking Local is trying to help solve the problem of high and uncertain integration costs and vendor lock-in when user-centred design and agile service development is combined with “gubbins of government”/government as a platform approaches.

Our Mission is to to have established (in collaboration with other interested parties) a draft standard and proof of concept implementations for the encoding of business rules in case management systems and online forms, specifically the class of systems described as “low-code” and “no-code” platforms.

Impact: This will enable digital service managers to integrate low code platforms into end-to-end digital transactions with less fear of vendor lock-in.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Analysis of Universal Credit Data

Partners: Policy in PracticeDWP - Housing Delivery Division

Mission: This proposal would develop a secure approach to working with UC data in real-time that could be scaled to other councils.
Councils have demonstrated their ability to use benefits data (including data on Universal Credit recipients). The partner, Policy in Practice, has demonstrated the required information security and governance capabilities to work with DWP, through their LIFT analytics platform. LIFT illustrates how local governments can use benefits data effectively and for prescribed purposes: identifying and engaging vulnerable residents, and tracking the impact of policy and effectiveness of interventions. They have also developed a shared data infrastructure for councils through the London Living Standards project and analysis on Universal Credit across Wales, and the policy knowledge necessary to make the data meaningful to councils.

Impact: This project has the support of heads of service (the data owners) across twenty councils, who already agree to pool data through Policy in Practice for a Trust for London backed project that uses data to tackle poverty, and at least a dozen councils outside of London.

Policy in Practice has demonstrated their ability to develop a shared data infrastructure for councils across the UK through their LIFT platform, the London Living Standards project and analysis on Universal Credit across Wales. Their analytics engine enables councils to squeeze the maximum value out of the available data, by e.g .determining certain household characteristics from the amounts paid through their benefits.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Develop html templates as PDF alternatives to make content more accessible

Partners: Swale Borough Council

Mission: To develop a set of html templates that replace a range of size PDF documents from small to large, frequently used in local authorities, specifically focusing on templates for strategy and policy documents to increase accessibility and engagement with the content.

Impact: The project aims to increase the accessibility of policy and strategy documents by creating alternative ways to display the content (currently held in PDF especially larger strategy and policy level documents) in html templates

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: We are looking to remove legacy systems with a new custom-built, cloud-based single software platform through a PAAS model. Through customer-led service, we hope to re-design MDC processes to better service our district and to support other councils with the same system requirements.

Partners: Basildon Borough Council, Chelmsford City Council, Brentwood Borough Council, EOLP Membership base.

Mission: Within a year we hope to migrate a number of our systems over to a new hosted platform build from the ground up in-house to support EOLP and our district.

Impact: Giving Customers and officers a single sign-on solution to all our major services, garden waste, R&B, Planning, Mapping etc. improving process and time management for officers and the public and supporting both sides in fast effective collaboration.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Linking Registration Services to other Government Services though new data sharing opportunities presented by the Digital Economy Act 2017 & the Registration Services Act 1953

Partners: Social FinanceWorcestershire County Council Registration servicesRedditch Borough CouncilBromsgrove District CouncilMalvern Hills District CouncilWychavon District CouncilWorcester City CouncilWyre Forest District Council Worcestershire NHS via Clinical Commissioning Groups, Acute Trust and Health & Care TrustWest Mercia PoliceHereford & Worcester Fire & Rescue ServiceSuffolk County CouncilHull City Council

Mission: Worcestershire County Council (via WODA with partners) will explore the benefits of securely sharing Registration Services data to support other local government activities such as planning provision of local services, removing barriers by verification services, safeguarding children, fraud, and improving statistics for planning and policy decisions.
Discovery will test, with users, potential use cases for Registration Services data sharing and identify opportunities for sharing this data between public sector partners.
Accessing and sharing data could be achieved by creating common data models and standards, as well as API's to enable connection between agencies and associated services. This would enable the design of uniform data standards to create a structure that all local authorities can adopt and build upon.

Impact: This project would potentially provide significant cost savings and efficiency benefits nationally, proportionate to volumes of births, marriages and deaths in England.
Examples of this would be through needs led forecasting for health care and education, timely alerts to safeguard vulnerable children and/or adult with health & care needs and combating fraud such as housing tenancies and Blue Badge (Disability) to reclaim public funds.
The key success measure will be:
o Cost benefit analysis on sharing registration data for the benefit of other public services
Possible long term benefits:
Deliver a common standards approach to using registrations data to support the following roles and their associated activities:
o Market Research Officers and Local Planners: Plan provision of local services and improve statistics for planning and policy decisions
o Residents and Customer Service Agents: Remove barriers by automating verification services
o Social Workers: Safeguard children and adults
o Fraud Investigators: Prevent Fraud

Commitment 2:

Title: Digitalisation of the Duty of Care application system for trade waste customers.To improve the efficiency of the application process for the trade waste customer and the processing of that application for the Waste and Recycling service.

Partners: Worcester City Council, Wychavon District Council

Mission: Within a year of signing the Digital Declaration we expect to have provided an online service for trade waste customers to complete their Duty of Care application. The customer will receive an instant response to their application providing their certificate in accordance with the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The customer will receive renewal reminders prior to the expiry of their current certificate and receive a unique link to renew. This will be prepopulated with the information provided previously to ease the renewal process. The customer will be able to check, make any changes and submit, again immediately receiving their certificate by email.
The Waste and Recycling service will have access to a back office which will record the Duty of Care applications. They will have the ability to edit some details where it might be required and issue certificates. The service will also receive notification when a certificate has expired so that they know to cease the trade waste collection service.

Impact: The service on a whole will see cost savings in printing, postage and time spent processing applications.
The Waste and Recycling Officer will benefit widely from this development. They will shift the majority of paper applications to online reducing the time spent process applications and issuing certificates. Direct contact with the customer will become focused on resolving more complex issues and not to complete general administration tasks. The trade waste collection officers will not need to return to the office to check a customer has their certificate in place. Instead they will be able to view the required information digitally on a mobile device.
For the customer the application process will become much simpler. The online application will be smart and only require the customer to complete the fields relevant to them. The customer will be able to submit their application at any time during the year, reducing the expanse of tasks to complete for the end of the financial year. The certificate will be produced immediately so the customer does not need to wait for a copy to arrive in the post to file away safely. They will be able to access their digital certificate at any time.

Commitment 3:

Title: Digital transformation of officer working to enable more efficient shared services. To be achieved by:- Reduce Officer costs and time spent travelling between sites by encouraging digital communication methods i.e. conference calling- Encourage more mobile working for Officers integrating mobile applications with both customer front end and back office applications- Offer more flexible working for Officers for off site working/home working- GDPR, reducing the need to Officers to carry paper files- Encourage ‘easy’ digital collaboration between Officers to reduce meeting times

Partners: Wychavon District Council, Worcester City Council

Mission: Within a year of signing the Digital Declaration we hope to have introduced Officers to more flexible mobile ways of working. We will have assessed equipment and workspaces to reflect our needs. We hope that Officers will see our digital drive as their ‘normal’ day to day practice.

Impact: We hope to benefit our Officers and our Customers by leading our own Digital Revolution.
Eg. The Planning Officer will be able to check what site visits they need to do whilst sat eating their breakfast at home. They will be displayed on a map on their mobile device. The Planning Officer will go to their first site, they will look at the plans they need on their mobile device and complete a form which covers all aspects of their visit. The completed form will automatically update their planning application record. No need to take any paper folders with them or go back to the office. The public will immediately see that the officer has been out to the site on our website. And if the member of the public is following that planning application they will be notified that there is an update to view. Before the Planning Officer attends their next site visit an emergency meeting is called. It doesn’t matter that the Planning Officer is 40 miles away because they can video call with the rest of their team to attend from their car. The meeting concludes and the Planning Officer continues to their next visit.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: A common data model for children’s services to streamline statutory reporting and improve data analysis

Partners: GMCA, Manchester City Council, Stockport Council, Wigan Council

Mission: We want to improve the statutory return process by giving Children’s Services Departments access to comparable, data on children in care (eg, needs, services, outcomes, etc) which will in turn enable them to make better, more appropriate commissioning decisions so that vulnerable children achieve the best outcomes possible. We will focus on developing a standardized reporting approach for the SSDA903 statutory returns, and identifying what the unmet data needs stemming from the current process are, with an eye to creating solutions that meet those needs.

Impact: Preparing comparable datasets on vulnerable children currently costs each LA around £50k, amounting to £7.6million nationally. Budgets for CSDs are being cut, yet demand is going up. Giving CSDs access to the data they need to complete statutory returns quickly and in appropriate formats will enable better operational, commissioning, and strategic decisions. Other LAs have successfully implemented common data models, that have created positive social and financial impact. Our ambition is to streamline this reporting process so that we can unlock analyst time to drive deeper insights into service delivery, and commissioning – ultimately leading to better decisions for children and families.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Develop a diagnostic tool to identify the digital skills gaps within the workforce and deliver a training programme to ensure our employees are able to deliver digital advancements.

Partners: Ashfield District Council

Mission: To have a fully digitalised modern service with highly skilled, adaptable and proficient employees that are able to meet the aspirations of the council's wider transformation programme. This will provide all of our customers with a platform to access council services through a range of channels that meet their needs.

Impact: This will provide faster resolution times for our customers, higher satisfaction rates, reduced contact and processing times, reduction in failure rates on form completion and a highly motivated workforce equipped to meet the modern needs of the customer through digital channels.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Make it easier for people to complain to the council, online

Partners: None yet identified

Mission: We will build a way for customers to easily raise a complaint about a council service online, user tested and into beta.

Impact: An online process will make it easier for customers to tell us about a potential failure in service, streamline back office processes and will reduce contact through other channels of communication.

Commitment 2:

Title: Joining up council data to identify and support residents approaching or in crisis

Partners:

Mission: To integrate data in a virtual environment for improved analytics and service delivery, cutting across council and government departments as well as council boundaries.

Impact: Gather, connect and transform data silos across council and Government departments
Reduce data movement and replication
Increase the benefit of data reuse - COUNT (Collect Once Use Numerous Times)
Support business operations and the front line with real-time insights
Join up data to avoid the risk of missing critical information and opportunity. Use automation to reduce council costs whilst providing an enhanced proactive service to customers before needs are realised
Future proof data to meet new demands - reduce administrative repetitive task cost to the council
Ensure governance, compliance and security – reduced risk of data breeches by the implementation of automation and increased intelligence to detect fraud

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: The design and implementation of a single unified communications technology solution that can be followed by all partners and that can be extended to other public sector organisations wanting to adopt similar technologies / solutions.

Partners: The Leicestershire Information Communication Technology Partnership (LICTP) - shared service councils include Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, Oadby and Wigston Borough Council, Blaby District Council, Melton Mowbray Borough Council and the Leicestershire Revenues and Benefits Partnership.

Mission: The project is to design and implement a repeatable installation and adoption strategy that can be followed by all partners and that can be extended to other public sector organisations wanting to adopt similar technologies / solutions.
The solution objectives are:
• Implement one single cloud hosted communications solution system
• Provide one number for each user – to be used seamlessly with desk based phones, mobile phones or softphones
• Offer modern unified communication functionality – offering opportunities/options such as integration with MS Office calendars, instant messaging, video calling and conference calling
• Implement one single contact centre solution – separately configured and implemented for partners as required
• Integrate telephony Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity arrangements
• Adopt one single support contract for all telephony elements (bills, lines, calls, technologies etc)

Impact: Critical success factors focus on providing public sector staff with the opportunity to work in a more flexible way to better facilitate working contact arrangements and engagements with customers from any location, specifically; Single contract and supplier management - Reduced hours spent managing supplier contracts and billing from LICTP Client and each partner authorities Finance Teams. Staff productivity increase via collaboration technology- Efficient working via enhanced collaboration capability. Efficient resource management. Flexible and home working capability. Enhanced citizen service capability and reporting - Increased first time resolution impact less complaint handling, better oversight on resource allocation. Enhanced DR capability - Reduced risk, reduced need for 3rd party DR capability (such as remote site maintenance and DR contracts), enhanced business uptime, consistent resource, sharing council buildings. Single support contract and point of contact - Reduced hours spent managing support issues, and single supplier accountability for support issues. Quicker resolution to issues and frees up technical resources to progress other prioritised work

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Understanding customer behaviours and barriers to digital channel shift and inclusion.

Partners: North Devon District Council, Torridge District Council

Mission: To establish more informed understanding, toolkits and engagment activities with our customers to ensure that the digital services we provide are needed and fit for customer purpose.

Impact: Better designed digital services, improved staff skills and shared common datasets/solutions where practicable.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Post COVID19 Community Engagement using Digital Wellbeing Assessment

Partners: Mid Sussex District Council, West Sussex County Council, TellJO

Mission: A post COVID19 world we will see increased negative societal pressures such as poor mental health, domestic abuse, suicidal thoughts, homelessness, addiction and catastrophic financial hardship such as increased arrears as debtors recover from events like redundancy.

Using the TellJO digital wellbeing assessment means we can quickly identify and support people experiencing vulnerability in a cost-effective way and scalable way.

The outcome of using TellJO will see increased community engagement, better support and reduced cost in managing crisis such as homelessness, financial hardship and suicidal thoughts

Mid-Sussex and West Sussex Councils proposed use of TellJO is both innovative and ambitious.

Impact: We will complete 450 post COVID19 digital wellbeing assessments, as well as reduce outstanding Council Tax for identified vulnerable residents. By early identification of issues we can identify available help, without adding to the stress of the vulnerable person, and without the need we believe to pass the case to enforcement agents, so ensuring no additional unnecessary fees are added. We also can signpost vulnerable residents to independent financial advice in advance of the introduction of Breathing Space in May 2021.
We will directly support an additional 450 vulnerable residents digitally, by safeguarding, or by direct intervention, who would not have otherwise been supported without the digital assessment. This will also help the Council identify further assistance including financial help towards vulnerable residents owing Council Tax.
Also in the Money and Pensions Service ‘The Economic Impact of Debt Advice’ publication they stated that avoiding a mental health state saves £600 to £800 per person. By identifying early we can bring additional savings. Telljo has a clinical psychologist on the team, who has helped design the assessment to catch people before worsening debt and by association deteriating mental health occurs.

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Digital identification and support of vulnerable citizens pre-crisis.

Partners: Adur and Worthing District Council, Reigate and Banstead District Council

Mission: To build on a Discovery stage of an innovative product to identify vulnerable people earlier in the Council Tax collection process so we can given them the vital personal and financial support.

Impact: To reduce arrears and mental health issues and get vulnerable people to communicate with us rather than bury their hands in the sand.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Demand Management

Partners: Leicester City Council

Mission: Councils across the UK hold an incredible wealth of data but have been slow to mirror the private sector in optimising this data as a strategic and operational tool to anticipate customer demands, target scarce resources to not so obvious areas in critical need, predict and prevent future adverse events and maximise opportunities as they emerge. Reviews of several high profile and tragic events across the UK including child fatalities have concluded that Councils together with other public sector partners had been in possession all along of the information needed to prevent or mitigate such events but were not aware of it or had not used it.

Impact: This project seeks to review the use of data within councils, using different service areas as case studies / proofs of concept. The objective is to develop a roadmap / toolkit for how data can be optimised, starting from the different multiple entry points into the organisation through to how it is validated and processed up to where it is stored and analysed to the point it could be used to predict customer trends, inform decision-making, service design and delivery and prevent or mitigate adverse events. Although it will be primarily of benefit to other local authorities, the principles can be applied to other public sector organisations.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: The Local Digital Declaration

Partners: All local and central government bodies

Mission: - create a £7.5 million innovation fund to invest in projects and training that helps local authorities to deliver on the Declaration ambition
- build a website to help curate and promote the most important Declaration projects
- build a community events finder service
- launch collaborative project exemplars that produce common design patterns, data standards or other tools required to realise the Declaration ambition.

Impact: These exemplars aim to make the case for collaboration and help us all learn how best to design and deliver these common products.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Building a smart and connected Neath Port Talbot

Partners:

Mission: Transforming the way we deliver our functions/services and increasing use of the Council’s online functions/services by residents

Impact: Establish a citizen account to help people use the Council's online services and to ensure the Council has a better insight into the way people use Council services;
Extend the range of Council services and information available online based on a thorough understanding of what matters to residents;
Actively encourage residents to use the Council's on line services and information as their preferred choice -promoting "Digital First" in all Council communications;
Use data sciences to improve the Council's understanding of residents' needs and preferences and use this data to inform and stimulate new innovations in service delivery.

Commitment 2:

Title: Building a smart and connected Neath Port Talbot

Partners:

Mission: Contributing to the development of favourable conditions for economic growth in the county borough

Impact: Ensure all young people are equipped with the digital knowledge, skills and confidence to fully participate in a global economy. Promote equal participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects to boys and girls;
Ensure adults are able to access the learning and development needed to fully participate in the global economy and to reduce inequality in access to services;
Maximise the benefits of the Swansea Bay City Deal, helping to create a fully connected region which is at the forefront of digital innovation;
Support businesses at all stages of their development to successfully operate within a digital economy to include the use of digital technologies to transform the processes through which organisations transact with the Council.

Commitment 3:

Title: Building a smart and connected Neath Port Talbot

Partners:

Mission: Embracing a “digital first” approach to the way we support our workforce.

Impact: Transform internal processes/services through a prioritised programme of digital change to shift work activities onto digital, self-service platforms. Create all new internally-focused services and processes on a digital only platform;
Ensure agile working is fully embedded across the Council so that staff can choose how, where and when to work;
Establish effective change management support to ensure the delivery of this Strategy benefits from strong, corporate leadership where the workforce is fully supported and engaged in the change;
Establish digital leadership and digital literacy as a core requirement for all Council jobs. Create and implement a Digital Skills Strategy.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: GIS Transformation Project. Embedding digital data into our decision taking processes as part of its digital transformation

Partners: Hampshire County Council, New Forest National Park Authority, Open Digital Planning (ODP) Community

Mission: Identify where we can generate efficiencies through digital integration and sharing of data across the Council. Design a digital service model and GIS principles which can be integrated to make access to key services better for our residents, businesses and visitors. This could also include changes to processes, technology, channels and ways of working. All software applications supporting front- and back-office operations

Impact: Improve customer experience, offering an online streamlined and simplified end to end customer journey across all Council services

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Our website

Partners:

Mission: The National Park Authority’s website receives well over 1 million ‘visits’ per annum and is a key way through which people understand and enjoy the New Forest National Park (linked to the second statutory National Park purpose). We are committed to reviewing our current website and updating it over the next 12-18 months, utilising the latest digital technologies to ensure information is easily accessible, readable and reliable.

Impact: An improved website for all users. Our website plays a vital role in the delivery of the two statutory National Park purposes and the dissemination of key messages to the public and partners. Strong privacy, security of data and value for money from the public purse.

Commitment 2:

Title: Digitise our planning function

Partners:

Mission: The National Park Authority deals with around 900 planning applications per annum and the planning pages are the most visited sections of our website. Last year the National Park Authority completed a move to new planning software (Agile). Our aim is to ensure our software (Agile and GIS) - and the data within - is fully digitised, providing modern, open, transparent and easy-to-use planning services to the public.

Impact: An improved service for all its users. Data is easy to find, available in easy to use formats and regularly checked/updated as necessary. Strong privacy, security of data and value for money from the public purse. The planning function is a key statutory role of the National Park Authority and improvements to our digital planning service will benefit local residents, applicants, parish councils and statutory consultees.

Commitment 3:

Title: New Forest National Park Partnership Plan delivery

Partners: Various local partners and stakeholders

Mission: The adopted National Park Partnership Plan 2022 – 2027 sets out a series of agreed objectives to share key messages and collate data and evidence pertinent to the National Park area. This includes (i) bringing together cultural heritage and archaeological datasets; (ii) improvements to the New Forest Knowledge website; (iii) developing our reputation as a ‘centre of excellence’ for evidence, data and insights for the National Park area.

Impact: A complete picture of the cultural heritage and archaeological datasets is collated to inform future management. The New Forest Knowledge website provides a comprehensive insight into the history and geography of the New Forest National Park. Partners in the New Forest use up to date evidence and data to scan horizons and deliver partnership projects.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Website redesign and channel shift technologies to provide user-centred content that's easy for everyone to understand and access.

Partners: Residents, Tenants, Parish Councils, Arkwood Active4Today, Shaw Trust

Mission: Full content rewrite that is easy to understand and yet pleasing to the eye.
That all aspects of the site are accessible so no individual is digitally excluded.
Channel shift with new features such as web chat facilities and Citizen MyAccount.
Digital uptake is increased and continues to increase.

Impact: Residents, Tenants and Visitors will be provided with content and services that best meet their needs that will be accessible to all.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improving digital services offered by revenues department

Partners: Firmstep (our form provider). We will share findings and experiences within the North of Tyne Combined Authority

Mission: In the past 12 months our Revenues department has closed their front-facing customer service offering. We anticipated that this would lead to an increase in the use of our online services but instead it is clear that customers are now using the phone. This is causing a number of problems – for the customer there is a delay in providing information due to increasing call queues, and for the Council, the increased demand is causing financial pressure on service delivery.

A piece of discovery work done over the summer of 2018 revealed the following:
- Webpage content and structure needs to be redesigned to support residents needs and be easy to understand and use
- Forms need to be clear and designed with form design best practices
- The flow of using forms needs to be improved – e.g. before you start, the form itself and after submitting the form
- Consistent language needs to be used throughout – online and offline journeys (letters and digital)

We aim to improve the current digital offering Revenues have by increasing their usability for customers so that we decrease avoidable Council Tax phone contact and enquiries.

We will begin in Alpha phase – using the statements in the title and apply them to a select council tax journey. We will improve, prototype and test this journey. Testing with real users will allow us to understand the best way to explain council tax language, which can contain legal jargon.

This will then be replicated across the council tax user journeys that exist, standardising common questions, form designs and improving digital interactions.

Impact: The impact will be a fit-for-purpose digital offering which our residents will choose to use above traditional methods i.e. phone. We will capture more relevant information upfront, reducing the need for multiple contacts from the service user, managing the customer expectations better and reducing failure demand on the service.

We will measure this success through monitoring the usage of the online forms, the volumes of phone calls received and the satisfaction levels of the users.

The successes and benefits can be applied to other non-council tax journeys to create common standards for online user journeys. The positive impact will be felt by both users and the service areas – in particular council tax department.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improving our web presence and digital access for residents

Partners: oneSource shared services, Newham community neighbourhood groups

Mission: We are committed to becoming a Council that has digital as the preferred channel and understand that we must redesign our online presence to be straightforward and convenient. All those who can use our digital offer will choose to do so, whilst those who cannot are not excluded.

Impact: To deliver an excellent online experience for residents, businesses and visitors to the borough. Making digital the preferred channel and supporting our users to self-serve wherever possible.
Broadening the reach of our digital web presence to increase accessibility and use amongst hard to reach people.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Bed Tracker App

Partners: Norfolk STP Footprint Partnership - County, Hospitals, Mental Health Trust, Community Nursing & GPs. Regional County authorities are also interested in using the development, in particular Suffolk.

Mission: The Bed Management Tracker prototype (using Microsoft PowerBI) has the functionality to show a full system-wide view of the bed capacity and demand across the Norfolk and Waveney STP footprint through one dashboard that can be available to all the key STP stakeholders to aid in managing bed pressures, especially winter pressures. There is also a provider-specific dashboard available to each organisation that identifies the number of occupied beds, number of empty beds and the demand of patients currently not in beds at ward level, and at organisation-wide level. There are also filters available to view the information by quinary age bands, gender, ward type, ward classification and bed group.

The Bed Management Tracker prototype has been designed to take a generic bed state dataset from the NHS provider organisations on a 15-minute cycle 24 hours, 7 days a week, 52 weeks of the year. The dataset is sent and received via a secure file transfer process and is digested into Norfolk County Council’s award-winning Data Warehouse analytical solution - GRID which has been developed to enable better business insights being key to delivering better decisions.

Impact: The key objective of the project is to help local people with health and care needs to get access to available beds without unnecessary delays and to save local public sector money in the process.

The Bed Management Tracker prototype (using Microsoft PowerBI) has enabled the art of the possible to be shown and identified in terms of bed management tracking and analysis to the key Norfolk and Waveney STP stakeholders. It has also raised hypotheses on the back of the information shown, in terms of areas of interest for future iterations - Home Care availability, Delayed Transfer of Care management and reporting, Performance Management, Bed Planning, Operational use within NHS providers etc.

As a result, the prototype needs to be developed based on these more detailed requirements and outcome deliverables into a fully deployed self-contained web application, and this will take a detailed programme of work to be put in place to ensure delivery. This will not only require technical expertise and project/programme management but will also rely heavily on information governance resource to enable the enhancement of the currently reduced non-identifiable generic dataset into an identifiable one to enable the more patient/patient group specific outcomes to be delivered.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: We are trying to create fit for purpose, customer-focused, end to end digital services.

Partners: Our external suppliers.

Mission: To have implemented a fully functioning, end to end digital process for a majority of our waste and recycling services.

Impact: This will reduce calls into our Customer Service Centre, allowing them to be freed up to deal with customers with more complex needs. Customers will be able to self serve, get quality information at various points in their journey and get a quicker outcome.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Discovering ways in which we can use AI, Chatbots and IVR technology to provide a seamless and improved customer experience.

Partners: Bolsover District Council

Mission: We would like to research and test AI, Chatbots, voice recognition and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology as ways to provide a seamless customer experience, ensuring calls are dealt with at the first point of contact and to also make better use of available resources.
We aim to have discovered which technology (or combination of) best suits the needs of Local Authorities and their customers and found solutions which provide fast and simple interactions for those customers who contact authorities by telephone.
We will establish how we can accurately direct a caller to the correct person/team/authority from the first point of contact or provide information to the customer, where possible/relevant without the need for a customer advisor. The aim would be to free up customer services advisors' time in order to provide a better, more personal service and give more time to those customers who need to speak to someone by phone or face-to-face.
Using the above technology, we would like to establish how we can put measures in place which will allow authorities to share customer contact resources, when necessary e.g. for business continuity, when services are temporarily unavailable or under-resourced.

Impact: The aim is to find a way to improve customer service whilst also reducing costs, providing a better value service and enabling a better quality service for those requiring face-to-face contact. A solution would allow customers to receive a seamless customer experience, directing them to the appropriate area/person even if their call or query is for a different authority e.g. Parish or County Council. It will also allow a way for authorities to share service therefore enabling business continuity.
Once solutions are researched/found, we would look to implement a solution at the authority.

Commitment 2:

Title: Increasing digital transactions online through the use of AI, Chatbots and robotics to provide a seamless, 24-hour, improved customer experience.

Partners: Bolsover District Council

Mission: We will increase the online services we provide using available technologies to ensure wherever possible that we provide customers with opportunity to contact, transact, report and apply via the authority's website.

Impact: The aim is to improve customer service and allow a 24/7 service wherever possible through the website. It will allow automatic processing of information and should reduce the number of calls to the contact centre; therefore reduce costs for the authority.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Failure Demand

Partners: Waste services, enforcement, Newlincs (Private sector waste partner) and the community

Mission: We aim to understand our failure demand with clear data analytics, engaging with our residents to identify the root causes and systemic failures.
By understanding our failure through discovery we are able to define clearly our ‘how might we’s’ to test hypotheses and prototype solutions to test with users.

Impact: By driving out failure demand we will:
• Reduce rework
• Increase satisfaction
• Reduce complaints
• Release capacity in the service to focus on our priorities
• Make significant savings across the wider organisation

Commitment 2:

Title: Blue Badges

Partners: DfT, Business Support, Commissioned assessors and the community

Mission: To develop effective and efficient case management for the assessment and issue of all blue badges meeting the requirements of new guidance for hidden conditions and integrating with the new DfT service. Furthermore integrating the payment process with GovPay through a pilot

Impact: This will ensure we:
• Deliver an end-to-end, seamless user experience
• Save money
• Make sure we meet the guidelines
• Handle all applications in a timely manner
• Improve the percentage of online payments

Commitment 3:

Title: Business Intelligence, Data and Performance Management

Partners: North East Lincolnshire Clinical Commissioning Group (NELCCG), Police, Fire NHS, Engie (Private sector infrastructure partner), Lincs Inspire (Leisure Trust)

Mission: To further develop our capability and prototypes to support strategic and operational management decision-making. To be become predictive and use our data to plan and design our services to meet the needs of users and the organisation most effectively.

Impact: We aim to understand our demand, pressures and capacity gaps and to:
• Improve how we visualise data and intelligence
• Improve how we make planning decisions about how we focus our resources
• Focus our resources where we can make the most difference
• Improve how we share data and information
• Develop real insight to inform how we design services

Commitment 4:

Title: Domiciliary Care

Partners: NELCCG, Focus, Adult services providers, service users

Mission: To improve the relationship between the carer and cared-for by bringing stability and sustainability to the care sector. This means the cared-for having visibility of who their carer is and moving from a time and task model to one that meet the needs of the users.

Impact: We aim to empower the carers to have a more active role in the care system by enhancing their status across the collective professionals around users, specifically through:
• Improved communication and handover from carers visible to other professionals across the system
• Improved communication with the users to know who will visit them today
• Empowering the carers to understand the medication they are giving and which are essential
• Improving information-sharing across the system to reduce crisis events
• Avoiding duplication of medication on discharge

Commitment 5:

Title: Permit use at our recycling centre

Partners: Newlincs (Private sector waste partner), enforcement and waste management

Mission: To improve the flow of demand at our recycling centre and to manage potentially illegal trade waste.

Impact: Residents can more easily apply for a permit and we will be able to reduce backlog and queues at our recycling centre. This will improve the management of potentially illegal trade waste and provide intelligence to identify offenders and enhance our enforcement; specifically, we will be able to:
• Enable users to apply for a permit online in advance of visiting the recycling centre
• Identify key patterns of potential trade waste
• Reduce queuing at the recycling site
• Track users by name and registration number
• Recognise and manage banned users
• Meet GDPR compliance for data handling and storage

Commitment 6:

Title: Moving Home as a service

Partners: Revenues and benefits, electoral registrations, waste, customers services, libraries, schools admissions, transport and planning.

Mission: To design a moving home service where residents moving within or into North East Lincolnshire sign up to multiple services simultaneously, telling their story once. Moving is stressful enough and residents end up calling separate parts of the council multiple times i.e. ‘to get the right bins’, ‘to register to vote’, ‘to pay their council tax’ and many more.

Impact: Residents will sign up to multiple services in one contact. We will ensure concise information, advice and guidance is available to meet their needs, easing their move into NELC. Specifically this will:
• Ensure a personalised, seamless transaction for the user
• Save time and money for the council
• Reduce the delay in the user receiving the services they need
• Signpost to other actions they may need or like to take
• Improve timeliness of income collection and revenue for the council
• Reduce the impact of the annual canvas on our elections team

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To implement a new low code digital platform that in Year 1 will replace the CRM and customer portals and then follow a longer term programme of application rationalisation and / or development.

Partners: Digital platform supplier, Other Councils that we can share and collaborate with

Mission: To deliver the Council’s digital modernisation programme through the introduction of a new digital platform and tools to release capacity for our staff and enhance service delivery for our customers, helping us to achieve our corporate priorities.

Impact: All of the following impacts will benefit our customers and staff: Improved data to enable data driven decision making. Increased automation and self-serve opportunities to enable 24/7 access. Re-designed and / or streamlined processes that are as efficient and effective as possible.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Integrated Mapping, Planning and Engagement System

Partners: City of Lincoln, West Lindsey District Council

Mission: To deliver a new integrated system to speed up the plan-making process, digitise our functions, and enhance engagement using digital and visual tools to improve engagement with our communities. At the end of the project we will have a new system in place, a team of upskilled officers who can drive it forward in plan making and engagement, and will have tested it on a call for sites and an authority-wide design code. This process will have included a number of stages of consultation to test the system out and opportunities to reflect and improve it.

Impact: The system will help reduce manual processes which act as a bottle neck in plan-making, automate site assessment, it will encourage people to take part in consultations, inputting responses directly into the system, and will help to engage hard to reach groups through greater interactivity and functionality. It will help the Local Plans Team in reducing resource needed at key stages of plan-making; developers and land owners by allowing them to directly map their sites and submit evidence to the system and providing real-time feedback through the process; members of the public by offering a more appealing and interactive way to engage in plan-making whilst focusing on parts of the plan and the geography that are of direct interest to them without having to read a huge document to find relevant topics; and officers at the district councils and statutory consultees in improving the efficiency of their involvement, freeing them up to focus on other work and planning applications. We will measure success by levels of involvement in the activities planned in the year and assessing geographic spread and the characteristics of respondents and will seek user feedback on their experience whilst using the system. Beyond the project period, we will reflect on how it has worked, seek further improvements and draft up protocols for its use going forward. We also want to investigate opportunities to expand it out for use by neighbourhood planners and members of the public as well as in wider functions at the joint councils.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Bulky item collections

Partners: Other Councils with similar problems

Mission: We believe that our bulky item collection service doesn’t meet a key user need i.e. As a customer I want a say in when my items will be collected so I know when to put them out for collection.

Currently customers are expected to place items outside their house when they request the service and we aim to collect within 10 working days.

The service is oversubscribed which leads to unnecessary follow up contact and even on occasion reports of fly tipping as other residents do not know why the items have been there for such a long time.

We want to fully understand the problem, consider and test a range of ways to better meet the needs by designing a new service with the people that use and operate it.

We want to work with other councils that have a similar problem.

We hope to have a new service live that fully meets user needs across all service access channels within a year of signing up to the LDD.

Impact: A smooth and effective end-to-end process that works effectively both internally and externally for our customers.

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Review of the Housing Benefit Application Process

Partners: Other Councils with similar problems

Mission: We believe that the process of submitting Housing Benefit application claims via our 3rd party system is very difficult for our customers for example the system does not permit adding attachments.
We would like to run a discovery session with customers and the people that run the service to understand the problem and the impact on customers.
We want to design a new service that works for everyone which will likely require the vendor to fix the plumbing.
We have previously successfully requested changes but we believe that these are more likely to be listened to as a collective concern from multiple councils
We want to work with other councils that have a similar problem to design a service pattern that can be reused by any local authority
We hope within a year to have the new service live of signing the MHCLG Digital Declaration

Impact: A smooth and effective end to end Housing Benefit Application process that works effectively both internally and externally for our customers.
The aim is also to reduce the cost of the application process for the Council.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To support a transformation in problem solving using collaborative digital techniques. Building on the close partnerships formed in Northamptonshire on the unitary programme and to support Covid 19 recovery and reset work

Partners: West Northamptonshire Shadow AuthorityNorthamptonshire County CouncilEast Northamptonshire CouncilKettering Borough CouncilCorby Borough CouncilBorough Council of WellingboroughNorthampton Borough Council Daventry District CouncilSouth Northants Council

Mission: To create a capability in service design and to ensure that the new unitary councils put in place technology platforms that can create end to end services, add value to users and enable transformational service outcomes for the new authority.

Impact: Transformational impact as we move from a largely on premises, product centric IT infrastructure to a more agile, user centred design culture with a platform of enabling technology with reusable components.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Optimising the use of technology to deliver a positive strengths based approach to Adult Social Care.

Partners: North Somerset Council, Agilisys.

Mission: We will use citizen-focused and agile service design techniques to optimise the use of technology to deliver a strengths-based approach to adult social care which will improve citizen satisfaction, reduce costs and help us to deliver our new social care vision

Impact: We aim to provide more targeted and personal support for adult social care service users, providing better information, delivering faster and higher quality and more consistent assessments and ensuring the best utilisation of resources.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Household Waste Permit Request Application

Partners: We will share the outcome with local partners in North East ICT forum but look to share wider and make code available to local Digital community.

Mission: During the COVID pandemic, there was a need to control the number of people visiting the Household refuse location within North Tyneside so that social distancing was maintained as well as queues to access the site being controlled. An application was developed that would allow a member of the public to select the day and time of the visit (based on the opening times of the site), enter the details of the user and vehicle (additional checks undertaken through DVLA) before submitting. That product will now be built upon to add an admin section to allow the service to start embedding data into daily decision making and directly control aspects of the system. Further development to add the facility for commercial permits to complete the digitisation of this service.
The Authority has now invested in a permanent Development team that will build on this success to deliver more customer facing digital tools based on GDS principles.

Impact: Specifically this application allows residents within North Tyneside to book a permit to visit the household refuse site without waiting in significant queues. The application processes 4,500 bookings on a weekly basis and provides a vital service for the residents. The product is based on accessibility and GDS standards to ensure it is accessible for all residents. Moving forward we expect to transform services across the Authority to make it easier for our customers to interact with us through the implementation of bespoke digital tools.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Website improvement and redesign

Partners: Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council, Jadu and Firmstep

Mission: To build on our established collaboration on shared design and hosting of our websites. We are carrying out a redesign which learns from others good practice and an upgrade which will enhance the customer experience, support our online and telephone services and improve accessibility for all. We will review and improve our integration with Firmstep and other suppliers online offering to further develop our self-service.

Impact: The project aims build on our collaboration and adopt good practice design elements to improve our website and self-service offering. We aim to provide accessible, seamless and trusted online services which will be effective for customers and deliver efficiencies for both authorities.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Using digital tools to help customers navigate complex information

Partners: Selby District Council

Mission: To develop our current chatbot tool to enable interrogation of complex data sets/information, enabling customers to access the information they need through simple 'search/chat bot' front end . Initially this will be used to help Selby Customers find information about their waste collection service however we have other use cases to explore including Covid Outbreak Management

Impact: It will be accessible to all digitally able customers, as it is based on familiar and basic search functionality

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Applying for a taxi driving licence.

Partners: Gateshead Council, North of Tyne Councils, Sunderland Council

Mission: We need to identify the issues and user needs by carrying out user research which will be published. To create a 'to be' service pattern for the application process which will help identify a digital solution.

Impact: The project aim is to improve the licence application process by identifying user needs to inform the design of a digital solution for licencing applications, which could be reused by other licensing authorities.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Creating digital mapping data using GIS

Partners: South Norfolk District CouncilBroadland District Council

Mission: Assist South Norfolk and Broadland with the creation of mapping data in GIS

Impact: Production of maps allowing South Norfolk and Broadland to publish details of land currently being promoted for development

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Investigate the possibility of replacing purchased forms solutions with one built in-house.

Partners: LGSS

Mission: We currently make use of a number of form solutions from various suppliers that deliver online services and integration to various legacy systems. Our aim is to find a more generic solution, built in-house and using industry standard software solutions, that would allow us to replace all these forms packages.

Impact: A single, in-house, fully integrated digital solution could potentially deliver significant cost savings. It would also provide greater control over service delivery, content, and integration, and could eventually allow us to make better use of the data being submitted.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Homelessness Prevention through Digital Innovation.

Partners: Mansfield District Council, Nottingham City Homes

Mission: Within a year of signing this declaration, we will have:
• Performed a detailed discovery and identified which issues can be improved by implementing digital processes
• Researched which technologies are available and how they can be used to reduce homelessness
• Designed a digital service model and principles which can be shared with other councils
• Identified and engaged with a range of stakeholders to shape and design the overall solution
• Engaged with users to design an intuitive self-service digital prototype which has an emphasis on the customer journey and streamlined triage
• Developed an alpha solution.

Impact: The ultimate aim of this project is to reduce homelessness through better prevention. Positive outcomes will include:
• Improving the lives and prospects of those at risk of homelessness
• Reduce unnecessary spend and ensure resource is allocated appropriately
• Increased access to services through digital opportunities
• Improved response times to citizens at risk of homelessness
• Improved understanding around the causes of homelessness

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Data and reporting geo spatial hub for Nottinghamshire government departments.Covid 19 recovery work, community support hub & safer Nottinghamshire hub.

Partners: Nottinghamshire county council.7 districts councils, Nottinghamshire Police, Fire and Rescue, NHS, CCG etc.

Mission: To build on and improve our collaborative cross government data and reporting hub for Covid-19 response work such as Covid 19 community support hub, Covid-19 PPE operational dashboard, Covid-19 Economic Recovery Survey, Care home, business and infrastructure analysis.

Impact: Operational and strategic insight and analysis for public sector response into the covid 19 recovery.
Improving the value for money for tax payers.

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Digital Care Needs Assessment

Partners: Looking Local, Stockton on Tees Borough Council, Harrow London Borough Council

Mission: To collaboratively develop a self-service online care needs assessment which will integrate with existing Local Authority back office systems and processes and with any local directories of services to provide information, advice and signposting to customers. For the online care needs assessment to work alongside the Resource Allocation System to produce an indicative personal budget where appropriate.

Impact: Local Authorities are under increasing pressure with budgetary cuts, increased requirements under the Care Act, and an ageing population. The development of an online care needs assessment offers an efficient and effective response to increasing demand for social care, rising expectations and the on-going reductions in council funding. It offers our citizens choice and control over how they want their assessment to proceed, and it offers flexibility.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: The design and implementation of a single unified communications technology solution that can be followed by all partners and that can be extended to other public sector organisations wanting to adopt similar technologies / solutions.

Partners: The Leicestershire Information Communication Technology Partnership (LICTP) - shared service council’s include Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, Oadby and Wigston Borough Council, Blaby District Council, Melton Borough Council and the Leicestershire Revenues and Benefits Partnership.

Mission: The project is to design and implement a repeatable installation and adoption strategy that can be followed by all partners and that can be extended to other public sector organisations wanting to adopt similar technologies / solutions.
The solution objectives are:
• Implement one single cloud hosted communications solution system
• Provide one number for each user – to be used seamlessly with desk based phones, mobile phones or softphones
• Offer modern unified communication functionality – offering opportunities/options such as integration with MS Office calendars, instant messaging, video calling and conference calling
• Implement one single contact centre solution – separately configured and implemented for partners as required
• Integrate telephony Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity arrangements
• Adopt one single support contract for all telephony elements (bills, lines, calls, technologies etc)

Impact: Critical success factors focus on providing public sector staff with the opportunity to work in a more flexible way to better facilitate working contact arrangements and engagements with customers from any location, specifically; Single contract and supplier management - Reduced hours spent managing supplier contracts and billing from LICTP Client and each partner authorities Finance Teams. Staff productivity increase via collaboration technology- Efficient working via enhanced collaboration capability. Efficient resource management. Flexible and home working capability. Enhanced citizen service capability and reporting - Increased first time resolution impact less complaint handling, better oversight on resource allocation. Enhanced DR capability - Reduced risk, reduced need for 3rd party DR capability (such as remote site maintenance and DR contracts), enhanced business uptime, consistent resource, sharing council buildings. Single support contract and point of contact - Reduced hours spent managing support issues, and single supplier accountability for support issues. Quicker resolution to issues and frees up technical resources to progress other prioritised work

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Making SEND Digital: Improving data intelligence to inform decision making

Partners: Tameside Council, Manchester City Council, Salford Council, Oldham Council Partners

Mission: To be able to produce high level data intelligence around children and young people with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND) via weekly, monthly, annual and ad hoc reports that are live, accurate and easily accessible. Financial and operational data will be integrated to make more informed decisions on how best to plan, deliver and fund SEND provision.

Impact: Local Authorities will be able to use data intelligence to better plan resources and consequently improve outcomes for children and young people with SEND. We will be able to ensure that there is a suitable balance of specialist provision, matching the needs of children and young people in the borough.
Finance departments will better understand the sustainability of educational support in future years to ensure that needs are met.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Discover how chatbots and artificial intelligence could improve service delivery in local government

Partners: Hertsmere District Council Cheltenham Borough CouncilDoncaster CouncilPreston City CouncilNorth East Derbyshire District CouncilBolsover District CouncilCalderdale CouncilRotherham Metropolitan Borough Council

Mission: Carry out user research across a limited number of services to better understand the customer journey, the issues that are faced and how/if chatbots could form part of a solution to improve service delivery
Be ready to implement an Alpha chatbot/AI project based on the findings of the discovery project

Impact: Ensure participating councils gain greater experience in user research techniques
Create a user research base that can be shared across local government
Identify the potential savings through service redesign that include chatbots/artificial intelligence
Identify service types that are most likely to benefit from chatbots/artificial intelligence, and those that are not suited to these technologies

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Local Energy Oxfordshire; LEO project ~ maximising prosperity of local energy systems

Partners: University of Oxford, Oxford Brookes University, Scottish and Southern Electricity networks (SSEN), Oxford City Council, Energeo

Mission: Oxfordshire County Council is a partner in Local Energy Oxfordshire (LEO) project which is one of the four national demonstration projects funded by Innovate UK to trial and integrate the elements needed to create a smart local energy system.
Mapping and Spatial Data work package, led by Oxfordshire County Council, Oxford Brookes University, will undertake high resolution mapping of Oxfordshire county to create a Land Use map and Land Use analysis with links to Conservation Area, Flood Zone, Topography and Agricultural Classification mapping layers.

Impact: The map will accelerate identification and integration of existing and new distributed energy resources, including generation, storage, energy efficiency and flexibility technologies. It will enable the county to assess land parcel potential and suitability for low carbon generation and energy system management to create an Oxfordshire Energy Master Plan and support the ambitious plans to build up to 100,000 new homes by 2030.

Commitment 2:

Title: COACH – Connecting Older Adults to Care & HealthUsing voice enabled technology to connect older people to families carers and communities

Partners: Oxfordshire County Council Adult Social Care, Oxford University, Oxfordshire County Council Public Health, Amazon, Day & Night Care Assistance service provider

Mission: The aim of this project is to pilot new technology to support older people with eligible needs in receipt of Homecare services. The pilot will demonstrate how technology can support enhancing the quality of life for people living at home and requiring ongoing social care support.
The project will make voice enabled technology accessible to older people - decreasing social isolation and improving independence, health and wellbeing. Oxfordshire County Councils' iHUB is working in partnership with Amazon, Adult Social Care and Day and Night Care Assistance to make this technology accessible for older people in receipt of social care.
The Councils' iHUB are working in partnership with Public Health and Oxford University to undertake an academic evaluation for publication of the project which will determine our direction and next steps using voice enabled technology.

Impact: Criteria for participation:
older adults 65+ with eligible needs receiving support to live at home funded by Oxfordshire County Council.
An initial criterion was for people in receipt of medication prompt visits, however this was widened to include individuals likely to benefit from increased social interaction with families, carers and communities.
Benefits include improvement in health & wellbeing, reduction in social isolation and increase in independence.

Use of devices:
Medication prompts/reminders
Video calling family, friends & carers
Listening to music/audiobooks
Listening to news programmes
Making shopping lists
Telling the time
Setting reminders/alarms

Measuring impact:
Baseline & follow up participant surveys on health, wellbeing, and use of devices
Academic Evaluation for publication undertaken with Oxford University

Future opportunities include:
Inclusion of Alexa/Google Assistant in the Assistive Technology offer as a means of reducing homecare. This technology is a cost-effective accessible option easily purchased in the consumer marketplace and could be introduced as a means of reducing care packages as well as to individuals not meeting the threshold of eligible needs as a preventative measure.
Introduction of Alexa/Google Assistant to other social care cohorts such as adults with physical and/or learning disabilities.
Introduction of Alexa/Google Assistant in residential settings such as Care Homes and Extra Care Housing

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Redevelop our My Account service to provide our customers with the best possible service tailored to their needs.

Partners: Town and Community Councils, Community Groups, Voluntary organisations, and most importantly our residents.

Mission: As a developing ‘digital’ Council we will:-

* Redevelop our My Account service to drive efficiencies and deliver an improved user experience for our customers.

* Move towards a ‘single view’ of a customer by ensuring our My Account service is fully integrated with our CRM and other back office systems.

* Listen to our customers to make sure our My Account service is developed with the user in mind and provides a simple, accessible and effective digital experience that encourages channel shift.

* Ensure online form submissions are streamlined, integrated and trackable.

* Expand our document upload facility to enable customers to quickly and securely upload and receive Council documents online.

* Allow customers to login with their social networking profile by conforming to the OAuth2 authentication standard.

* Monitor channel shift uptake and measure customer satisfaction in relation to our digital provision. This will be a fundamental part of shaping our My Account service.

* Improve and expand our notification options to enable customers to opt-in for location specific information, warnings, service alerts and reminders.

* Make more use of geographic information to enable customers to search and view information in an easy and accessible format.

* Enable customers to track the progress of their application, report or enquiry using a unique tracking code generated on submission of their request, and notify customers of status changes by email/SMS.

* Appoint Digital Champions to help our customers understand the benefits of using My Account and support them to undertake simple tasks online

Impact: Redeveloping our My Account service using the latest web technologies will provide a better customer experience, improve accessibility/usability and support access via mobile devices.

By reviewing current processes and ensuring our My Account service integrates with back office systems will help the Council to be more efficient whilst providing a better online experience for customers.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: We are developing a new way of operating across the public sector system in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough for providing services and creating community resilience, called Think Communities. This new way of thinking puts people, places and system at the core - focusing on resilience, connectedness and unity. This is where cross-sector and place-based services match need, are responsive, creatively co-designed, simple and accessible.

Partners: Cambridgeshire County Council, Huntingdonshire District Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council, East Cambridgeshire District Council, Fenland District Council, Cambridge City Council, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority plus emergency services partners, health and the voluntary sector.

Mission: Our collective mission is to put community resilience at the heart of how we work and redesign services around the needs of the people using them. We will prioritise citizen and user needs above professional, organisational and technological silos.
• People: Resilient communities across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough where people feel safe, healthy, connected and able to help themselves and each other
• Places: New and established communities that are integrated, offer a sense of place, and which support the resilience of their residents
• System: A system-wide approach in which partners listen, engage and align with communities and with each other, to deliver public service and support community-led activity

The Think Communities movement will demonstrate digital leadership, creating conditions for genuine organisational transformation to happen. We will embed an open culture that values digital ways of working such as working in the open, sharing our plans and experience, working collaboratively with other organisations and reusing good practice.
The end result of this movement will result in a mind-set shift of the way the public sector delivers services and a change in the relationship between citizen, community and service. The movement will see more place-based relational working and much more co-design of solutions and services.

The priorities for Think Communities over the next year include:
• place based commissioning
• food poverty

We aim to work with communities to understand their world, their situation, their strengths and their needs and co-produce solutions. This will involve timely, meaningful, appropriate, safe, secure, useful and flexible data sharing and analysis and co-designed solutions and digital tools.

Impact: The cost of services are increasing and yet outcomes and KPIs are not being met. We believe that by working in the Think Communities way, we can ensure that services are local and relevant and build on the strengths of communities. In the short term, communities will see a change in the way public sector bodies relate to them which will increase trust and engagement.

Place based commissioning will result in citizens and communities co-producing what services and support they have access to in their area, ensuring that services are engaging, relevant and sustainable. Ensuring that people have access to the right services in their place means that better outcomes for citizens, families and communities will be achieved and the public sector bodies will be collectively targeting our resources effectively.

This movement will help residents of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough find and access the right support they need when they need it; locally and painlessly.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Creating a collaborative digital platform to monitor development delivery with our join local plan partners

Partners: South Hams District CouncilWest Devon Borough CouncilGreater London Authority

Mission: To design a best practice way for local plan monitoring and reporting across local authority areas that share responsibility for the delivery of homes, jobs and infrastructure. We will develop a digital tool that enables coordinated collection of information and a reporting service with our partner authorities. We will work out what data is required by planning authorities and develop a standard schema with our partners. We will test our assumptions of what the public and development industry will find useful and will trail web-based technologies to provide more interactive and accessible ways to display this information.

Impact: The project will make the monitoring, reporting and reviewing of local plans easier for authorities and more transparent to the public by ensuring useful and accurate information is available from a single source. It will help other councils who use the schema to share information easily and make planning information easier to understand for citizens.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Developing an interactive and engaging toolset which helps to connect and grow communities and from that build community social action which underpins the statutory safety net

Partners: CCG, Portsmouth Hospital Trust, Healthwatch, 20 plus VCSE organisations (which can be listed) , local neighbourhood forums

Mission: To co-design an interactive, intelligent digital presence to complement the work being undertaken in the development of the Portsmouth HIVE. Once we have developed this will be owned by a newly created co-operative within the City and shared across other partners. The first phase will concentrate on finding information and support and matching solutions for those working with our social prescribing partners.

Impact: The aim is ultimately to build community resilience and support for those people in our society who feel lonely or isolated; from this we hope to take away some of the pressures on statutory bodies, particularly health, and inevitably achieve savings.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Common approach to chatbots and AI development

Partners: Oxford City Council, Cheltenham, Hertsmere, Doncaster, Derbyshire, Calderdale, Bolsover.

Mission: There is a drive amongst local authorities to embrace the potential opportunities provided by AI and chatbots as a means to improve service to their customers, solve complex issues in service delivery and release efficiencies through reduced staff resource requirements.

Impact: Provide better customer service in a more efficient manner to our residents. Significant savings across Councils and making use of ongoing technologies which will be engrained in the organisation, for future generations.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Moving to a new Customer Digital Platform

Partners: Publica Group Ltd, Cotswold District Council, West Oxfordshire District Council, Forest of Dean District Council

Mission: We will commence a programme of redesigning and moving all our low complexity, high volume services to a new digital platform to start to build a single view of the customer and ensure all initial customer contact is managed through a single access point regardless of channel. Initially the programme will start with migration of services currently handles through legacy CRM systems but will move onto reimagining and redesigning other services and moving them to the platform.

The platform will facilitate a single customer contact record which is shared across Publica’s partner councils and this will test the ability to build a scalable and flexible data model to manage customers across geographical boundaries where they deal with more than one Council.

Further phased work during Summer 2019 will extend the solution to facilitate easy to use and accessible web self service with the ability to track a case progress online.

Impact: Increased customer satisfaction through improved feedback loops and visibility of case progress
Ability to offer consistent levels of service regardless of customer channel choice

Automation of low complexity tasks and case routing

Ability to design and develop a single platform to cater for the distinctive local policies set by each of the partner councils

Reduction in the number of systems that customer service agents have to log into to respond to a query.

Commitment 2:

Title: Developing a platform across multiple local authorities and service providers

Partners: Cotswold District Council. Cheltenham Borough Council. Forest of Dean District Council. West Oxfordshire District Council. Ubica

Mission: To build out a platform that provided visibly better services

Impact:

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Casework and Customer Management Platform

Partners:

Mission: Replace legacy casework and front-end customer form solutions with comprehensive CRM platform with low-code capabilities, in support of customer excellence strategy

Impact: Improvements in the customer-centricity of our customer journeys and in the user experience offered by our digital services, improving the service delivered to residents

Savings of £400k pa enabled by process efficiencies, shift left and reduced failure demand

Commitment 2:

Title: Independent Living

Partners: Collaboration being explored with neighbouring authorities via Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West Integrated Care System and NHSX

Mission: Pilot use of digital technologies - primarily sensors coupled with machine/artificial intelligence based pattern-of-life analysis - to enable the elderly and vulnerable to live more independently for longer

Impact: Improvement in quality of life for the elderly and vulnerable (and their families) and a reduction in the scale and hence cost of packages of care. The benefits are to be robustly evaluated and the results shared with other authorities.

Commitment 3:

Title: Digital Skills

Partners:

Mission: To improve the effective use of technologies (such as Office 365) - some of which were introduced at pace during the pandemic to enable remote working - to enable effective collaborative working in a post-pandemic hybrid environment coupled with robust information governance. This will include the development/elaboration of a skills matrix, which we propose to share.

Impact: Staff have the skills and confidence needed to do their jobs effectively, and to make innovative use of the capabilities offered by new tools.

Information assurance can be provided more effectively, clearly and straightforwardly through effective use of the functions of our new tools throughout the organisation.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Use Robotic Process Automation technology to automate processing of Private Sector Licence Applications

Partners: SME’s and other local authorities

Mission: We will automate the processing of Private Sector Licence Applications by using Robotic Process Automation technology to do the manual rule-based parts of the process, which will significantly reduce the time taken to process licenses currently

Impact: RPA will automate parts of the process, including validation, chasing for missing information, and approval. This in turn will lead to an increase in capacity across the team to focus on the interactions that really need human involvement, including an increase in key targets met and backlogs removed, alongside a reduction in human error.

Commitment 2:

Title: To use machine learning to validate documents attached to planning applications and fulfil some of the processes currently carried out to assess planning applications

Partners: Agile

Mission: To have 90% of planning applications validated by AI by using pre-defined statutory and local criteria to assist the technical officer. This will also assist in other areas of validation such as constraints, statutory consultations, fees and MHCLG reporting information.

Impact: Alongside reducing the planning application assessments to 2 working days rather than the government target of 8 weeks, implementation of AI will release technical team capacity to focus on more meaningful actions, including;
• Income generation
• Improving resident satisfaction and customer journeys
• Reducing human error and improving accuracy

Commitment 3:

Title: Create a community device library scheme through which residents and businesses can loan a device and get online

Partners: TBC

Mission: To divert Council devices away from traditional disposal routes, and instead refurbish them for community lending. Working with a diverse range of service providers, we will identify and target those individual and cohorts for whom device access is a key barrier to digital inclusion.

Impact: The aim of this project is to create a more circular pathway for Council technology and support digitally excluded residents to get online.

Commitment 4:

Title: Create an online platform through which residents can access online training resources and self-refer to formal training providers

Partners: TBC

Mission: To create a single platform through which residents can access online digital skills training and self-refer to formal and informal training offers. We’ll work with users to create a platform that is user-friendly and accessible, and work with partners to signpost digitally excluded residents to the platform.

Impact: The platform will allow residents to become digitally upskilled and will consolidate information about the support that is available across the borough into a single location.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: A Paperlite Council

Partners: Elected Members and the Public

Mission: To deliver a Council offer through a digal platform and via a full scale digital deployment whereby all public meetings of the Council are conducted without the need for paper

Impact: The intention is that the Council's digital infrastucture is improved to allow for a secure digital environment to operate for elected members to give them access to council business and the ability to be efficient and effective in their role

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Real time service status dashboard

Partners: Yet to identify but any local councils that wish to share.

Mission: To keep residents informed and better deliver services during disrupted times (COVID) with published real time service status information.

Impact: Reduced customer contact, better informed residents, linking our data sets.

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: TellJo Digital Funding

Partners: TellJo, Mid Sussex District Council, Adur & Worthing Councils

Mission: To automatically identify and support vulnerable customers digitally using Telljo to enable a more compassionate and cost-effective debt recovery process on liabilities such as Council Tax, whilst preventing people from reaching crisis and supporting their ability and skills to become more financially and socially resilient.

Impact: By identifying vulnerable people at an earlier stage, you reduce opportunity for growing arrears and additional costs being added and can find economic, financial and social benefits to individuals and families. This saves time from a point of administration. So nationally substantial cost savings and better customer service are offered.

Many outcomes take into account social value created by improving these outcomes. However, for some outcomes we cannot provide a standard value of social value as it varies dependent on intervention modelled, or cohort engaged.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Moving towards a more digital, easily accessible planning service

Partners: NEC Software Solutions

Mission: To enable the development management officers to deliver the services more efficiently and effectively for the benefit of the Boroughs' residents and businesses.

Impact: The aim is to enable a fully accessible, customer focused planning service with all information available digitally 24 hours a day improving the speed and efficiency of the service to the benefit of our residents, businesses and to enable to officers to carry out their functions more effectively.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improving our digital engagement for planning policy

Partners: Internal organisations within the council and our external suppliers

Mission: We hope to have made several improvements to the user experience for customers, streamline our internal workstreams, reducing the amount of officer tie processing digital data and increasing the volume and quality of our consultation responses.

Impact: Less wasted time and more people informed, aware and able to contribute to the planning process.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Developing and implementing a comprehensive digital strategy for the authority

Partners: NHS, Police and other local authorities

Mission: This Council is committed to becoming an engaging, open and innovative Council - one that has better local schools, is safer and greener, one that is fair and more affordable for all. In doing so we plan to learn from best practice elsewhere and bring fresh ideas and approaches to the borough.
We are clear that an increasingly digital approach will be one of the enablers to achieving our goals and that becoming more digital is key to better more efficient service delivery. Our new strategy sets out how we develop that approach, working towards providing efficient, customer focussed digital services – open and accessible to all, ensuring all our residents, businesses and service users can benefit.
For this Council, digital simply means the smart use of technology to improve the lives of residents and businesses. The key shift in our approach is about putting them at the heart of how we think about designing and delivering all our services. We’re not interested in “digital for the sake of it” and will be driven by ensuring all digital developments meet the test of “how will it benefit the user’s experience of council services, using modern technology when appropriate”. We won’t push people to digital – but will design services so they will move that way naturally.

Impact: Our new strategy sets out our digital ambitions as follows:

For the service user
• the right services delivered in the right way, providing consistently good outcomes and user experiences
• greater transparency and openness from their Council
• a more joined up approach across different Council services
• Increased access for the excluded

For the organisation
• opportunities for efficiency savings, including through flexible and working and technologies for staff
• continuously improving and innovating services as we become a digital organisation will break down silos and deliver better outcomes at lower cost
• reputational benefits from being an innovator – helping us to attract and retain the best staff

For the community as a whole
• a more vibrant, digitally enabled and resilient local economy
• environmental benefits, including improving air quality by reducing travel and congestion
• improved community safety by the smarter use of our data and CCTV

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Attracting and retaining families and young people to Richmondshire

Partners: Craven DC, Eden DC, South Lakeland DC, Yorkshire Dales National Park

Mission: Richmondshire District Council’s mission is to improve access to online and digital services throughout the district. This aligns to a corporate project to attract and retain young families and younger people to the district, as we aim to create a district where families are able to access all services required to live and work in the digital age, whilst enjoying the benefits of living and raising young families within a rural area. Richmondshire District Council aims to achieve this by achieving the objectives set out below by May 2020:

• Improving access to Superfast broadband to allow young people and families to work from home, have access to social media, distance learning courses and training, and essential online services such as banking, council services and NHS
• Increasing access to digital services within the council’s rural community offices
• Providing access to digital services by recycling computers no longer in use by RDC staff, by lending them out to residents, in a bid to increase digital access and skills amongst residents of Richmondshire
• Increasing and improving RDC digital services to promote the development of digital skills
• Creating online ‘how to’ guides for general use of digital services
Richmondshire District Council’s mission is to improve access to online and digital services throughout the district. This aligns to a corporate project to attract and retain young families and younger people to the district, as we aim to create a district where families are able to access all services required to live and work in the digital age, whilst enjoying the benefits of living and raising young families within a rural area. Richmondshire District Council aims to achieve this by achieving the objectives set out below by May 2020:
• Improving access to Superfast broadband to allow young people and families to work from home, have access to social media, distance learning courses and training, and essential online services such as banking, council services and NHS
• Increasing access to digital services within the council’s rural community offices
• Providing access to digital services by recycling computers no longer in use by RDC staff, by lending them out to residents, in a bid to increase digital access and skills amongst residents of Richmondshire
• Increasing and improving the council's digital services to promote the development of digital skills
• Creating online ‘how to’ guides for general use of digital services

Impact: In our preliminary research, 40% of our customers told us they lack skills or confidence when accessing digital services and this project would equip them with the tools to not only access council services, but also employment opportunities, health services and communication networks. Research from Good Things Foundation estimates that today in the UK, there are over eleven million people who lack basic digital skills and by 2028, 10% of the population will be digitally excluded.
The council would benefit from this project as contact from customers, and therefore costs, would reduce and residents would feel more equipped to live and work in the district.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital Inclusion Programme (Enhancements to existing programme

Partners: Libraries, local voluntary groups, Heywood Middleton and Rochdale CCG, GP Surgeries

Mission: To continue to provide and increase basic digital skills support and training across the borough for residents that genuinely need it. This includes providing support for the elderly, vulnerable, unemployed and residents with physical and mental disabilities. This work will include working with local learning providers as well as upskilling a bank of digital volunteers to allow digital skills training to become sustainable and a beneficial community resource in community venues across the borough.

Impact: The benefits of such projects would include social benefits for residents who would be able to use digital skills to be able to keep in touch with friends and family who they may be out of touch with, without having digital skills and capabilities. Providing basic digital skills training will benefit residents who are unemployed and claiming universal credit. Due to the service now being online, many residents will struggle to keep on top of their
universal credit account without basic digital skills. By providing beginners sessions claimants will be able to feel more confident to use online services as well as completing online job searches and applications. Sessions delivered would include online safety and social media safety for vulnerable groups for example residents with learning difficulties to ensure they are safe whilst they are using the internet and social media. Sessions delivered will continue to provide digital skills regarding public services and health online; including the Council’s website, NHS choices and online doctors’ appointments and prescriptions, these kinds of support sessions will allow residents to access beneficial services at a time and place that suits them. Work on providing skills so residents are able to access online doctors’ appointments and repeat prescriptions will be undertaken in partnerships with local GP surgeries in the borough.

Commitment 2:

Title: Self/home scanning (Existing/underway)

Partners: Providers, council, councillors, housing providers, local residents

Mission: Self-scanning is a system and process that enables customers to scan documents themselves when they come into a customer service office such as N1R as well as an option to scan documents at home and send them securely to the right Council department. To create an online platform that encourages self-serve and avoidable contact for customer who are required to provide supporting documents for a wide range of services across the council.

Impact: The self-scanning solution will make the existing manual process more efficient and effective. This will be achieved through integration of selfscan and our Document Management System and other line of business solutions, removing the need for manual re-keying of information. Increased customer satisfaction. More resilient service. Faster service delivery. Single point of access for enquiries. Reduction in waste.

Commitment 3:

Title: Website refresh (+ eForms) (Existing/underway)

Partners: Council, Local Residents, Carers and CCG

Mission: To create a top class public sector website and online services, supporting the councils customer access strategy (in development), through the implementation of a new content management system.

Impact: The refreshed website will be so good that our customers will prefer to use it to access council services and information. They will be able to do this at a time an d place to suit them. The website will meet all accessibility standards and have functionality that residents have come to expect from top online service providers. It will help us to drive more service requests online, reducing customer contact from more expensive channels. Online services will be integrated with back office line of business services to ensure seamless and efficient transfer of data.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digitising the planning service to improve customer engagement and experience.

Partners: London Borough of Southwark, London Borough of Lambeth and Buckinghamshire County Council

Mission: To move the planning system to a modernised, data driven approach, through the co-creation of the RIPA (reducing invalid planning applications) and BOPS (back office planning system) projects. To collaborate in these pioneering changes to the planning system and help other authorities implementation through our learning.

Impact: The tools will make the planning processes, policies and requirements as clear as possible. The aim is to make applying for planning permission simpler for both the applicant and the local planning authority staff.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Redesign and redevelop the Rossendale Borough Council website to improve the site and online services as a whole

Partners: Jadu, NEC

Mission: To create an external-facing website that meets the needs of the customer. To ensure that Rossendale online services are easy to access at a time and place that suits our customers. The Rossendale website will be accessible to all, secure and responsive on all types of devices. The new website will allow customers to easily access the services they require at the first point of contact, reducing the need for more expensive channels such as face-to-face contact. We aim to create an excellent user experience so that our customers prefer to access services online rather than through other channels. Our digital services will be simple and intuitive.

Impact: By redeveloping the Rossendale website it will allow customers to access information they require more easily, at a time and place that suits them, increasing their satisfaction with the Council. By increasing the use of our online services, it will allow us to free up staff time, which will enable us to focus our resources on supporting vulnerable residents.

Commitment 2:

Title: Customer & Digital Strategy - Citizen Access Portal Revenues and Housing Benefits

Partners: NEC, Capita

Mission: Development of Revenues and Housing Benefits self-service portals that are fully integrated with back office systems. To ensure that Rossendale online services are easy to access at a time and place that suits our customers. We aim to create an excellent user experience so that our customers prefer to access services online rather than through other channels. Our digital services will be simple and intuitive.

Impact: Improved customer service by introducing this easier, more accessible channel of contact. Also, customers can track and manage their enquiries online. To improve the experience for our residents and customers when interacting with us, to enable them complete their business easily and quickly and therefore encourage them to use the customer online portal and to help us save money with a reduction in calls.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To improve the quality and quantity of digital services available to our residents by implementing a range of projects including:• Delivering an improved transactional website • Improving our My Account service to empower residents to manage more of their information in one place• Introducing e-billing for Council Tax• Developing our My Alerts email service to offer customizable content on a weekly basis

Partners: A number of our local Town and Parish Councils

Mission: To reduce demand on our front line services by providing digital services our citizens will actually want to use.

Impact: A greater uptake of digital service users will free up our valuable resources to focus on our most vulnerable customers.

Commitment 2:

Title: Improving functionality and user friendliness of existing Ocella database and document management systems

Partners: Ocella

Mission: Continued improvement to IT enablement of Planning Services following completed internal Planning Review

Impact: Improve self service, improve report writing and information available for customers, staff and stakeholders

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Can chatbots and AI help solve service design problems?

Partners: Oxford City Council, Doncaster MBC, Hertsmere District Council, Preston City Council, Bolsover District Council, North East Derbyshire District Council, Calderdale Council, Redditch Borough Council, Surrey County Council

Mission: There is a drive amongst local authorities to embrace the potential opportunities provided by AI and chatbots as a means to improve service to their customers, solve complex issues in service delivery and release efficiencies through reduced staff resource requirements.
However, there are problems for local authorities looking to adopt these solutions;
There is no shared understanding of the technology and its advantages/disadvantages as a solution to key issues. For example, what type of application is it best suited to in order to ensure the best return on investment
There are a variety of products and platforms that already exist on the market, but no objective evaluation of each to identify the most appropriate to use.
There is a risk of duplicating effort, wasting time and resource in the discovery phase to arrive at the same conclusions that others have already reached
Without a sound evidence base, there is a risk of inappropriate chatbot/AI projects being pursued that have poor prospects of meeting their objectives, wasting further time and resource
This discovery project aims to resolve these problems by delivering;
a methodology for evaluating the suitability or otherwise of a particular application for developing into a chatbot or AI product;
a research base to assist local authorities developing their individual business cases to save time and resource rather than duplicating research;
a summary of the potential technology solutions that are available with their individual advantages and disadvantages of each, and their applicability to different circumstances a set of case studies drawn from participating councils in how the framework can be applied;

In pursuing this it will also:
explore the feasibility of adopting or developing a common, open source platform for local government to use to develop chatbot/AI solutions;
for the participating councils, deliver a set of recommendations on how to proceed with their use cases to alpha stage;
Enable (an) alpha project(s) to take over from the discovery phase from initial prototypes for the case studies, either funded collectively by participating authorities or through the MCHLG Local Digital Fund.

Impact: Benefits from working in this collaboratove approach will be seen from:
Reducing the duplication of effort from other local authorities interested in this field;
Having a body of research that underpins the use of this technology and its application to certain types of local authority services.

Leading ultimately to:

A significant reduction (across LA's) in responding to certain types of local authority customer contacts and therfore the release of cashable savings;
An improvement in customer service experience;
A new and efficicent way of delivering services

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: HEART IT Solutions

Partners: Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council, Warwickshire County Council

Mission: To implement a digital solution that will provide a service for advice and assistance to deliver disabled adaptations and home improvements to keep customer’s in their homes safe, secure and warm

Impact: A new digital system will create efficiencies across the partnership enabling more time to be allocated to dealing with the issues of the community

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: A Digital Journey

Partners: Although we have no named partners we are extremely keen on developing working relationships with other local authorities.

Mission: Rugby Borough Council will continually provide for the evolving needs and expectations of the community through encompassing digital opportunities and nurturing a culture of innovation through efficiency

Impact: Rugby Borough Council has pledged itself to provide a digital service to its community and citizens enabling the customer to interact through digital self-service channels when and where the customer needs to

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: How to embed digital thinking within a local authority

Partners: Hampshire councils and others

Mission: Define and identify digital behaviours and skills. Understand the blockers to changing behaviours. Understand the potential benefits and risks to working in this way. Develop a business case to justify the investment in training, mentoring and equipping our teams.

Impact: Motivated teams who are empowered to meet rising resident expectations and be responsive to change. Able to make the most of the opportunities afforded by emerging technologies. Cross functional working becoming the norm.

Commitment 2:

Title: To avoid duplication of work within local government

Partners: Hampshire councils and others

Mission: Work in the open through publishing our research and design work. Use a blog to start talking about our plans, ideas, successes and failures. Open source our in-house developed code. Invite and seek collaborators by publishing our project roadmaps. Contribute to communities of practice.

Impact: Save time and money through re-use of work by other organisations. Share risk, cost and learning with collaborators whilst working on common problems. Encourage others to work in the open.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Waste data visualisation in waste collection services

Partners: North East Lincolnshire Council & Leeds City Council

Mission: To provide an integrated IT approach to service delivery

Impact: Improved services delivery

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Visualising missed collection performance to enable waste management to make decisions and intervene to improve the service and relationship with communities

Partners: North East Lincolnshire Council, Leeds City Council

Mission: To collaborate and support the partner councils in developing a missed waste collection visualisation tool

Impact: The aim of the project is to provide better business intelligence on missed waste collections to improve efficiency and improve customer service

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Making SEND Digital: Improving data intelligence to inform decision making

Partners: Tameside Council, Manchester City Council, Oldham Council, Oldham Partnership

Mission: To be able to produce high level data intelligence around children and young people with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND) via weekly, monthly, annual and ad hoc reports that are live, accurate and easily accessible. Financial and operational data will be integrated to make more informed decisions on how best to plan, deliver and fund SEND provision.

Impact: Local Authorities will be able to use data intelligence to better plan resources and consequently improve outcomes for children and young people with SEND.
We will be able to ensure that there is a suitable balance of specialist provision, matching the needs of children and young people in the borough.
Finance departments will better understand the sustainability of educational support in future years to ensure that needs are met.

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: We are on a path to create brilliant digital experiences for colleagues and residents. Core to getting this right is a feedback loop that will constantly improve what we are doing, and the right training that will enable everyone to benefit. To do this, we need clear directions and a trained up collective of people that are motivated to help others on their path to digital confidence.

Partners: Barclays UK and their Digital Eagles Programme

Mission: Every colleague feels confident themselves, and feel empowered to help others get confident and comfortable with a digital future. We also want to foster a culture of continuous improvement, encouraging our colleague and residents to suggest new ideas.

Impact: We want to see every generation being confident with our digital services. We know that the most likely to benefit from digital access, for example the elderly who are less mobile, are often the least able to access services. If we can build better access and confidence we can reduce our cost to service, It is too easy to get it wrong, and this level of 121 interaction will shape our digital future in a way that is tailored to real needs. There is a positive financial impact for our residents also, by sharing knowledge and skills that grow their ability and confidence online, this will aid them in becoming up to £744 better off a year*.
*sourced from Good Things Foundation’s Digital Nation 2016 report

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Council Tax Arrears Collection

Partners: Barnsley Metropolitan Borough CouncilBirmingham City CouncilBolton CouncilBradford Metropolitan District CouncilBrighton & Hove City CouncilCornwall CouncilEaling CouncilIslington CouncilEastbourne Borough CouncilKirklees CouncilLewes District CouncilManchester City CouncilMedway CouncilNewham London Borough CouncilNorth Hertfordshire District CouncilRotherham Metropolitan Borough CouncilSalford City CouncilSouthwark CouncilRoyal Borough of Kensington & ChelseaWakefield CouncilWealden District Council

Mission: At 31 March 2018, the total amount of council tax outstanding in England amounted to £3 billion (cumulative from the introduction of council tax in 1993

For 2017/18, Local authorities in England collected £27.5 billion, with arrears of £818 million, approximately 3% uncollected.

Our mission is to collect more council tax in a fair way to maximise funding for local services, thus benefiting local residents, whilst identifying those who are vulnerable and in need of assistance.

Impact: Our business case supports an approach which we believe can increase collection rates for all councils across the country. The increase in collection will help to negate cuts to annual funding and limit reductions in key service areas, where it matters most.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Define, Procure, and Deploy a Digital Platform upon which to re-invent how the council's services are delivered.

Partners:

Mission: Our digital strategy includes
* improving the experience for our customers
* improving efficiency for the council
* collaborating with other agencies serving our communities
* improving decision making on the use of Council resources

The single digital platform approach delivers on the Declaration ambitions for
* modular building blocks for the IT we rely on, and open standards
* design safe, secure and useful ways of sharing information
* digital ways of working from every member of our workforce.

The single platform will replace a number of separate existing Case Management systems, improving our ability to engage with customers holistically.

Impact: Having now completed our 1st phase of procurement, we have already published our
* Requirements Specification for the Digital Platform
* Digital Capability Map

at https://www.sedgemoor.gov.uk/cap . We would like to encourage councils to take our specification and feedback on strengths and weaknesses.

We are also developing a local 'Process Design Manual' to guide our multi-disciplinary redesign teams to cover topics such as

* user needs and circumstances
* reducing demand
* channel shift expectations
* risk management and mitigation
* capturing blockers
* information flows
* capturing insight for continuous improvement

We'll share that too during 2019.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To support our agile and mobile workforce and remove dependency on our legacy data centre by migrating our applications to Cloud

Partners: Agilisys

Mission: The council will look to implement a multi cloud model, whereby greater use of cloud technology and services is made (where appropriate)

Impact: The multi-cloud model will enable a scalable and resilient infrastructure that can flex in line with business requirements and provide resilience to improve business continuity for the residents of Sefton.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Website improvement

Partners: North Yorkshire County Council

Mission: To improve the overall customer experience when visiting our website, including improved accessibility for all customers and more options to self-serve by introducing a greater suite of services online.

Impact: The project aims to improve the self-service transactions available to our customers whenever and wherever they choose to access our website.
Seamless transactions that speed up the process for customers and the authority, creating greater efficiencies for both parties.
Creating a satisfying web experience which builds customer confidence to continue using the website to interact with the authority.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Exploring & implementing solutions to improve access to Tree Preservation Order information and submitting applications to carry out works to protected trees and notifications of works to trees in Conservation Areas.

Partners: IDOX Group

Mission: We would like to create a ‘one-stop’ shop so that applicants can confirm if an Order exists, download a copy of the Order and submit their application at the same time. We would like to create a standardised and consistent process that all local authorities that benefit from and provide for their customers.

Impact: Creating a user friendly process that can be accessed on demand will ensure a better customer experience and a more efficient way for us to register and respond to applications and or notifications.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Service design: Office of Data analytics

Partners: Currently seeking partners.

Mission: It is well established that many bodies under-capitalise on the value of data in service planning, service evaluation and ensuring efficient delivery. In Sheffield some good progress has been made in terms of establishing smart use of big data within some sectors (for example NHS / Social care, police). Links between sectors are not yet made in terms of sharing data sets.

Our proposal is to commission a piece of work that will establish a detailed business case for the establishment of a cross-sector office of data analytics.

Impact: However, there is still a great deal of work to do in order to link datasets between sectors in the city. We are underinvested in this both in terms of capacity and capability.

We have broadly established the parameters of what we need to do across all of our agencies in terms of technical requirements, establishment of vision, shared and single approach to IG, data streams that should be included, infrastructure and IT investments that will be needed, governance & leadership requirements, and processes for citizen engagement.

Establishing a cross-sector ODA will facilitate better decisoin making, preventative thinking by default and the ability to model different scenarios.

Commitment 2:

Title: We are on a path to create brilliant digital experiences for colleagues and residents. Core to getting this right is a feedback loop that will constantly improve what we are doing, and the right training that will enable everyone to benefit. To do this, we need clear directions and a trained up collective of people that are motivated to help others on their path to digital confidence.

Partners: Barclays UK and their Digital Eagles Programme

Mission: Every colleague feels confident themselves, and feels empowered to help others to get confident and comfortable with a digital future. We also want to foster a culture of continuous improvement, encouraging our colleagues and residents to suggest new ideas.

Impact: We want to see every generation being confident with our digital services. We know that the most likely to benefit from digital access, for example the elderly who are less mobile, are often the least able to access services. If we can build better access and confidence we can reduce our cost to service. It is too easy to get it wrong, and this level of 121 interaction will shape our digital future in a way that is tailored to real needs. There is a positive financial impact for our residents also, by sharing knowledge and skills that grow their ability and confidence online, this will aid them in becoming up to £744 better off a year*.
*sourced from Good Things Foundation’s Digital Nation 2016 report

Salford have successfully trained over 400 Digital Eagles within the council using the Barclays Digital Eagles Programme and resources. This has led to over 3,000 resident training interactions since January 2018, making a massive impact. We want to continue to grow this programme and repeat the success across our Council. Striving to support our colleagues and residents to become confident and comfortable online is crucial to getting the whole city digitally confident. The majority of colleagues are also residents of the city, so by sharing digital know-how and up-skilling where possible, we will grow confidence, knowledge and ability. This will pave the way for the wider ambition of continuing this journey until all residents are confident online and linking this to a skills escalator to match residents’ growth in the City.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To utilise Digital Technologies to improve the lives of those we serve

Partners: Through the STP:o Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trusto Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trusto Shropshire CCGo Shropshire Community Health NHS Trusto Amongst others

Mission: Our digital mission is to harness all the opportunities that technology brings to improve the lives of those we serve.

Impact: The potential impact of our mission is simple – we will deliver a more sustainable organisation and continue to provide excellent services.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Council Tax Arrears Collection

Partners: Barnsley Metropolitan Borough CouncilBirmingham City CouncilBolton CouncilBradford Metropolitan District CouncilBrighton & Hove City CouncilCornwall CouncilEaling CouncilIslington CouncilEastbourne Borough CouncilKirklees CouncilLewes District CouncilManchester City CouncilMedway CouncilNewham London Borough CouncilNorth Hertfordshire District CouncilRotherham Metropolitan Borough CouncilSalford City CouncilSouthwark CouncilRoyal Borough of Kensington & ChelseaWakefield CouncilWealden District CouncilWalsall Metropolitan Borough CouncilCoventry Metropolitan Borough CouncilWolverhampton Metropolitan Borough Council Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council

Mission: At 31 March 2018, the total amount of council tax outstanding in England amounted to £3 billion (cumulative from the introduction of council tax in 1993).

For 2017/18, Local authorities in England collected £27.5 billion, with arrears of £818 million, approximately 3% uncollected.

Our mission is to collect more council tax to maximise funding for local services, thus benefiting local residents. It will help ensure that those able to pay do not avoid their responsibility whilst identifying those who cant pay or are vulnerable and in need of assistance.

Impact: Our business case supports an approach which we believe can increase collection rates for all councils across the country as well as reduce the amount of unpaid Council Tax outstanding from previous years. The increase in collection will help increase resources available to Councils and limit reductions in key service areas, where it matters most.

Commitment 2:

Title: Using assistive technology to drive efficiency in personal care visits

Partners: Birmingham City Council and Worcestershire County Council

Mission: • Identify a cohort of citizens where personal care visits could be reduced through appropriate use of assistive technology whilst maintaining or improving citizen satisfaction.
• Identify the appropriate technologies that provide LAs with the confidence that citizens wellbeing and independence could be being maintained within a community setting despite a reduction in number of calls.
• Demonstrate that a 15-20% reduction in the number Home Support Calls can be achieved as an evidential base for other LAs to adopt and adapt to meet their needs

Impact: • Reduction in social care visits resulting in significant savings and contributing to predicted future funding gaps in adult social care
• A data driven robust framework for better targeting of care support for other LAs to adopt and adapt to meet local needs
• Supports early prevention and predicative analysis to identify those at greater risk and who may require a different support package
• Targeted support and more effective use of resources reducing demand on statutory services
• Significantly reduced commissioning costs
• Ability to flex the service at times of high demand such as in the winter months when pressure increases significantly on social care and health partners.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Somerset Integrated Digital Electronic Record (SIDeR)

Partners: NHS digital, Taunton and Yeovil Foundation Trusts, Somerset Partnership, Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group, South West Ambulance Service Trust

Mission: To develop a common interface to allow exchange of key information between Health and Social Care. Providing live integration with existing Health and Social care systems

Impact: This means that staff within Heath and Social Care will be able to share and access live data to deliver better outcomes for people, improving lives.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Development of an online reporting mechanism for “Streets” and “Grounds” services using our new online customer portal technology.

Partners: Huntingdonshire District Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council and Cambridge City Council will work with their IT Shared Service (3C Shared Services) and 2C Shared Waste Partnership to develop the solution. We will have the solution tested by Kent based SDS http://smarterdigital.info/.

Mission: Our shared IT service is in the process of delivering a standard back office application for Streets and Grounds processes across the three councils. Each council is also developing an online customer portal to link in with their existing websites. Whilst each council will retain their own separate Streets and Grounds services, we plan to develop a consistent set of eforms, back office processes, and a customer portal that delivers proactive customer status indicators and notifications, while our services deal with requests. The solution will extend into our customer service departments, ensuring a holistic view of the status of each request.

Impact: Reduction in customers having to chase. Other similar councils have seen circa 25% reduction in calls and face to face visits through implementation of a similar system.

Commitment 2:

Title: Customer portal

Partners: 3C Digital, IEG4, Civica and Tascomi

Mission: Develop our customer portal to be a one-stop shop for residents accessing personalised information regarding council services. Our top services (council tax, benefits, bins, housing and planning) will be integrated into the portal (working with our partners) so all personalised information is in one place and residents can self-serve. Residents will be able to access the information 24/7 and won’t need to email or call us for answers.

Impact: Reduced calls and emails from residents to us. Back office processes streamlined so we are working more efficiently.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital solution for Pest Control service requests

Partners: None

Mission: To develop a digital solution which will enable requests for a Pest Control service to be made by members of the public, via an online solution. The requests will then be received via mobile devices, by the Pest Control officers whilst in the field and outcomes immediately updated.

Impact: - Customers can easily submit a request for a Pest Control service via an online solution
- Customers can select an appropriate time and date for an appointment
- Resources will be automatically scheduled to appointments
- Pest Control Officers will receive case work whilst out in the field via a mobile device
- Officers will be able to update outcomes of service requests in real time meaning the customer receives an update in real time
- Officers will spend less time travelling back to an office to update paper-work
- Improvements to management processes as data is available in real time

Commitment 2:

Title: Improving our website content

Partners: None

Mission: To review, rewrite and reorganise all content on the council’s public website, embedding content design as a discipline within the organisation and establishing a centralised web authorship model to extend this approach into business as usual.

Impact: - Users can easily find the information they need, either via an external search engine, through the site search or navigation
- Users can easily understand our content, without the need to reread or contact the council for clarification
- Users are provided all the information they need before beginning an online service request
- All our users, regardless of their access needs, can access the content on our website
- Ultimately, more people will use the council’s website and digital services.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To deliver a unified service request queue.

Partners: South Hams and West Devon councils, Netcall

Mission: To merge all inbound service requests regardless of source/medium (Voice, Web, Message, Chatbot, Email, Post) enabling all service requests to be dealt with in a uniform way and to provide capacity respond to peaks and troughs in voice calls.

Impact: Better service for customers, consistent service, better work management and improved management reporting on work volumes, wait times etc.

Commitment 2:

Title: To make all internal service transactions digital

Partners: South Hams and West Devon councils, Netcall

Mission: To automate and deliver internal services to the same quality as external facing services, using web forms and workflow.

Impact: More efficient internal processes, improved management reporting.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Online processes

Partners: Breckland Council - East Lindsey District Council - Goss Interactive

Mission: The creation of multiple online processes constructed to the BPMN standard. These processes can then be integrated into our Goss digital platform and multiple third party systems all presented to the end user via our Goss forms package.
The work will be to map all Council processes to establish where integration is possible, what API’s will be required and to document the full process for not only direct online users and but also where Contact Centre perform the operation on residents behalf’s via assisted service.

Impact: To create full end to end digital processes for all major Council processes.
Once implemented residents will benefit significantly from using these new processes as it will greatly speed up each process by removing manual steps and allow for residents to engage with the Councils at times most convenient to them.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Re-designing planning application advice: Research into the reason why all users do not submit valid applications; whether they have the necessary tools, incentives or knowledge or how accessible they find the system

Partners: Joint application lead by Wokingham Borough Council

Mission: To publish user research that:
● Explains the reasons why applications are invalid
● Identifies existing costs and opportunities through better, integrated and digital services
● Describes the users end to end service needs, including the publication of validation information requirements
● Provides prototypes for a digital pre-application advice service, linked with a planning application service, and including front end patterns
● Considers the required technology, content design, legislative or regulatory changes and other relevant work being done to resolve this problem.

Impact: By resolving this problem, local planning authorities will benefit from controlling the costs relating to planning advice and invalid applications. Freeing up resources to ensuring high quality development within their locality and provide better outcomes to residents.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Designing our online and offline services around the needs of our customers and working with partners to increase digital inclusion of our older and rural customers.

Partners: Age UK, Lancaster University

Mission: We will launch a ‘My Account’ feature on our website which will enable customers to access more services at a time of their choosing and enable us to deliver a better customer experience by putting the customer’s needs at the centre of the design process. The ‘My Account’ technology will deliver a joined up digital service across our departments, which will be more efficient, and also help to break down silo working.
We will also work to increase digital inclusion in South Lakeland’s aging and rural population. We are collaborating with Lancaster University who have co-created an app which uses open data to help older users find local groups and activities. We also plan to work with Age UK’s digital champions for the roll out of ‘My Account’ to help those customers who want to use more online services but are lacking the skills or confidence.

Impact: All our customers who need to carry out a transaction with us will benefit. Using ‘My Account’ will enable our online customers to self-serve at a time that suits them and will free up resources to help our more vulnerable customers, complex cases and those who do not/cannot use online services.
Customers' data will be more secure through ‘My Account’ as information is stored in one place rather than on multiple systems across departments.
Alongside our partners, we will give our older and rural customers the opportunity to learn how to use and access technology for the improvements this can bring to their lives.
Our staff will also benefit from more efficient online processes, which reduces silo working and brings the opportunity for much more mobile and flexible working.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Consistent Customer Journey for Planning Applicants across districts.

Partners: Broadland District Council

Mission: Identify where we can generate efficiencies through digital integration and sharing of data across multiple districts. Design a digital service model and principles which could be adapted to other councils. Produce ideal state customer journey maps for a solution to be considered for development in the next stage.

Impact: Improve customer experience and offer an online streamlined and simplified end to end customer journey (from pre-application to discharge of conditions) for planning applicants regardless of district boundaries and independent back office systems.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Deliver unified accessible services to all residents in reducing the number of log ins required when using council services

Partners: Chorley Council and Preston City Council

Mission: Residents use the council’s website to access a range of different services, including payment of council tax, making a housing benefit claim, reporting issues to neighbourhood or waste services, to make planning applications and more.
Each of these services are often facilitated through an external business application requiring residents to create multiple accounts on separate business applications, often having different password requirements.
This is a not a joined-up process and residents can be redirected to another website or portal.
The council’s website needs to be accessible and easy to navigate for all residents of differing dynamics. Residents expect to log into the council’s website and access all services, without being redirected and having to further log in.
This project will explore a single sign to deliver unified accessible services to all residents in reducing the number of log ins required when using council services.

Impact: Anticipated benefits include:
- More accessible services for residents
- Encourages more residents to sign up for My Account services
- Drives online engagement
- Reduces contact into the council due to increased online interaction
- Supports the transition to secure cloud based solutions

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Great On-Line Services

Partners: Customer Connect

Mission: Ensuring we have on-line services that our customer will want to use because they are so good

Impact: Great customer satisfaction through excellent service delivery and customer journeys.

Commitment 2:

Title: Managed and efficient processes

Partners: Business Areas

Mission: To continue to drive efficiency gains and quality improvements into the core processes through which services are delivered

Impact: Improved customer and employee satisfaction through faster, better and more cost effective service delivery

Commitment 3:

Title: Work Flexibly from any location

Partners: All staff

Mission: Create an environment in which staff can work efficiently from any location, readily able to collaborate and share information with colleagues

Impact: Greater productivity, improved quality of work/life

Commitment 4:

Title: Securely access and analyse data

Partners: Strategy and Commissioning

Mission: To access information held within SSDC and other sources and the tools to analyse data, supporting better planning and performance management while managing the associated cyber security risks.

Impact: Better, more proactive planning of service improvements

Commitment 5:

Title: Integrating with Partners

Partners: Other local authorities, central government, voluntary sector, commercial partners

Mission: To be able to collaborate with partner organisations

Impact: Deliver outcomes and services more effectively.

Commitment 6:

Title: Empowering Communities

Partners: Members, towns and parishes, community groups

Mission: To be able to enable and engage local communities, making them more resilient and reducing demand. Supporting more effective democratic engagement.

Impact: More resilient and empowered local communities

Commitment 7:

Title: Skilled and Confident Workforce

Partners: All staff

Mission: Develop the necessary leadership, management and IT skills for staff and managers to operate effectively in an increasingly digital environment

Impact: An organisation that readily and effectively uses digital technology to continually improve.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: WORKING DIGITALLY POST COVID 19

Partners: Local Authority Officers and Members, Parishes and County Council.

Mission: To capitalise on learning learnt through COVID 19 to better improve our services to maximise technology via our transformation agenda.

Impact: Improved access and to services, virtual transaction of Council services for example virtual meetings.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Enabling effective collaboration within Local Government Digital Services

Partners: Newcastle City Council, Sunderland City Council, North Tyneside Council, Gateshead Council, Stockton Council, and potentially other councils within the North East.

Mission: To establish the North East Digital Services group to make it easier for councils to share learning and solutions within local government digital services.

Impact: The participants in the group will benefit from; speedier development and deployment of local government digital services; development of common data sets and standards to facilitate closer working in the future; shared , problem solving and solutions.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: We are on a path to create brilliant digital experiences for colleagues and residents. Core to getting this right is a feedback loop that will constantly improve what we are doing, and the right training that will enable everyone to benefit. To do this, we need clear directions and a trained up collective of people that are motivated to help others on their path to digital confidence.

Partners: Barclays UK and their Digital Eagles Programme

Mission: Be very much on the journey to make every colleague feel confident themselves, and feel empowered to help others get confident and comfortable with a digital future. We also want to foster a culture of continuous improvement, encouraging our colleagues and residents to suggest new ideas.

Impact: We want to see every generation being confident with our digital services. We know that the most likely to benefit from digital access, for example the elderly who are less mobile, are often the least able to access services. If we can enable better access and confidence, people can be empowered and we can reduce our service costs. The intended level of 121 interaction will shape our digital future in a way that is tailored to real needs. There is a positive financial impact for our residents also; by sharing knowledge and skills that grow their ability and confidence online, this may aid them in becoming better off financially.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Using smart technologies to provide improved services for residents in a local care home

Partners: Southend Care

Mission: To utilise smart technology sets and equipment to deliver a range of services to provide a more enhanced and independent life-style for residents of the home

Impact: These services will enable the resident to be more self-reliant, safe, and have services to provide a more comfortable life style whilst they are resident in the home.

Commitment 2:

Title: Building a data warehouse as part of the Smart City - Intelligence Hub initiative

Partners: Local businesses, Local Service providers

Mission: To consolidate various data sets in one warehouse from where we can do better analytics, predictive analytics and machine learning. With predictive analytics we can ensure that public funds are targeted at the right problems/opportunities

Impact: This will improve public services and make better use of public funding.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Planning Viability Assessments - Create a digital service for assessing viability information from property developers, reducing manual administration and improving decision making by using data from multiple sources.

Partners: GLA, Future Cities Catapult (at Discovery).

Mission: Demand for affordable housing is high and growing, and councils need to be able to secure affordable homes in new developments. The data provided by developers during an assessment is not provided in a standardised format and the rules are open to interpretation. As a result councils find it difficult to assess and, where appropriate, challenge viability assessments. We will carry out a discovery phase to create a digital service for assessing viability information from property developers, reducing manual administration and improving decision-making by using data from multiple sources. We will work in the open and share the outputs of the discovery.

Impact: This will give property developer applicants clarity on the data and information required for viability so that they can reduce cost and delay in the development process.

This will give Planning Officers the ability to assess viability based on standard data and benchmark so that the right decisions can be made.

This will give residents appropriate amounts of affordable homes to be created in the borough so that there is a continuing diverse supply of housing in their neighbourhood.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Provide responsive digital services that meet the expectations of all our customers and stakeholders

Partners: Grancius, Netcall

Mission: Spelthorne’s mission is to ensure systems are secure & connected with high levels of integration. They will be scalable, future-proof and provide efficiencies. The data we hold will be accurate, appropriate, and relevant. Communication channels will be made responsive, simple and accessible – with no digital exclusion. Where possible, transactions and processes will be automated. Customers will be empowered to self-serve or find information via our web site & online portal – removing layers of staff interaction. A greater use of analytics and reporting will be introduced to measure performance and engagement – including customer satisfaction and feedback and to provide a better all in one service to our community.

Impact: The benefits are:

Increased Efficiency : This mission will help Spelthorne streamline processes and automate tasks, reducing the administrative burden and freeing up staff to focus on higher value tasks. For example, the implementation of an online customer portal and the utilisation of digital workflows and e-forms. This leads to significant time savings and increases the efficiency of our operations.

Cost Savings: Our mission offers significant cost in a variety of ways. The adoption of digital systems will reduce paperwork and manual processes, which leads to lower administrative costs. Our goal to move to digital communication channels will improve the speed and accuracy of communication, reducing the need for costly and time-consuming in-person meetings. The use of data analytics helps identify areas where resources can be allocated more effectively, potentially leading to cost savings. Finally, automation and the use of artificial intelligence will help streamline processes and reduce the need for certain resources, further reducing costs.

Better Decision Making: Greater use of digital tools will provide us with real-time data and analytics, enabling better decision making and more targeted interventions. For example, we can use smart metering technology to collect real-time data on energy use in buildings and other infrastructure and use this data to identify opportunities to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. By capturing and analysing data on our residents behaviour and service usage, we will identify areas for improvement and implement more effective interventions. We aim for this to lead to better outcomes for residents and demonstrate value for money.

Enhanced Collaboration: Our digital transformation mission will promote collaboration between departments and with other local authorities, enabling more joined-up services and better outcomes for residents. For instance, the adoption of common standards and platforms to improve interoperability between different systems and reduce the duplication of effort. This will lead to more efficient and effective service delivery and enable us to work more closely with other organisations to address complex challenges.

Upskilled Staff: We want to regularly provide training and development opportunities for staff to build their digital skills and capabilities, ensuring they are equipped to deliver high-quality services in a digital age. For example, MS Office training and better utilising our business applications such as SharePoint and Teams.

Engaged with Citizens: This mission will facilitate the opportunity to regularly engage with residents in order to understand their needs and preferences and involve them in the co-design of new digital services and initiatives. By engaging with citizens, the council will ensure that its digital services are tailored to the needs of its users, and that residents are engaged and informed about the changes that are being made.

Contribution to Addressing Climate Change: This mission has emerged as a powerful tool in tackling climate change and promoting sustainability. Leveraging digital technologies, the council and its staff will improve their understanding of the impact of their activities on the environment and take steps to reduce their carbon footprint. For instance the use of digital tools such as sensors and analytics will help us to optimize its resource usage and minimize waste. Additionally digital technologies are also facilitating the shift towards more sustainable practices. For example, the rise of hybrid working has reduced the need for as many employees to commute to work daily, resulting in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To complete development of existing auto-validator tool project including piloting with users and integrate with PLANX/RIPA project to improve user experience at start of planning process.

Partners: Agile and potentially work with Hertfordshire County Council, East Herts District Council and Dacorum Borough Council to explore County wide validation service.

Mission: To have 90% of planning applications validated by AI by using pre-defined statutory and local criteria to assist the technical officer and improve automation of validation process and to integrate this tool with PLANX/RIPA so that customers can better identify whether a proposal requires planning permission and is offered a user friendly system for submitting an application.

Impact: This project will improve user satisfaction and customer journeys. It will reduce human error and improve accurary and there is potential income generation.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Build a standardised re-usable, secure, accessible and affordable, digital portal for Education, Health and Social Care Plan applications, assessments, reviews and appeals for children with SEND.

Partners: Warrington MBC and Blackpool BC

Mission: The objective is to build a portal that will allow people to use a common system across different Local Authorities, will support standardisation of information and will break the vendor lock-in created by existing proprietary technologies.

Impact: The development of the portal will improve the digital journey for families of children with SEND, unlocking a pathway for high-quality consistent services, better information and decision making, better outcomes for children and increases the efficiency and transparency of the EHCP processes.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Local maps

Partners: Cannock Chase District Council

Mission: To provide the local community with a holistic view of local amenities, local plans and issues.

Impact: It is our intention to develop the local digital information via electronic maps to better inform the communities of the plans that could affect them. We intend to collate digital information into a single, easily accessible view.

We have been working on a pilot to draw together digital information from our planning systems, building control systems, land charges system, Council tax database, grounds maintenance, and waste collection information. We intend to import data from external agencies to supplement our own data.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Promotion of Smart Working & Collaboration

Partners:

Mission: We will support and empower our staff to work in a flexible and open manner, by giving users the tools and skills they need to work collaboratively with colleagues and partners. We will achieve this through the roll out of Office 365 online tools.

We will review and upgrade our systems and processes to enable users to work using the devices they prefer (via BYOD) and from the location that is most appropriate for them.

We will actively promote the user of Microsoft Teams to be the application of choice for messaging, meetings and voice services.

Impact: · Improved collaboration with colleagues and partners

· Reduction in email traffic as collaboration on files will take place within Teams, as will information sharing.

· Reduction in time lost travelling to meetings

· Improved pace as colleagues can meet immediately via Teams rather than waiting to gather in one location

· Increase productivity

· Improve information sharing as all relevant information on a project will be saved in one Team site

· Reduce risk of silo working

· Increase staff satisfaction

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Research into a FOI solution to assist with citizens’ FOI request experience regarding Council’s FOI handling and improving council processes to make it easier for local authorities to manage FOI requests more easily.

Partners: Stevenage Borough Council & East Hertfordshire District Council Cornwall Council Hackney Council

Mission: • To design better processes for FOI handling by use of technology to improve FOI services for our citizens and staff. We’ll do this by working with our partners and MySociety to use agile research approaches to inform better processes for FOI request handling to improve citizens’ FOI journey and engagement with local authorities.

• We’ll work with our Partners to research and collaborate with a number of councils and their experiences of FOI handling, and what their users need of the service. We’ll then use this research to inform the development of a FOI solution that any local authority could use to improve its FOI service quickly and in line with the Declaration principles.

Impact: • The aim of this project is reduce the time, cost and resource of FOI handling by streamlining processes with the use of technology to improve the FOI experiences.
• It will help councils that handle FOI requests eliminate the unnecessary manual processing of FOI requests and reduce the number of repeated FOIs that councils receive, saving councils money.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital Stockport

Partners: Content Management System - Essex County CouncilFamily Context Information Sharing - Surrey, Worcestershire and Leeds CouncilsDigital Data Protection Impact Assessment - Greater Manchester Combined Authority

Mission: To use digital and design skills to build better partnerships and services for Stockport.

Impact: To share the learning of Stockport's Digital by Design programme and build collaborative development partnerships to further exploit our existing open source products for the benefit of all local public services.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Customer self-serve and automation of Tip Permits.

Partners: Darlington Borough Council

Mission: We will create fully automated end-to-end processes enabling customers to order, pay for and use tip permits.

Impact: The project aims to improve the Customer experience by providing options for self-serve and automation for the application and use of tip permits and to reduce Council costs by redesigning the current manual processes.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Review of customer contact - identifying barriers to digital contact

Partners: Newcastle Under Lyme Borough Council - TBC

Mission: We are currently encouraging people to connect with us via digital methods and have improved the web site and accessibility generally to provide a simple and quick process. However we are still seeing a general increase in the more traditional methods of contact, in particular, telephone and face to face. A primary example for us is the lack of take up of automated payment methods with customers still preferring to pay via traditional methods.This is bringing additional pressures to our contact centre and face to face locations and recognizing we have to maintain these offers in terms of customer contact but we would like to investigate new ways of working such as improved digital contact such as AI and any other new approaches to digital contact. We want to understand why this is happening and what we can change to encourage more online contact and improve our overall customer experience whilst introducing more efficient process.

Review of customer contact
Identify any barriers to digital contact
Identify new digital solutions that could remove barriers

Impact: Improved customer experience via digital contact methods
Faster and more consistent response to requests for customers

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Effective and Efficient Processing of Revenue and Benefits applications

Partners: East Devon District CouncilExeter City CouncilTeignbridge District Council

Mission: To explore how feasible it is to create a customer focused, configurable , cost effective IT system for processing revenue and benefits applications

Impact: Potential for a new IT system to be developed for all local authorities to process revenue and benefits applications.

The aim is to create a 'state of the art' platform, which can be easily integrated in other authorities systems in an effective manner with the need for expensive middleware, whilst enabling easier and less costly system modification.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Making a committed move to Digital

Partners: Various

Mission: To provide more services online to residents

Impact: To allow residents to transact with us at a time of their choosing

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Modernisation of Council services

Partners: Communities, Members, IT vendors and an HR consultant

Mission: Within a year of signing this declaration, we expect to have improved our employee proposition such that our people are better able to power our services, improved our connection with the District community in order to better understand and serve its needs, re-engineered many of our most important processes (implementing some via a Digital Platform for increased self-service), and significantly improved the resilience and security of our technology services.

Impact: The Council-communities relationship will be improved by the Council adopting a more 'conversational' approach to dialogue that is based on listening to needs and framing responses that are appropriate within regulations and using data that is appropriate to each community group. Our communities will also benefit from the greater channel choice we offer. For example: our Digital consumers will be able to access our services 24 x 7. Those unable or unwilling to use these services will be able to access other channels and enjoy improved servicing due to more optimised processes, 'safe' hand-offs and enhanced servicing behaviours. The Council's officers will be better equipped and supported in order to perform their duties in a more consistent manner and to the highest of standards.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Suffolk Cloud Procurement

Partners: Suffolk County Council, East & West Suffolk CCGs, West Suffolk Hospital Trust, Ipswich Hospital Trust, Ipswich Borough Council, Suffolk Coastal, Waveney District Council, St Edmundsbury Borough Council, Forest Heath District Council, Mid Suffolk & Babergh District Councils

Mission: To provide a single public sector network throughout Suffolk for public authorities to use including the building of new infrastructure and associated management services.

Impact: Demand aggregation of network costs by buying everything under one contract with Suffolk County Council acting as the anchor tenant. Improving the way information and systems can be shared between organisations allowing for improved integration between Health & Social Care and other public sector organisations. Other benefits include users from across organisations will be able to work in buildings further improving the ability for the organisations to work together and improved connectivity for wider businesses and residents of Suffolk due to the presence of improved infrastructure being available in 10 towns within Suffolk.

Commitment 2:

Title: Blue Badge Application / Renewal Management

Partners: Department for Transport (DfT) – national service provision

Mission: To automatically interface with the application form that is being centrally developed by the DfT, to streamline / automate our internal workflow processes and develop our own digital workflow solution to automatically issue a blue badge with minimal manual intervention.

Impact: To members of the public: Full digital process, Improved turnaround times, secure online payments, regular communication, able to submit evidence at the time of application, straightforward user journey
To staff: Reduction in manual processing, all required information received at the time of application, payment received at the time of application, automatic communications to the customer, digital dashboards to aid service management.

Commitment 3:

Title: Suffolk Information Partnership

Partners: Suffolk County Council plus 15-20 local voluntary community sector (VCS) organisations e.g. Age UK Suffolk, Suffolk MIND, Suffolk Family Carers, Citizens Advice, Sue Ryder, Healthwatch, Suffolk Libraries etc.

Mission: When a partner identifies that a person's support need could be met by a service provided by another voluntary sector organisation / community support service, we will make a direct online referral to the third-party organisation, removing the need for phone calls and data re-keying. This will be done by our in-house developed online referral management platform that will be used by all partners helping to streamline the handover process, with the appropriate mechanisms of consent and data sharing built in.

Impact: To staff: Full digital process, no manual intervention, secure transmission of customer information, seamless process in making the referral to a partner organisation, better interaction with the voluntary sector and those community services that are already available.
To Third-party organisations: Improved quality of referrals due to required information being provided at the outset, customer data received in a secure manner, referral received without any delay and customers taking up services that are already available to them.
To customers: a tell us once approach to supporting needs across a range of multiple partners across Suffolk. Seamless and secure handovers between organisations enabling the best placed organisation(s) to meet the customer needs.

Commitment 4:

Title: Suffolk Registrars Service

Partners: All Suffolk Registry Offices but as this is a service that is provided nationally all LA’s responsible for Registrars services could benefit from learning / reuse.

Mission: Our plan is to implement a single fully end-to-end digital platform for the public and our back-office teams, we will streamline the existing process, use fewer software applications and provide a straightforward user journey.

Impact: To members of the public: Fully end-to-end digital process, secure online payments, electronic communication, easily accessible, self-service appointment bookings.
To staff: Fewer software applications to be accessed and supported, all required information received at the first point of contact, automated communication with the customer, payments can be made online for additional ceremony services, digital dashboards to aid service management.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Contaminated Waste – to redesign our recycling services to ensure that our collection of waste is effective.

Partners: GOSS, Bartec and regional Councils

Mission: To redesign our digital services for refuse collection, enable mobile working and educate residents on recyclable waste to reduce missed bin service requests and waste penalties. To work with partners and allow other regional local authorities who have Goss and Bartec digital tools to use our findings to improve their own service offerings quickly and in line with the Declaration principles.

Impact: To ensure our digital services for recycled waste are fit for purpose, meet the needs of customers and enable the council to achieve local and national objectives. This in turn will encourage more people to recycle, save money for the Council and improve the environment. Other councils will benefit directly from the findings.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Use automation tools to help reduce cost and save time related to manual tasks in Adult Social Care.

Partners: Orbis partners (Surrey County Council, East Sussex County Council, Brighton and Hove County Council)

Mission: To use agile development and design thinking techniques to identify opportunities for reducing hand-offs, improving processes and removing pain points key Adult Social Care processes. We’ll do this through the creation of an Automation Innovation Centre that will bring together expertise and develop best practice for automation projects, which can then be applied to further services.

Impact: The project aims to create capacity within the Adult Social Care service by saving time spent on manual processes. By using RPA we hope to give social workers a little more time to focus valuable professional skills on residents and in doing so increase service availability and user satisfaction.

Commitment 2:

Title: Understand the digital service offer for Surrey residents and identify what can be done to improve digital inclusion.

Partners: Citizens Online, local districts and boroughs and various third sector partners (to be determined)

Mission: To conduct research with our staff and partners to assess our existing online service. This will help us to identify gaps on what isn’t offered online for Surrey residents and ask ‘Why don’t we? Would it be useful? The research will also consider how our services are accessed by people who aren’t online and highlight how this can be improved.

Impact: We want to ensure no-one is left behind in the move towards more digital services. This project aims to help to identify where and how we could take work forward to improve and increase our offer for residents and ensure the switch to online does not exclude people.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Implementing a digital platform

Partners: Royal Borough of Kingston

Mission: Lessons on implementing a new digital platform

Impact:

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Publishing in HTML over PDF

Partners: Maidstone Borough Council

Mission: As part of new accessibility legislation and following on from a review of good practice we are trying to develop a better way of publishing things such as our corporate strategy into a html format to make it more accessible.

Impact: We can ensure that as many people as possible who want to read our publications will be able to in an accessible way.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Excellent local digital services

Partners: BaNES, Swindon and Wiltshire CCG

Mission: Swindon has aspirations to use data and digital service in a way services can be better designed for local residents and the public can access as much of their data in an open standard way.

Impact: We intend to be able to deliver better services better suited to residents, more modern, efficient and effective with more focus on meeting specific local needs.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Making SEND Digital: Improving data intelligence to inform decision making

Partners: Tameside Council, Manchester City Council, Salford Council, Oldham Partnership

Mission: To be able to produce high level data intelligence around children and young people with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND) via weekly, monthly, annual and ad hoc reports that are live, accurate and easily accessible. Financial and operational data will be integrated to make more informed decisions on how best to plan, deliver and fund SEND provision.

Impact: Local Authorities will be able to use data intelligence to better plan resources and consequently improve outcomes for children and young people with SEND.
We will be able to ensure that there is a suitable balance of specialist provision, matching the needs of children and young people in the borough.
Finance departments will better understand the sustainability of educational support in future years to ensure that needs are met.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improve Customer Contact through Cloud Based Telephony and improved website

Partners: Salesforce, Aspire CRM, Smarter Digital Services (SDS) & Ring Central and Purple Creative

Mission: Within a year the Council will have moved to a fully cloud hosted telephony solution that will provide a much more intuitive and enjoyable experience for service users. We will have implemented Mulesoft and be sharing data unilaterally across the organisation to build a much more digitally capable organisation with reduced process times and streamlined processes.

Impact: Residents should benefit from a better experience when they contact the council, and staff should see processing times reduced, resulting less duplication of effort and more efficient processes.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Tees Valley Digital Strategy

Partners: Darlington Borough Council, Hartlepool Borough Council, Middlesbrough Borough Council, Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council

Mission: The Tees Valley Digital Strategy sets an ambitions target for the Tees Valley to become a Smart Region by 2032 – using world-leading digital infrastructure and innovation to create opportunities for all residents and businesses. Within the first year (2022) we will publish a Strategy Delivery Plan providing details of how we plan to deliver our ambition, working together with partners and stakeholders across Tees Valley to deliver across digital infrastructure, innovation and inclusion and skills.

Impact: The delivery of the Tees Valley Digital Strategy aims to have impact across three key foundations:

• Digital Infrastructure - ensuring affordable, high-quality digital infrastructure connecting people to each other, people to businesses, and businesses to markets, forming a foundation for economic activity and community prosperity, enabling the development of digital technologies, digitisation of business and investment
• Digital Innovation - driving digital innovation across the Tees Valley, enabling the development of a Tees Valley Smart Region, supporting business growth through digital innovation, enabling businesses to make technology led decisions and raising the profile of the area as a hotspot for digital innovation. This also includes digital innovation across public services, working closely with public sector partners to enable key digital innovation projects.
• Digital Inclusion and Skills - ensuring the benefits of the internet and digital technologies are available to everyone, while ensuring the supply of Tees Valley residents with high-level digital skills meets employer demand.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Enterprise Content Management / Enterprise Information Management

Partners: Exeter City CouncilEast Devon District CouncilStrata Solutions Ltd

Mission: Enterprise Content Management systems (ECM) or Enterprise Information Management (EIM) systems, enable the effective management of multiple data stores across an organisation / or multiple organisations under one centralised platform.
The primary outcome of the Electronic Content Mgt project is to deliver efficiency savings through more effective access to multiple data and content sources via a single front end application. We are in the process of developing a detailed business case, to perform research, to identify benefits and to produce pricing for an alpha project.

Impact: • Version Control of documents- i.e. one version of the truth, rather than multiple version of the same document
• Ease of information discovery – search and find information across a multitude of information stores in one go
• Contextualised information. i.e. when I want to find information on “Java” – the EIM will understand that it’s Java the coffee bean I’m interested in, not the country or programming language.
• Better Security – know what information has been accessed, when and by whom, and have more controls on restricting data access
• GDPR – search for all information on individuals across the whole organisations in one place.
• Data archiving and retention – manage data retention in one place
• Collaborate – multiple users can contribute to a single document in a managed and co-ordinated way
• Workflow – management of the flow of information through an organisation, leading to greater efficiencies in information usage
• Business Process Mapping – links with improving managing key and departmental business processes
Improved organisational efficiency and the customer an improved customer experience with availability of customer information for mobile officers working in the field and less duplication (eg provision of ID data)

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Creating an online smart referral form for adult social care.

Partners: We aim to work with our local health partners

Mission: The aim is to reduce inappropriate referrals and ensure that people get the right help at the right time from the right service. The form will help us to better manage our demand and ensure that those most in need are provided with timely support whilst helping others to maintain their independence.

Impact: A more streamlined referral process, quicker decision making process, reduced need to chase information, reduction in inappropriate referrals.

Commitment 2:

Title: Digitalisation of cemetery maps

Partners: none as of yet

Mission: To improve the current process from a paper based system to a digital system

Impact: Improved productivity and accuracy of existing records

Commitment 3:

Title: Develop a council wide booked appointments solution that can be configured to meet the needs of an array of services.

Partners: none as yet

Mission: To imporve access to council services in the digital age

Impact: 24 hour access to main council services, giving people the option to book appointments with professionals online for an array of services.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Essex Digital Partnership (Previously Essex Online Partnership) Property-Based Work Programme

Partners: Basildon Borough Council, Braintree District Council, Brentwood Borough Council, Castle Point Borough Council, Chelmsford City Council, Maldon District Council, Rochford District Council, Southend-on-Sea Borough Council, Tendring District Council, Uttlesford District Council

Mission: To work as a collaborative partnership to baseline and agree common standards of digital architecture, data-sets, development standards and shared/ adopted best - processes and practices across the range of local authority property-based services

Impact: Standardised 'best' property-based services will homogenise Essex local authority services enabling residents, customers and businesses to engage 'seamlessly' across Essex removing 'localised' service-boundaries. This will additionally facilitate future shared-services / pooled resourcing opportunities and enhance efficiency and drive down operating costs. It will establish a roadmap for future homogenised and unified partner technology adoption to better serve residents and their engagement and transparency needs.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Council tax and business rates e-billing

Partners:

Mission: At present we only issue paper bills for council tax and business rates, however as part of our expansion of digital services to residents and business we are keen to offer council tax and business rates payers the option to receive their bills electronically.

Further, in Business Rates Information Letter 3/2016 it was stated that Government intended to make it a mandatory requirement that business rates payers will be able to choose to receive bills online by April 2018. Following the decision not to reintroduce the Local Government Finance Bill, BRIL 7/2017 confirmed that the Government no longer intends to introduce a mandatory statutory requirement for ebilling by April 2018. It also states “nevertheless, the Government remains committed to modernising the billing process and encourages those billing authorities who don’t currently offer electronic billing to continue to develop this capability”.

Impact: This approach will enable us to provide more choice and a better service as well reducing the costs of administration, paper and postage costs. If successful, we would look to extend the range of documents we issue electronically to include benefit notification letters.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Moving our Emergency Planning Process from manual to digital driving a robust, reliable and proven plan in support of an emergency situation.

Partners: Thanet District Council - LeadCanterbury City Council - collaborative partnerDover District Council - collaborative partnerEmergency services and other external bodies as required including Resilience Direct

Mission: To deliver an effective and up to date digitised emergency planning management process that can be subsequently deployed to other districts and local authorities nationwide. Through effective, timely information share, appropriate use of resources and clear accountability of tasks that can be used in the event of a emergency situation. The process and solution will complement Resilience Direct initiative.

Impact: - Reduce any level of public and service risk associated with an out of date emergency plan in the event of an actual emergency.
- Ability to update, share and access information in a digital format
- Detail clear defined roles and planned timing of interventions in the event of an emergency situation of all parties
- Methodology to capture testing of emergency planning
- Ensure any solution is accessible by relevant internal functions or external bodies, including emergency and community services.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Simplifying the digital process

Partners: Firmstep

Mission: To review all current digital forms on our platform and create a best practice for form design. We’ll do this by researching other councils' digital platforms and comparing submission rates on online services against digital form designs. We will also run user focus groups to help identify unnecessary questions on forms and understand users' concerns in submitting enquires via digital channels. We’ll then use this information to create and document a best practice on form design to use across digital platforms.

Impact: The project aims to remove barriers that people currently feel are in place that prevents them from making reports via digital channels. By the end of the project, we would like to have a documented best practice around form design. This would look to ensures people have an efficient way to submit enquiries online on a platform that they are comfortable using. As a result, this would see reduce the number of calls to contact centres, saving councils money.

Commitment 2:

Title: Licensing applications on a digital platform

Partners: Firmstep, Idox

Mission: To design a best practice way to allow people to apply for applicable licences online. We’ll do this by reviewing all current paper application forms that we currently have in circulation and redesigning them so they fit our digital platform. We will also explore the possibility of integration from our CRM into our back office system to develop a more efficient process when handling applications.

Impact: The aim of the project is to reduce the printing out of documents for applicants and as a result reducing the carbon footprint. By turning the form into a digital process we can ensure the correct documents are submitted with the application and as a result improve efficiencies when handling applications. As a result, this should reduce the number of calls back office staff make to applicants chasing documentation and the number of calls received into the contact centre around the application process, saving councils money.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Reduce social isolation, improve mental and physical health and wellbeing bringing the community together, improve digital knowledge and skills.

Partners: Oomph!Public HealthAdult Social Care - Local Area Co-ordinators and Community Lead Support TeamsReach Out for Mental HealthLocal Community HubsOther housing departments, Financial inclusion and well homesVoluntary sector: Thurrock Stronger TogetherLocal Community Groups: Re-Engage and The ArcIntergenerational projects with local schoolsLocal libraries who will support with digital training directly to the community

Mission: To improve community links and inclusion for the elderly and vulnerable. Reduce social isolation and improve daily general health and wellbeing through a variety of activities, that link the community and generations.

Impact: Improve health and wellbeing, including mental wellbeing. Enable people to communicate through digital inclusion. Stay fit, well and health and reduce social isolation.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Engaging the Non-Digital Native Colleague

Partners: Gravesham BCSmarter Digital Services (SDS) - Tunbridge Wells BC

Mission: Initially, a full investigation into how the non-digital native perceives service redesign and the introduction of digital solutions (in its widest sense) within the Council and how this sits alongside their role within the organisation.

A report outlining the current digital picture and what, if anything, needs to be done to ensure colleagues that have not grown up with technology are provided with a comprehensive set of resources to provide them with full support in using digital tools.

A tick box template detailing digital concepts to which the council has subscribed, designed to provide colleagues with a full understanding of digital rationale and direction.

Impact: Colleagues that may previously have felt peripheral to digital are provided with context and understanding of the digital agenda.

The culture of the organisation will see a shift towards further and better understanding of the digital agenda.

The council has made significant inroads and are into the second year of our 4 year Digital strategy (2019-23)

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Poor customer service in high transaction volume services due to reliance on multiple digitally fractured systems and processes.

Partners: Stage one, to which this commitment refers: Torbay Digital Inclusion Network. Stage two will bring in multiple partner agencies.

Mission: Complete Beta testing of new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System in specific service areas to prove following headline requirements have been met:
-Customer/Member/Supplier/Location 360 degree view and golden records for included service areas linked to legacy case data outside of the CRM for in scope service areas;
- Web portal and case management functionality including Chat Bot for development into virtual assistant;
- Common platform for end-to-end digital services included in Beta phase;
- Integrations with line of business systems to enable end-to-end digital services;
- Reduction in single use applications where functionality can be delivered through CRM and MS365 product suite;
- Community engagement platform and tailored push communications according to customer preferences and organisation requirements;
- Full reporting, linked to Power BI according to business need;
- Go live with Digital Advocacy Service.

Impact: Through Beta testing we will prove the system in specific service areas prior to full adoption across the organisation. We will see the following high-level impacts in this first stage:
- Improved 24/7 digital customer service resulting from, but limited to, mission objectives above;
- Improved telephone/in person customer service due to support from a common CRM platform for Beta service areas;
- Custom profile for tailored engagement on local issues and opportunities;
- Improved data quality management and security;
- Lower cost per transaction;
- High income opportunity per period for relevant transactions;
- Simplification of application estate and associated costs for licensing and support.

Success will be measured through a matrix of qualitive and quantitive KPIs using both CRM engagement and reporting capabilities.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: What digital services do customers want and how do they want to access them.(Once base data has been established, it is envisaged that this will lead to the development of a common digital footprint)

Partners: Mid Devon CouncilNorth Devon Council

Mission: The provision of accessible digital services that deliver what our users want and not what we believe they want.

Impact: The provision of fit for purpose common digital solutions.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improving the conveyance process to prevent delays in property transactions

Partners: London Boroughs of Southwark, Hackney and Waltham Forest

Mission: We plan to use spatial analysis to provide an online con29 service which will assist the conveyance process ensuring there are no delays in property transactions. We will develop an On-line solution to administer the Con29 service which will assist the conveyance process ensuring there are no delays in property transactions.

To design a web-based solution and a Data Store using Open-Source technologies. We will be researching user needs, identify the available data sets and work towards a standardised data format. This will enable LA’s to feed in their datasets to the Data-Store which will enable the online web-solution to provide the con29 service. We will also be looking to identify the best framework to be utilised to enable easier future development of the online tool and data store.

Impact: The project aims to
•identify what user groups are most likely to use the website and how they might use the website
•understand what options and channels would be most efficient for people to use the website
•produce assets that will be reusable by other local authorities. In particular:

A user research report that gives us an understanding about the most effective way to create a new website and the stages that need to be gone through in order to achieve this

A minimum viable product to validate whether the website can be a success and highlights an immature product that needs to be tested. This will entail producing a prototype and qualitative research.

The identification and specification of platforms, people and technology necessary to deliver the website

A report setting out a process for the delivery of the project

A report that identifies follow on workstreams that would be required
Look at the delivery of the Con29 online service within the context of a Council-wide approach

LB Tower Hamlets to be used as the example and then look at the other boroughs to see if there is a standard format that could be considered

A communications plan of how we can provide this information to other councils and services

A report that will highlight pain points in the process

A user journey map

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improve efficiency and the Citizen experience with Exchequer Services

Partners: FutureGov

Mission: Automate manual processes, reduce the number of exceptions and improve system integration with the Benefits process. Improve the Citizen experience with the Change in Circumstances process, including the online form and back end processing. Improve the bulk update process for Social Landlords.

Impact: Automation will reduce the time spent on processing updates and ensure that records will be consistently more up to date. Improving processes and systems integration will reduce the volume of exceptions for manual updating; resulting in the team spending less time on these tasks and a more efficient service. Improving the on-line experience will ensure that Citizens are more satisfied with the manner in which their claims are handled, their claim will be processed quicker, and more people are likely to use the on-line service.

Commitment 2:

Title: Improve the digital skills, confidence and access for those that are digitally excluded.

Partners: Trafford Housing Trust; Trafford College; Trafford Partnership; Trafford VCSE Sector; UA92; Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Growth Company, Thrive, NHS Trafford CCG.

Mission: Create a social movement within Trafford to tackle digital inclusion. Launch a grant scheme to support VCSE organisations to deliver digital inclusion initiatives. Implement a device loan scheme to provide access to those unable to access digital services. Implement a digital community coordinator to provide support and training for those needing to develop their digital skills.

Impact: With digital expected to form an increasingly important role in how businesses operate and people communicate following Covid-19 we need to provide as much support as we can to address digital inclusion. This is particularly relevant as the Council will be increasing the range of services it provides digitally. This project aims to increase the digital skills, confidence and access for people who are currently finding it difficult to engage with an increasingly digital world.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Local government as a platform

Partners: Maidstone Borough councilSwale Borough council

Mission: Within a year of signing the Declaration, we hope to have investigated and understood the requirements for a new operating model for local government based on the government as a platform methodology.

Impact: Ultimately, the aim of this work is to save the taxpayer and the council money over the long term. We hope to identify the capability and technology required to run all of local government, reducing expenditure on big inflexible systems and developing more responsive, user-centric services that help people serve themselves online, as well as delivering services efficiently.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: We want customers to be able to help themselves, and to access the right information, for the right services at the right time. A specific example of this is improving the customer journey of a Blue Badge application.

Partners: Other LAs, suppliers of digital hardware and software solutions, wider stakeholders across the district.

Mission: Over the next twelve months we’ll be looking to:
• embed a culture of innovation, evidenced by engagement and collaboration throughout the organisation
• deliver a programme of 12 digital improvements and evidence that they directly impact the people of Wakefield
• turn our data into intelligence, filling gaps where necessary, to ensure that our digital improvements meet the needs and expectations of our customers
• create channel shift – reducing the number of face-to-face and telephony enquiries through the creation of a good self-serve offer.

Impact: We want to create digital services so good that customers choose to use them. This will help to reduce demand on traditional contact channels releasing resource to add more value to complex enquiries, and improving the customer experience.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Council Tax Arrears Collection

Partners: Barnsley Metropolitan Borough CouncilBirmingham City CouncilBolton CouncilBradford Metropolitan District CouncilBrighton & Hove City CouncilCornwall CouncilEaling CouncilIslington CouncilEastbourne Borough CouncilKirklees CouncilLewes District CouncilManchester City CouncilMedway CouncilNewham London Borough CouncilNorth Hertfordshire District CouncilRotherham Metropolitan Borough CouncilSalford City CouncilSouthwark CouncilRoyal Borough of Kensington & ChelseaWakefield CouncilCarmarthenshire CouncilCity of WolverhamptonCoventry City CouncilDudley Metropolitan Borough CouncilSandwell Metropolitan Borough CouncilSolihull Metropolitan Borough CouncilWalsall Council

Mission: At 31 March 2018, the total amount of council tax outstanding in England amounted to £3 billion (cumulative from the introduction of council tax in 1993

For 2017/18, Local authorities in England collected £27.5 billion, with arrears of £818 million, approximately 3% uncollected.

Our mission is to collect more council tax to maximise funding for local services, thus benefiting local residents. It will help ensure that those able to pay do not avoid their responsibility whilst identifying those who cant pay or are vulnerable and in need of assistance.

Impact: Our business case supports an approach which we believe can increase collection rates for all councils across the country as well as reduce the amount of unpaid Council Tax outstanding from previous years. The increase in collection will help increase resources available to Councils and limit reductions in key service areas, where it matters most.

Commitment 2:

Title: Improved Customer Access & Management

Partners: Agilysis, PWC, Microsoft and Socitm

Mission: Our mission is to: improve and modernise the way our customers access council services provide the best in class to anyone interacting with us do things right, first time, every time make services accessible to help reduce inequalities and maximise potential.

Impact: Updated and compliant web pages - improving the experience for residents and reducing demand at the "front door" Installed a CRM to improve our customer data and experience - create a single record for a customer where possible, log and track requests, review feedback etc.
If we do this right we will improve: • Service user outcomes and Customer experience • Employee satisfaction and commitment • Service efficiency and performance • Resilience in Partnership arrangements and engagement.
We will measure this by: • Capturing regular feedback and learning from it • Making our feedback methods so everyone has the opportunity to take part • Setting performance measures and developing an action plan which helps us to improve Customer experience for all.

Commitment 3:

Title: Enabling Support Services - Creating an internal portal for employees to self service common queries and manage demand for internal services

Partners: PWC and Microsoft

Mission: Enabling and Support Services (E&SS) will reduce duplication of effort across the business and make better use of our resources. The Council will deliver trusted, customer focused, and supportive enabling and support services, which are recognised by customers and our partners for the value they bring.

Impact: Improved internal processes - Implementing ESS will allow the council to reduce duplication in requests, review workloads easily, review progress of requests, and create a streamlined and efficient experience for employees to request internal services. This will therefore increase capacity for staff to focus on their core tasks and deliver on the council outcomes.

Commitment 4:

Title: Installation of Programme Management Software - Verto

Partners: Verto Microsoft

Mission: To create tools to support our Programme Management and Change centre of excellence.

Impact: This will create easy access across the council to review our projects/programmes - review utilisation, quality of data, benefits management and dependencies. This will create increased levels of assurance for key stakeholders within the council and support transformation projects and programmes.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improving citizen digital interactions

Partners: Coventry Council, and other local authorities

Mission: Work with other authorities to redesign our citizen portal to be even more intuitive and drive digital adoption. Initial project will improve FOI applications using Firmstep software.

Impact: Easier, more customer-focused interactions, and boost channel shift.

Commitment 2:

Title: Data analytics and cloud technology

Partners: London Borough of Hackney and other local authorities

Mission: Explore how modern cloud technology can help the Council get the best insight from the data we hold, to ensure we focus our services on greatest need and drive more efficient working.

Impact: Drive better and more efficient working at relatively low cost.

Commitment 3:

Title: Rollout of Gigabit broadband

Partners: GLA, Local London, TFL, DCMS

Mission: Work with government and industry to incentivise the rollout of Gigabit broadband to the premises / households in our part of London.

Impact: Better speed and value internet access to all our citizens and businesses, boosting business growth, access to services and skills, and investment.

Commitment 4:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Digital Planning Service

Partners: Lead Authority: London Borough of Southwark, Partners involved: London boroughs of Brent, Lambeth, Lewisham, Waltham Forest, Ealing, Westminster City Council and Gateshead Council.

Mission: Deliver a digital planning service where information is inaccessible and can be navigated, interrogated, searched or interrogated by council staff, Councillors, residents, businesses, developers and others.

Impact: A user research and technology solutions based report that gives us an understanding about the most effective way to create a new digital service and the stages required. This will set out who service users are, why they find it difficult to navigate the service, what information they need, which technology, binary, rules based systems and ease of navigation for the user. This will use Southwark as an example, followed by how this can be replicated nationally with example partner boroughs
how their service users are, why so many users tend to find it difficult to navigate the web, what information users need, and what alternative kinds of web tools and interfaces (eg search functions or 3D interactive elements) that would make that information more intuitive and useful, and how that information can be pulled into digital services; so it comes to the user, instead of the user needing to find it
A minimum viable product to validate whether the website can be a success

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Data and insights needs for Early Help services

Partners: Other local authorities

Mission: Early Help services: “Early Help” (EH) services are preventative support for children and families, aiming to act “early in the life of the problem” before issues escalate and become more serious – better for families and more cost effective for councils. EH:
1) Helps avoid escalation to statutory services (social care, youth offending etc.)
2) Helps families deal with issues such as housing, debt and health, leading to healthier, happier and more prosperous communities
3) Builds the positive connections with families that are harder for statutory services
EH is therefore a strategic priority for many councils
Financial pressures: With rising needs, decreasing budgets and few other options, many councils, instead of investing, have turned to cutting these services: EH budgets have reduced >40% 2012-2017 (NAO). Worryingly, these financial pressures will escalate significantly over the next two years as: 1) 10% of councils are expected to exhaust their reserves (NAO) and 2) phase 2 of MHCLG’s £920m “Troubled Families” programme, which has funded much EH support, comes to an end in 2020.
No common data – 1) Nationally: Unlike social care and education, there are no statutory guidelines and datasets for EH services, meaning that every council follows a different approach to EH itself, and in particular to collecting and analysing EH data.
2) Locally: In addition to this national variation, as EH is often funded by multiple commissioners and delivered by a range of services within a council, often with separate legacy systems, there can be significant variation, duplication and inefficiency in the EH data that is collected within a council area.

Impact: Lack of visibility and evidence: With no common datasets, there is limited visibility of EH, even on basics such as what services are provided and what families are supported, both nationally and within localities. This makes it difficult to: 1) understand, improve and coordinate EH services and 2) evidence the impact of and business case for EH.
Inefficient recording and reporting: Local differences often make EH Reporting difficult and inefficient for services and analyst teams, with services in some areas reporting with multiple different datasets and systems to different funders.
Assess if there is potential for a shared solution to these issues through understanding:
1. What insights are needed to manage and asses performance of EH, and what operational data is required by frontline practitioners, to see if there is sufficient commonality of needs for a shared solution
2. Current best practice to assess if there are shareable solutions already in existence
3. Current services, data, tech and processes, to assess feasibility of shared solutions
4. The impact of better evidence, to assess the business case for collaboration
There are two major workstreams:
1. Mapping the “as is”: Review current approaches across councils to understand what data/metrics are available, what systems are used and what EH services operate
Outcome: understand what level of commonality there is currently, what the potential to share is and how feasible common approaches could be
2. Insight needs research: user research with leadership, commissioners and EH teams to understand what decisions they make, how these are made, what evidence is required to inform them and what evidence is available currently.
Outcome: understand the common insight needs and gaps and the impact of better data

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Build an Alpha version of a cross-Council shared SEND portal.

Partners: St Helens Council, Blackpool Council

Mission: Build a first iteration of a solution based on an open source products, with an agreed process model and defined data standards. Create a platform suitable for evolution into a Beta solution.

Impact: Build a re-usable, affordable, EHCP portal that will allow people to use a common system across different Local Authorities, will support standardisation of information and will break the vendor lock-in created by existing proprietary technologies.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Using Service Design and Agile project delivery methods to create an improved Noise Nuisance service

Partners: None

Mission: We are using Service Design and Agile project delivery methods for the first time at the council to improve our Noise Nuisance service. We have already completed our Discovery phase, conducting user research and gathering other data to really understand the current service. Upholding the Digital Declaration principles, we have been working in the open both internally and also sharing our findings with the wider Local Government community. We are now going to take the Discovery findings and work up some iterative improvements to the service, testing as we go.

Impact: The aim of this exemplar project is two-fold:
• We will make improvements to the Noise Nuisance service that will benefit both our customers and also the staff who deliver the service.
• We are also learning how to use Service Design and Agile project delivery methodologies so that we can improve other services across the council.

Commitment 2:

Title: Create a Local Government Application Managers Network

Partners: Bradford Metropolitan District Council

Mission: We will create a network for Application Managers across Local Government to collaborate better, share ideas and good practice, knowledge and resources. We are building on a pilot network that we launched in 2018 which has already proved beneficial to members as they juggle the conflicting demands of supporting the business as usual while meeting the aspirations of their authorities’ transformation programmes. We are also planning to research the feasibility of creating a secure database of the Business Applications used by each member’s authority. Having this information in a single database will make it easier for Application Managers to work collaboratively with other local authorities at all stages of a Business Application’s lifecycle.

Impact: The project will uphold the declaration principles, particularly in enabling local authorities to share their plans and experience, work collaboratively with other organisations and reuse good practice. We believe that this network will drive digital innovation and may even help to break our dependence on inflexible and expensive technology that doesn’t join up effectively.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Enabling Digital Deliberative Democracy so that our citizens are engaged, and their views are represented

Partners: To be confirmed

Mission: We want to increase the participation of our citizens in the consultation and decision-making process by making it quicker and easier for staff and partners to find suitable groups to engage with. Consultation and engagement groups may be developed within individual services, with only that service aware of their existence. Breaking down these silos and bringing greater awareness to staff and partners of the groups available to us for our consultations and engagement activities could provide a more diverse and representational range of views from our citizens.

Impact: * A method of sharing details of community groups across our staff and partners, including details of their specialist areas of interest, geographic areas covered, preferred methods of communication and engagement. This could also include a record of how recently and often these groups have been consulted with to avoid 'burn out'.
* An improvement in the design of WCC and partner consultation and engagement activities so they make full use of appropriate groups available to the whole organisation and use the preferred engagement methods of those groups.
* Training for staff and partners around the use of the solution and how to make best use of this resource while planning and delivering activities.
* Ultimately, a greater take up and a wider range of views that are more fully representational of the diversity of Warwickshire's citizens.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Exploiting LPWAN technologies to deliver transformation in local authorities

Partners: Digital Catapult, Giosprite, IoT Solutions

Mission: To identify opportunities and develop solutions to use IoT technologies to transform the way local authorities operate away from a culture of checking to see if something needs to be done to a new culture of doing things that need to be done and thereby actually doing more of what is needed and it costing less. Initial projects are concerned with developing solutions for parking, footfall monitoring and litter bins.

Impact: Local authority - reduce costs of operations
Residents:
Parking - new datasets regarding availability of on-street parking spaces; more efficient enforcement regime reducing the numbers of illegally parked vehicles; new data sets about availability of taxis in ranks
Litter bins - reduced detritus due to reducing the numbers of overflowing bins

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To provide the residents of Waverley/Surrey with options to contact and transact with the Council(s) digitally.

Partners: Waverley Borough Council and Surrey County Council initially. Possibly extending to Farnham Town Council and Godalming Town Councils.

Mission: We want to increase and maximise the number of services customers can access and transact business with us by automation and digitilisation. We will do this by reviewing and re-designing the processes underpinning customer contact. If necessary we will invest in our infrastructure and work with our partners to create channel shift options where they do not currently exist, providing a business case can be made to do so.

Impact: We are aiming to increase the number of automated transaction routes customers can use if they choose to do so and simplify accessibility to services provided by both Surrey and Waverley Councils. We will be promoting these new facilities with a view to increase web access and reducing telephone calls and footfall. Once we have achieved this we will be able to reduce staff resourcing of these areas. Ultimately we are anticipating increased customer satisfaction (services already automated show very high satisfaction returns) and reduced cost of service provision.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Alternative ways of providing customer access to Council services

Partners: Open to working with organisations with the same objectives.

Mission: To produce a service via voice-activated technology (i.e. Alexa) available to customers, this is to be decided, however, is likely to be regarding waste, for example "When is my next bin day".
To pilot the use of automated chatbots for dealing with customer enquiries over the phone. Our current plan is to use this initially for our internal ICT helpdesk.

Impact: To find ways of encouraging digital behaviour using customer-friendly means.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital platform implementation and CRM replacement

Partners: Sopra Steria

Mission: To provide customers with a single user account to access a range of council services and replace the existing customer relationship management system (and other legacy systems) with a single platform. The platform will be a key component of our core technology stack, which will enable digital service redesign and transformation across Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council.

Impact: Improved self-service options and fewer single-service customer portals.
Increased end-to-end processes and automation, resulting in improved customer satisfaction and efficiencies.
A reduction in the number of systems in use and a simplified technology infrastructure.
A single view of the customer.

Commitment 2:

Title: Virtual Healthy Hub

Partners: Hertfordshire County Council, Goss Interactive

Mission: As part of the Hertfordshire Healthy Hub programme, we’re developing a virtual hub that enables residents to get free information, advice and support to help people stay healthy and well.

Impact: By utilising the NHS’ free syndication programme, we will be combining approved NHS health advice and tools with local health, well-being and sport service providers. The virtual hub will enable 24/7 access to services and provide localised information about health, events and training opportunities.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital by Design Day

Partners: Oxford City Council and any other council that wishes to use it.

Mission: We will share our open source election dashboard, used successfully at the 2019 local elections in West Berkshire, working with Oxford City Council with any other council that wishes to use it

Impact: Councils will be able to better display election results at their count venue and on the internet, making access to the results of the democratic process easier.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digitising customer services to increase customer engagement and enhance digital experience

Partners:

Mission: We will research the customer needs for all services so that we better understand what we can deliver digitally to customers. We will redesign the way people find information on our website about local services and how they access them.

Impact: Enhanced and focused service delivery.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: We're seeking to solve prevalent Public Sector issues concerning data collection, dissemination and collaboration that are often attributed to proprietary "system-centric" approaches (vendor lock-in, inflated-costs, complex integrations, prohibitive licenses, barriers to change etc.)

Partners: Our open source approach welcomes input from any organisation, no matter the sector or department (we've had high-profile contributions from a multi-national and Central Government Departments). Potential users of the platform include other Fire Services, wider Emergency Services, Schools, Local Businesses, Local Authorities & Health.

Mission: To develop a modular, open source software platform, built using modern software engineering practices and open standards, that will allow non-traditional developers to create, maintain and share their own data-collection forms and workflows.

Impact: Any end-user can manage their workloads from a single, modern app. This creates an excellent user experience and improves organisational efficiency. Subject matter experts can tune and refine their own processes and data-content to drive continual improvement. Digital overheads are reduced due to a holistic approach to system design, container-based deployment and centralised user-management. Organisations can contribute, shape and improve their core software as they see fit, or use modern API techniques to proxy legacy systems. This approach also helps drive central initiatives such as shared software developments, inter-operability and best practice.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To support transformation in problem solving using collaborative human centred design and digital techniques. Building on the close partnerships formed in Northamptonshire and to support Covid 19 recovery and reset work

Partners: North Northamptonshire Shadow AuthorityNorthamptonshire County CouncilEast Northamptonshire CouncilKettering Borough CouncilCorby Borough CouncilBorough Council of WellingboroughNorthampton Borough Council Daventry District CouncilSouth Northants Council

Mission: To create a capability in service design and to ensure that the new unitary councils create technology platforms that can create end to end services, add value to users and enable transformational service outcomes for the new authorities.

Impact: Transformational impact as we move from a largely on premises, product centric IT infrastructure to a more agile, user centred design culture with a platform of enabling technology with reusable components. The 8 councils in Northamptonshire have been working together to form two unitary councils. Our response to the Covid 19 pandemic has highlighted how well we can work together to achieve outcomes for our service users and given us a strong platform to build on. Increasing our capability to build digital, data and technology solutions to support our teams will further improve our resilience and support the cultural change in the new unitary organisations.

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW (merged from LGSS): Blue Badge Digital Service

Partners: Cambridgeshire County Council, Northamptonshire County Council, Milton Keynes Council

Mission: To deliver a blue badge digital service using reusable shared capability to replace the BBIS service being retired.

Impact: An end-to-end digital service that adds value for end users - customers and administrators

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Digital and Technology Strategy

Partners: Agilisys, partner Councils

Mission: To develop a comprehensive digital and technology strategy for the West of England Combined Authority that supports delivery of our Council Plan and Mayoral priorities.

Impact: - Clear direction for how digital and technology will help us deliver our priorities.
- Secure and reliable services.
- Improved digital capability and capacity.

Commitment 2:

Title: New cloud environment and GIS system

Partners: Agilisys

Mission: - To complete work with our strategic IT partner to deploy a cloud-based technological estate using Microsoft Azure.
- To provision cloud hosted SQL database servers for the storage & consumption of geospatial data.
- To develop a fully functioning Geographic Information System (GIS) that helps visualise mapping data for our users and helps inform decision making.
- To reduce dependency on external consultancy and systems.
- To grow our geospatial capabilities.

Impact: Using Platform as a Service (PaaS) technologies, we will be able to quickly spec, configure, deploy and maintain GIS databases to suit our business needs. Staff will be able to access a single source of truth for geospatial data, without searching through inconsistent, poorly formatted, often out of date file-based datasets. Building a GIS using open-source technologies (PostgreSQL for GIS databases) allows us to better control our GIS data without restrictions. Using industry standard tools like PostGIS and QGIS, staff will be able to undertake complex geospatial analysis to fully understand and resolve our regional challenges.

We commit to sharing our learning with other councils.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Developing a platform across multiple local authorities and organisations

Partners: Cheltenham Borough Council / Cotswold District Council / Forest of Dean District Council / Ubico Limited / Publica Group Limited

Mission: We will commence a programme of redesigning and moving all our low complexity, high volume services to a new digital platform to start to build a single view of the customer and ensure all initial customer contact is managed through a single access point regardless of channel. Initially the programme will start with migration of services currently handles through legacy CRM systems but will move onto reimagining and redesigning other services and moving them to the platform.

The platform will facilitate a single customer contact record which is shared across Publica’s partner councils and this will test the ability to build a scalable and flexible data model to manage customers across geographical boundaries where they deal with more than one Council.

Further phased work during Summer 2019 will extend the solution to facilitate easy to use and accessible web self service with the ability to track a case progress online.

Impact: Increased customer satisfaction through improved feedback loops and visibility of case progress
Ability to offer consistent levels of service regardless of customer channel choice

Automation of low complexity tasks and case routing

Ability to design and develop a single platform to cater for the distinctive local policies set by each of the partner councils

Reduction in the number of systems that customer service agents have to log into to respond to a query

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Improving Verification Services post COVID

Partners: Other Local Authorities, private plus 3rd Sector as appropriate

Mission: To simplify the process of Self Verification through adoption of new working practices and associated technologies to provide a safe, secure and reliable verification/validation service. The project also focuses on and seeks to protect, and enable our more vulnerable groups to access Council Services, safely, easily and securely.

Impact: Greater take up of services by those in most need of them.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: First Assist - an App for expectant and new parents across West Sussex

Partners: District and Borough Councils, Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust

Mission: To improve access to information and support for expectant and new parents – providing online advice and guidance through pregnancy, birth and beyond.

Impact: A Best Start in Life is one of the Council's core strategic objectives and a priority commitment to our community. Working to increase the ease of obtaining quality advice and guidance for new and expectant parents - along with opportunities to connect with others to build resilience, the First Assist App will support early development and learning for our youngest residents. The App will be developed and rolled out across the county.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Creating a Customer-Focussed On-line reporting system to better capture the needs of our residents and customers.

Partners: We have consulted with Bromley Council in our quest to incorporate best practices in our new project. Other partners will be identified and incorporated after a successful procurement process is conducted.

Mission: To ‘Keep Customers at the Heart of Everything’ we do, we will be designing an on-line reporting system that incorporates first and foremost, the desires of our residents/customers - creating an ‘easy to use’ format that will encourage them to use this approach for any concerns within the community. At the same time, relevant information will be captured for internal departments responsible for addressing customers’ concerns and needs. We will do this by hosting a customer engagement period, involving customers in an agile intuitive approach and joint application development; focus groups with the developers, and the use of analytical tools to measure customers’ activity.

Impact: The aim of this project will be to better meet the needs of residents and external customers, while at the same time reducing our costs (with a reduced call centre and a saving of £145,000 for the cost of licence from the previous Evolve system) and to encourage a higher take-up of customer reporting.

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: To investigate the use of open source software to support the ongoing development of the website

Partners: Other councils looking to embrace similar technology

Mission: We will delivered a new open source search tool on the website, and identified other areas where this technology could support our aspirations to provide an improved customer experience of our website. We aim to create a product that could be used by other authorities or partner organisations and will share our experiences in developing this.

Impact: An open source search tool will enable us to deliver an improved service, to our customers, the success which will be measured by improved satisfaction of our website and improved analytics in terms of people being able to access the right information. We also hope to demonstrate the benefits of open source in terms of it enabling us to take control of developments rather than relying on third party software developers, and to also deliver cost savings as a result

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Increase digital engagement and skills for all our residents, to have everyone who possibly can be digital included.

Partners: Agilisys Digital & Taskforce Partners

Mission: Encouraging people to develop digitally, enhancing creativity by making technology available. Encourage digital engagement and enhancing skills by offering courses at a higher level for our residents.
Roll out the Duke of York iDea Silver Award across the community to adults, children and our workforce. We will aim to complete this by:
o Offering digital courses, such as get online and coding sessions by working in collaboration with our taskforce partners and volunteers
o Offering residents access to computers within our Libraries and Life Centres so that they can interact digitally with us, and enhance their skills. Updating our digital access points within our Libraries and Life Centres.
o Promoting the Duke of York iDea Silver Award by blending this with current/future digital sessions and events to show how this can support our residents and help with digitally enhancing their skills. Linking in with schools, colleges, residents and staff.
o Having a presence at local community days, college days, youth events to promote iDea
o Have our Digital Taskforce partners completing the Silver Award to enhance their digital skills and then for them to encourage residents to sign up/signpost iDea awards.

Our Digital Taskforce who is a collective of individuals from the private, public and voluntary/community sectors, who live and/or work in Wigan Borough and are committed to working with people, groups, businesses and organisations across the borough to support the development of the area through ‘digital’.

Impact: Aim to have everyone who possibly can be digitally included by 2020 to enhance their digital skills and building self-reliance. This will:
o Support vulnerable groups / older people to get online to reduce social isolation
o Build confidence and improve residents digital skills to help with job opportunities, and interacting with us digitally
o Encourage more people to get online by offering free PC access across Libraries and Life Centres using better equipment
o Broaden the understanding of digital and to gain both basic and advanced digital skills
o Building on existing digital skills to a more advanced level to upskill our residents.

Commitment 2:

Title: Develop an Integrated Care Organisation

Partners: Wigan CCG & WWL

Mission: Developing the Healthier Wigan Partnership and specifically focusing on how we can integrate community health and care services in a way that will enable individuals to look after their own wellbeing, was developed as part of an agreement between Wigan Council and our NHS Partners across the borough. This agreement is called the Deal for Health and Wellness, and it’s a plan to ensure that the whole health and care system in the borough can be financially sustainable and support good outcomes for people.

Impact: Our aim is to Initial scoping needs to be completed as part of the developing Healthy Wigan Partnership (HWP) which will help to form the clarity on work needed to integrate workflows and information flows between Health & Social Care, (Primary, Acute, Community and other care settings) as well as integrate staff and IT estates into a single operational form, with an outcome which provides a prioritised solution & delivery model. Which will provide:
• Improved information sharing & Streamlined information flows
• Aligned back office systems
• Rationalisation of systems and processes and teams in line with IT Reform and Transformation.
• Further rollout of existing system access to wider partners
• Agile working & co-locating
• Digital online citizen/patient records
• Better connected communities

Commitment 3:

Title: Develop an Integrated Care Organisation

Partners: Wigan CCG & WWL

Mission: Develop a Mini Town to within an area of the borough, to demonstrate the impact of sensor tech and evaluate if this technology can provide wider offering to the council.

Impact: To test a number of solutions which would help in realising efficiencies across the services which allow the authority to work smarter by reducing unnecessary travel, removing non essential ‘jobs’ from day-to-day work, focussing on what is needed.

o Winter Sensors for Gritting Trucks
o Pothole Sensors
o Waste Management
o Cemetery Management
o Drainage

This discovery piece would:

o Carry out data/technical analysis to identify a suitable geographical area
o Define key processes/workflows
o Define cost/benefits
o Develop sensor technology options & use cases for Alpha pilot

Commitment 4:

Title: Single view of a child's record

Partners: Schools, Police, GP

Mission: We want to on-board wider partners as part of multi agency working, including primary and secondary schools to directly access and input Early Help Referrals directly into the system. We want to provide a single system view for Children’s records to key agencies which will help to inform them to provide safer, more informed services wrapped around the need of a child.

We would like to deliver a supported and structured training path to over 200 schools and wider partners on the system.

Impact: The model will concentrate on provision of introduction skills, specific initial training on the system and process with the schools and follow-up on-site support days, providing skills workshops and user group management for the schools to embrace the benefits of the new system.

This project will deliver:
o Single view of a child’s record across multiple systems to external partners
o Secure, accurate, real time access to a child’s record
o Improved information sharing
o Support Ofsted Social Care
o User confidence & supported deployment
o Reduced admin time
o Less duplicated data entry

Project commitments:

Commitment 1:

Title: Information Security Assurance Design

Partners: MHCLG, CESG, private sector IS specialists

Mission: Setting our course for information security assurance in a post PSN and Covid19 setting

Impact: Shared materials and description of the approach Wiltshire has taken in setting our revised standards and assurance framework for information security using existing industry standards.

Commitment 2:

Title: UNDER REVIEW: Use of robotic process automation in the end-to-end digitalization of services undertaken for the public.