South Lakeland District Council

Enterprise Digital Platform and Blueprint for Operation.

Both Eden District Council and South Lakeland District Council are in the process of developing, configuring and implementing a common Enterprise Digital Platform, which has a single customer record and online account at its heart.

We have a common approach to dealing with customer registration and account operation within the platform and we are developing a framework which allows us to develop truly digital processes. These processes will be accessible through an online portal 24/7 but our design does not alienate existing channels of delivery. We are developing integration with other key systems such as our Geographical Information System (GIS) which is cloud based and shared across both councils and our enterprise document management system which is also shared.

The GIS integration is key because we can use spatial data to automate processes based upon geographical boundaries. Large portions of the GIS platform we use are open source and we are working with a supplier to develop integrations to automate tasks.

We are planning to reduce the number of systems we operate within the councils by replacing functionality with new digital processes built within the digital platform. An example is that we are building systems in the digital platform to replace our ageing Planning, Building Control and Land Charges systems and have these fully integrated with the new Digital end to end processes, customer accounts and online portals.

Our design ensures full compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation requirements as part of the design of processes and starts the councils on a journey of turning data into a valuable asset which will be used as part of strategic decision making, reducing demand and improving the way services are delivered.

As part of the development we would like to create the capability to link our corporate customer accounts to the national verify scheme and Government Gateway or its replacement.

An overall design principle is for the blueprint to be inclusive and for it to be used by partner organisations as well as customers.

The products created as a result of this work will be a working demonstrable build and blueprint of a true enterprise class and GDPR compliant digital platform which is built around a central customer account and digital by design service transactions, enhancing the customer experience across all channels and the Councils’ operating model whilst realising the financial benefits.

We can demonstrate how enterprise systems can be deployed and how integration can enable separate systems to be used, through the use of interfaces, to improve efficiency and help automate tasks that are considered to be manual with existing systems.

Discovery evidence

The Councils have been through a process of developing a business case, requirements’ specification and running a joint European procurement exercise and after approval in 2016 at full council meetings, entered into a single contract with a digital platform provider. We have other joint contracts for GIS and Document Management suppliers. These contracts are managed though a Shared IT Service which has been in operation for over 6 years delivering technology improvements to both Eden DC and South Lakeland DC.

We have robust joint governance arrangements in place coordinating the work, with a joint board, and joint project manager along with input from staff across the councils.

The key drivers are :

• Reduce the complexity of operating the many systems that exist within Local Government
• Enable an online delivery channel (portal) backed up by redesigned digital end to end processes that bring a high level of automation
• Enable the single view of a customer
• Privacy by Design and wider Information Governance requirements
• Store Data once and re-use as required in services provided to customers
• Enable partners to take part in our digital processes in an efficient digital way
• Reduce the operating costs for Business as usual activities provided by the councils, creating savings and generating capacity
• Create an Enterprise platform that is fully GDPR compliant