Filter

Download data in a CSV file: Full applications

Projects submitted

Browse project applications from Rounds 1 to 3 of the Local Digital Fund. Since Round 4, we no longer publish all applications on our website. However, you can find applications for successful projects on their individual project pages.

Optimising data usage to improve services to our communities

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…

Understanding digital exclusion and inclusion in Local Government

We would like to learn more about digital skills, exclusion and inclusion in relation to local government digital services and understand how to reduce non-participation and improve the delivery of those services in ways that put users first. Existing data is often out of date, at local authority level, and…

Homelessness prevention through digital innovation

This project aims to address rising homelessness affecting councils across the UK. We would like to see how this can be controlled and prevented through early intervention. Our vision is that this could be achieved through self-service and using digital tools & technology. A pre-discovery in Nottingham with the Housing…

Pathfinder integration of health and social care systems

The 12 North East Councils wish to progress their digital ambitions by doing the necessary preparatory work to ensure our digital system architecture is ready to plumb into the regional HIE and social care clientele are fully informed about how we will share and use their data. Supported by ADASS,…

Building Capability: Digital Commissioning and Supplier Relationship Management

Across local government generally there’s a lack of skills in digital commissioning; recent engagements have evidenced gaps in understanding / knowledge on: how to most effectively use commercial agreements procurement and digital / technology teams working together effectively At a local level Hackney is looking at how to build skills…

Scaling service design and agile methods to transform services

Councils increasingly have transformation teams with digital skills but they tend to be small teams struggling to manage the demand from services wanting digital change. There have been small scale successes with design sprint and agile discovery projects utilising GDS’ methodology, however traditional council governance, culture and structure make it…

Simple Sign On

Local Authorities have made significant progress in providing digital services to the public. As this journey continues it is becoming increasingly apparent, both from customer feedback and professional teams, that the ability to provide a simple and seamless authentication process across multiple case management systems is needed to make the…

Re-Designing Planning Application Advice

All local planning authorities face a common problem in terms of significant numbers of the applications found to be invalid.  This is frustrating for service users and an unnecessary cost for all involved. We don’t fully understand why users struggle to submit valid applications; whether they have the necessary tools,…

Strengthening Information Governance, Ethics and Data Standards

The ability to use data better has benefits for councils, their public sector partners, and citizens. However, as local government strives to make better use of data assets, issues of privacy, confidentiality, cybersecurity, and ethics emerge, particularly around data linkage, analytics, and the use of predictive models. For data linkage…

Digitisation of Bereavement Services

The processes within B&NES Bereavement Services for burials, cremations and memorialisations are inefficient and outdated meaning the service is unable to maximise income generating opportunities.  A discovery project would uncover ways to build capacity and create efficiencies to both improve the customer experience and support the growth of the service.…

Supporting households at risk of homelessness

The nature of homelessness has changed in the past decade. In the first quarter of 2008, 20% of households that were accepted as Homeless in England had lost their rented or tied accommodation, by the first quarter of 2018 this had risen to 31%[1]. As rents continue to increase[2] at…

An online digital solution providing a Con29 service

HMLR Local Land Charges (LLC) project aims to streamline the LLC ‘service’. Its scope did not include the second element of the current service i.e. provision of replies to questions, which are prescribed in the law society ‘Form Con29’. Completion of the form and provision of a copy of the LLC…

Proving the use case for Open Data

The purpose of this project is to develop a repeatable methodology to build use cases to support the release of open data. The current method of releasing data, to meet commitments under the Local Government Transparency Code, does not systematically take account of user needs in the use and reuse…

Headless CMS Platform for Local Government

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…

Registration of births

North of Tyne would like to look at  the process of registering of births. There is a considerable amount of manual work and paper processes involved which puts an added burden on registrar staff. In Northumberland and Newcastle there were over 11,000 births.   Each one requiring a face to face…

Mapping Children’s Journeys Through Children and Family Services

Problem: All Councils struggle to understand and monitor how children move between statutory and non-statutory social services. This can make it much harder to make informed decisions on service delivery and often results in children bouncing between services without accessing the right support. Despite local authorities collecting data on children…

Processing FOI, EIR and SARS requests for GDPR

North of Tyne Councils have been struggling with the challenging process of FOI management. There is a considerable amount of manual work and paper processes involved which puts an added burden on information governance staff. We currently get over 3200 FOI requests a year, over 400 EIRS and over 100…

Meeting FOI Demand through Assisted Self-Service

Problem Statement The Freedom of Information Act 2000 gives the UK public a ‘right of access’ to information held by public authorities including central government departments, Parliament, the armed forces, local authorities, the NHS, universities and police forces. These public authorities have a duty to respond to FOI requests within…

Why can't we use that cloud system?

There are so many major open source products available but the vast majority of councils continue to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on traditional services from the traditional companies like ‘Microsoft Office” as an example. We could be using Gmail/GSuite or other software and this is just one example.…

National Land and Property Gazetteer API development

Problem: councils struggle to implement modern APIs for local address lookup which resolve unique property reference numbers (UPRNs), so where digital services are developed by or in collaboration with third parties, those solutions must rely on expensive, closed NLPG APIs that offer poor usability for end users and/or frustrating onboarding…