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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.

Exploring issues around a sharable model of IoT standards for security, interoperability and data so that emerging IoT applications can be incorporated into a standard framework.

Council name: Roayl Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Not funded

Internet technologies around IoT are promising radical improvements in how we serve our residents and businesses. This gives rise to a range of emerging opportunities to achieve significant social and economic benefits for our communities. However, we need to make sure that we put people first and foremost in this…

Exploring a Digital Data Tool to Accelerate SME led House Building

Council name: Gateshead Council

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Status: Not funded

The alpha stage of the project will be the development of a digital planning tool (the Tool) which will be a live functional prototype based on Gateshead Council data to support the SME house building industry. The project objective is to develop a product that is scalable to the extent…

Exploring a digital self led Care and Support Assessment (CSA) to identify an individual’s strengths and support requirements.

Council name: Coventry City Council

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Status: Not funded

This alpha will explore and test the hypotheses that a digital triage tool, combining a best of breed web app with carefully constructed animations will enable clients, and their immediate support network to self-serve elements of their care act assessment. In turn this will determine their strengths and outcomes and…

Exploring an evidence-based, shared and scalable digital resource approach which enables local authorities to match technology enabled care with older adults' needs in order to deliver efficiency gains.

Council name: Birmingham City Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Partners: Shropshire County Council, Worcestershire County Council, Worcestershire Telecare, Solihull MBC, Goldfish and Aston University

Status: Not funded

Themes: Adult social care

We collected evidence during our initial LDF project that slow progress and duplication was due to the lack of a sector specific structure, organisation, and network for coordinating efforts across the West Midlands. The problems and causes revealed by this project were:  1 - No single technology product suits all…

Exploring and expanding the use of predictive modelling to understand future demand for children’s social care

Council name: Suffolk County Council (SCC)

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Status: Funded

Suffolk County Council has developed a prototype open source model which has revealed new insights about the care pathways of children in care and projects future placement needs, working in partnership with Mastodon C: https://github.com/MastodonC/witan.cic The model and supporting data analyses address the following user stories: As a child in…

Exploring and prototyping a common service pattern for online housing repairs

Council name: London Borough of Southwark

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Partners: City of Lincoln Council, South Kesteven District and the Royal Borough of Greenwich

Status: Funded

Themes: Housing repairs, Website improvement

From our discovery, we identified council tenants’ and leaseholders’ user needs and barriers for going online to report and book a repair and that a common service pattern for online repairs is possible.  For the alpha phase, we want to explore and test:  Whether the ideal user journey and wireframes…

Exploring barriers to household recycling and testing whether helping residents to quickly and easily identify if an item can be recycled, how to prepare it for recycling, and what alternative disposable methods are available, would increase recycling rates.

Council name: South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Not funded

Recycling rates vary across the UK and range from 14.1 - 64.5% of household waste sent for reuse, recycling and composting (source:  DEFRA, 2017/18 figures).  The three Local Authorities involved in this project (South Tyneside, Sunderland and Stockton) are in the bottom quartile of this list with household recycling rates…

Exploring citizens’ views on data use so that local government can secure public trust and maximise the value of data.

Council name: Bristol City Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Not funded

A recent Select Committee report concluded that “the Government does not understand citizen’s views on how their data should be used” (https://bit.ly/2k2U1P0). This knowledge gap problem exists at national, regional and local levels. Recent regulatory changes and high profile cases of data and privacy misuse has heightened public awareness, interest…

Exploring cross-local government User Research: can one council learn and improve the same statutory service from another council UR insights?

Council name: London Borough of Croydon

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Funded

Local authorities experience common problems – dealing with increasing demand, reduced budget and as a result less staff. They are also experiencing a vast set of common goals and needs – improve user journeys, simplify contact, reduce inefficiency, make it easier for users to access care, find information, apply and…

Exploring Customer Identity Management and Shared Digital Services between Districts and County to save costs on shared services and improve customer experience at local government level.

Council name: South Norfolk Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Not funded

We would like to look into how we can, as separate authorities, deliver joined up digital services to our collective customers, as if we were a single authority, but maintain council identities over a shared service platform. The separation of District and County services is not understood by the general…

Exploring debt poverty (the causes, residents’ responses, access to services & information, approaches to debt management) so that we can develop a more holistic and effective approach and alleviate some of the current problems for our residents suffering debt poverty.

Council name: Sunderland City Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Not funded

Debt poverty is an issue that affects all Local Authorities in the UK. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that approximately 22% of people in the UK are living in poverty. Problem debt is defined by the Family Resources Survey as “being behind with any household bill or credit commitment” and…

Exploring digital capability and confidence, to enable tailored training programmes to be developed to drive the take up of digital servicing

Council name: Salford City Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Not funded

Across all councils there is a desire to encourage residents to move to online servicing. This creates a better and more efficient service in the community and reduces the cost to serve, reduces the time to delivery and creating a more satisfying experience.   We know that the members of…

Exploring error identification to improve data and evidence on children in care

Council name: Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA)

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Partners: Wigan Council, Manchester City Council, Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, Department for Education, Milton Keynes Council, Isle of Wight Council, West Berkshire County Council, East Sussex County Council, Buckinghamshire County Council and Bracknell Forest Council

Status: Not funded

Themes: Children services, Health and social care record

Our discovery highlighted that keeping Looked After Children (LAC) data accurate is time-consuming and difficult. Consequently, leadership often don’t have the reliable insights they need for key decisions. (See p.22 for full user needs.) In alpha, we’ll explore different solutions to this problem and test our biggest assumptions and risks,…

Exploring error identification to improve data and evidence on children in care

Council name: Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA)

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Status: Funded

Our discovery highlighted that keeping Looked After Children (LAC) data accurate is time-consuming and difficult. Consequently, leadership often don’t have the reliable insights they need for key decisions. (See p.22 for full user needs.) In alpha, we’ll explore different solutions to this problem and test our biggest assumptions and risks,…

Exploring exercise-based smartphone apps to improve health outcomes related to poor physical activity levels and digital literacy in users with learning disabilities and their carers.

Council name: Kingston Upon Hull City Council

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Status: Not funded

Research in Sport, Health and Exercise Science at the University of Hull has seen the development of an exercise intervention which shows significant improvements in a range of health markers (strength, power, functional fitness, wellbeing).  A smartphone app which facilitates the delivery of the exercise intervention has now been developed. …

Exploring GDPR impact on planning data-sharing projects in local borough areas and possible interventions so that data-sharing projects can be designed and implemented with confidence that GDPR requirements are met

Council name: London Borough of Hounslow

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Not funded

Councils and partners collect large amounts of data in the course of their work, which if joined up could bring much greater insight and better inform policy and strategy design. However much of this data is collected for a specific purpose, project or for compliance with particular legislation and is…

Exploring how Internet of Things (IoT) devices can enable vulnerable residents to be more independent in their home, promoting preventative intervention, augmented by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Council name: Cornwall Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Not funded

National picture   Nationally and locally, health and care systems need to manage the inevitable challenges of increased demand, expectations and reducing finances.   Across the UK, there are baseline objectives which underpin reform to achieve this: a whole population approach to improving health, regardless of health status, eligibility or…

Exploring how local authorities can effectively engage people and develop their cultures to successfully implement digital transformation.

Council name: Rushmoor Borough Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Not funded

Local Authorities are undertaking digital transformation so that we can meet our residents’ raised expectations. We have had some success digitising services but found it harder to engage our staff and develop our cultures. We believe there are some factors limiting full digital transformation: Difficulties engaging with people and creating…

Exploring how residents’ voice searches can help them find the information they need across multiple websites.

Council name: East Sussex County Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Not funded

Residents often struggle to find the information they need due to website design. This project seeks to explore how access can be simplified to make the experience more human, avoiding the need for the resident to drill down through multiple pages or even across multiple websites. How do we make…