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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 ways to record children and young people's health data electronically to reduce cost, both financially and socially.

Council name: Royal Borough of Richmond upon Thames

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Not funded

The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames and The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead own an organisation called Achieving for Children. Achieving for Children  is contracted to deliver statutory children's social services on behalf of the three Local Authorities.    Through consultations…

Exploring what Early Help service heads need to analyse performance so they can improve the quality of their services and make the business case for continued funding

Council name: Wandsworth Borough Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Funded

Introduction Early Help (EH) services support families with issues including domestic violence, substance misuse, mental health problems, poverty, family issues and others. EH services act before problems escalate and builds good relationships between families and councils. Users EH Service Heads oversee EH locally. They’re typically sector experts, having worked previously…

Exploring whether voice is a step-change in how customers interact using technology and if it is, how we might best approach designing the voice experience for customers of council services so that sector-wide efforts are consistent and employ best practice.

Council name: Tunbridge Wells Borough Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Not funded

This discovery project breaks into three parts a common problem facing local authorities; The first part of the common problem is understanding whether voice truly represents a long-term change in user behaviour or is simply a novelty with a short shelf-life. Over the last couple of decades, local authorities have…

Exploring Wi-Fi print solutions to reduce silo investigations, enable better purchasing decisions and open up collaborative purchasing efficiencies between authorities.

Council name: Nottingham City Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Not funded

This Discovery Project looks to explore Wi-Fi print solutions so that local authorities have a greater understanding of the available solutions in the common marketplace and can make better informed purchasing or development decisions on the best solution to meet their demand, budget, audience and environment. [SEE LOCAL DIGITAL FUND…

Exploring wider use of the Ministry of Justice open source correspondence tool to support better case management of FOI requests and SARs

Council name: London Borough of Hackney

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Partners: Cornwall Council and Greater Manchester Combined Authority

Status: Not funded

Themes: Freedom of information

During our previous project looking into better case management of FOI and SAR requests, we were approached by the MOJ about an open source correspondence tool that they developed and use internally. We investigated the tool, made some rough prototypes on how it could be expanded to match the capabilities…

Family Context in Children's Services

Council name: Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Partners: Leeds City Council (Clare Walker), Surrey County Council (William Balakrishnan), Worcestershire Office of Data Analytics (Neill Crump)

Status: Funded

Themes: Children services

Problem and objectives With 12 other councils, we identified that we all face a common problem with getting information about a child’s family (from basic details to understanding relationships and risk factors) for Children’s Services decision making. Not having this information readily accessible makes it harder to judge risk and…

GOV.UK Pay as a viable alternative e-payment provider

Council name: North East Lincolnshire Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Partners: GDS GOV.UK Pay team, Publica Group (Cotswold DC, West Oxfordshire DC and Forest of Dean DC), Allerdale Council, Oxford CC

Status: Funded

Themes: Local government as a platform

LAs should use GDS GaaP products; GOV.UK Pay has processed >£93m, yet LA adoption is slow to adopt with concerns about if GOV.UK Pay can be their sole e-payment system. The GOV.UK Pay contract model is financially beneficial for LAs but their feeling is that challenges & integration costs with…

Headless CMS Platform for Local Government

Council name: Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Partners: SMBC, Essex County Council

Status: Not funded

Themes: Content management system, Website improvement

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…

HIVE Digital Innovation

Council name: Portsmouth City Council

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Partners: Hampshire County Council, Gosport Borough Council

Status: Not funded

Themes: Adult social care, Chatbots, Children services, Communities, Digital inclusion, Digital skills and capability, Directory of services, Homelessness, Independent and assistive living, Libraries

The fundamental issue to address as part of the project is to produce a one-stop-shop of all services across the city. Currently there are multiple databases and multiple service providers, from the statutory & voluntary sectors, often providing overlapping services. Equally residents and patients currently need to have an understanding…

Homelessness prevention through digital innovation

Council name: Nottingham City Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Partners: Mansfield District Council, Ashfield District Council

Status: Not funded

Themes: Artificial intelligence and robotic process automation, Digital inclusion, Digital skills and capability, Homelessness, Website improvement

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…

Housing Options for Older People

Council name: Greater Manchester Combined Authority

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Partners: London Borough of Haringey, London Borough of Islington

Status: Not funded

Themes: Adult social care, Care assessment, Directory of services, Housing/Planning

Local authorities have a duty to ensure that people can get the information and advice they need to make good decisions about care and support, including preventative measures such as attention to their home circumstances. Yet cost constraints, as well as lack of expertise, make this challenging. We want to…

Housing repairs online - improvement

Council name: London Borough of Southwark

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Partners: City of Lincoln, Gravesham Borough Council, Lewisham Homes

Status: Funded

Themes: Housing repairs

This discovery aims to define a common service pattern for housing repairs and understand: barriers to adoption of digital repairs services The elements best suited to self service Optimal uses of technology to improve user satisfaction, reduce costs, which may not be the initial logging of the repairs Work on…

Hydration Innovation – exploring a digital solution to improve hydration in care home residents

Council name: North Somerset Council

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Status: Not funded

A full PDF of application with diagrams will be sent to [email protected] The Discovery Phase of the Hydration Innovation project was supported by a £30k grant from the Local Government Association (LGA) and NHS Digital (NHSD) ‘Social Care Digital Innovation Programme’.  A 78-bed dementia care home in North Somerset provided…

Improving outcomes for vulnerable adults after hospital discharge

Council name: Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Partners: Optalis, Wokingham BC, AWS, Thought & Impact

Status: Not funded

Themes: Independent and assistive living

We are seeking to address a strategic priority of the Council Plan; to enable older residents and vulnerable adults to live independently & a strategic main theme of our Joint Health & Well Being Strategy; to enable residents to maximise their capabilities & life chances; specifically to improve the outcomes…

Information Technology Projects Financial Flows Integration

Council name: Colchester Borough Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Partners: Brentwood Borough Council, Castle Point Borough Council

Status: Not funded

Themes: Data standards sharing and modelling

The majority of IT enhancements to business area improvements do not significantly consider the impact to Income Management and Finance Systems. All too often these areas end up with supplementary reports and manual processes which take up officer time and reduce department efficiency. Our proposal is to identify core financial flows…

Intelligent Process Automation of Back Office services

Council name: Suffolk County Council

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Partners: Suffolk County Council, Babergh District Council, Mid Suffolk District Council, East Suffolk Councils (Waveney and Suffolk Coastal), West Suffolk Councils (St Edmundsbury and Forest Heath), Norfolk County Council

Status: Not funded

Themes: Artificial intelligence and robotic process automation, Local government as a platform

Suffolk County Council and our partners need to safeguard front line services by ensuring that we execute back office work in the most effective and efficient way possible.   We want to introduce Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to deliver high and medium volume transactions that are of a simple or moderately…

Joining Up Telehealth, Telecare and Tecnology Enabled Care

Council name: Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Partners: Gloucestershire County Council, Gloucestershire Care Services, Gloucestershire Hospitals Trust, Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service

Status: Not funded

Themes: Adult social care, Artificial intelligence and robotic process automation, Care assessment, Children services, Communities, Digital inclusion, Digital skills and capability, Health and social care record, Housing/Planning, Independent and assistive living, Website improvement

Within Gloucestershire we have many silo'ed services that all have the joint aim of increasing independence, mobility and safety within the home and community.  We want to join these up to not only improve the outcomes of the individuals through the shared learning of each service but also remove the duplication…

Learning how to make code-sharing between councils work in practice

Council name: London Borough of Croydon

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Status: Funded

There’s no pan-local government ‘playbook’ describing how to make code sharing work in practice. We believe this discourages collaboration, and leads to painful reinventions of the wheel in councils where it’s tried.   Our Discovery project will work through the issues that make shared development of code difficult, including:  issues of fairness in investment, workload, benefits and ownership of IP  resource implications initially and over time,…

Local review of gaps and opportunities for loneliness prevention

Council name: Cambridgeshire County Council

Stage: Funding application – Discovery

Partners: Huntingdonshire District Council

Status: Not funded

Themes: Adult social care, Communities, Health and social care record

Loneliness is a universal public health issue that   impacts health and wellbeing (Nyqvist et al., 2016) and generates more demand for social care and health services. The problem that this project seeks to address is a lack of understanding of how and where our council should deploy interventions. Within…

Local Social Progress Index

Council name: London Borough Of Barking and Dagenham

Stage: Funding application – Alpha

Partners: London Borough of Redbridge

Status: Not funded

Themes: Data standards sharing and modelling, Local government as a platform

Many councils across the UK are finding that “inclusive growth” is a key philosophy for building better and more resilient communities. It is also widely understood that societal inequalities will need to be addressed. It is however, currently difficult to understand the differing pressures on communities in a spatial context…