Jump to section
- 1. Reimagining services
- Reimagining services – trend summary
- 2. Technology for public good
- Technology for public good – trend summary
- 3. Community resilience
- Community resilience – trend summary
- 4. Local and national leadership
- Local and national leadership – trend summary
- 5. Skills and capacity
- Skills and capacity – trend summary
1. Reimagining services
Reimagining services beyond the limitations of existing cultural, administrative, organisational and structural borders is becoming an overriding trend for local governments as they seek to improve social, economic and environmental outcomes for people, communities and places. Pressures on public sector organisations to deliver more with limited budgets are generating an ever-increasing focus on leadership, collaboration, redesign and innovation. This will involve:
- Breaking down barriers caused by silo-based working, organisational structures, funding gaps and skills shortages.
- Transforming place-based working with technologies and data insights.
- Actively seeking new perspectives, sharing experiences and learning across networks, regions and nations.
Local governments have a significant role to play in orchestrating partners and resources to help improve people’s lives and the places they inhabit. Digital, data and technology-related capabilities provide numerous opportunities but also present challenges for use and adoption. Socitm is at the forefront of understanding these developments, and their leadership, cultural and ethical implications in a place-based context.
Technology trends are redefining public services with dynamic, digital and data foundations, improving efficiency, productivity and the user experience. Even face-to-face services such as hospitals rely on digitised components from booking systems to tracking, diagnostics and data analytics. Use of advanced technologies and adoption of data-driven strategies have become a cornerstone for public sector organisations striving to enhance their services and meet the evolving needs of their communities.
Socitm is a long-standing advocate of ‘Simplify – Standardise – Share’, adapting, adopting and sustaining good practices to improve service delivery. Featured in our seminal 2011 publication, ‘Planting the Flag: A strategy for ICT-enabled local public services reform’, we advocated some core principles for reforming local public services. These principles stand the test of time and closely align with the concept of reimagining services.
Planting the Flag: Three core principles
Collaborate, share and re-use assets
Local public service organisations should join-up service delivery strategies and support them with collaboratively developed, ICT-enabled, delivery processes and communications functions. They should jointly commission ICT and other infrastructure and services, pool budgets, share staff, and measure, capture and share benefits and savings.
Redesign services to simplify, standardise and automate
Services needed to deliver priority local public service outcomes should be re- designed and ICT-enabled, using open and reusable standards to meet aspirations for ‘anytime, anywhere, any device’ access. The outcomes that service users value will be delivered by people, performing processes, with information, underpinned and enabled through technology. Only when all four elements are considered together, through formal change management, will ‘change’ deliver value to our citizens and their public service organisations. Services, whether internal or external, should be designed as ‘digital by default’. Action should be taken to improve significantly the ICT, change and information management skills of all managers, staff and service users.
Innovate to empower citizens and communities
Social and digital inclusion should be built by shifting ownership and use of information and technology towards the service user. Service users, SMEs and the technology sector should be engaged in service design and delivery, and resources, information and skills should be used in the community to build local systems and services. Local public service organisations should act quickly and not be afraid to take considered and controlled risks.
Collaboration between stakeholders across the public sector, including supplier partners and use of technologies and data to predict and manage service demands will help to achieve better resource allocation, improve efficiency and enable sharing of capabilities, infrastructure and assets.
Redesign will build on collaboration to deploy open and reusable standards in creating the services that best meet local needs; it will ‘shift the dial’ towards prevention rather than simply responding to a never-ending spiral of symptoms.
Innovation will enable a more inclusive approach that builds on the assets and capabilities of a place; it will upskill local populations and employees to harness new technologies and data to improve outcomes for people, communities and places.
Reimagining public services is also central to the concept of “connected places,” a key policy and research theme for Socitm and its members. The goal is to create and maintain social, economic and environmental conditions that allow people and communities to prosper, regardless of whether they are in urban or rural areas, or in large or small place settings.
Socitm connected places themes:
- Community resilience
- Data
- Democratic and community engagement
- Economy and business
- Education, skills and jobs
- Environment, sustainability and energy
- Health and wellbeing
- Imagining connected places
- Travel and mobility
The imminent local government reform agenda in England and elsewhere, and increased opportunities to support devolution provide an impetus to consolidate, collaborate and share even better and to promote application of the ‘connected places’ concept beyond borders in support of reimagining services.
These approaches to reimagining public services across places will only accelerate in the face of changing citizen needs, data and technology opportunities and economic constraints. Digital leaders will need to become adept at ‘storytelling’, building a narrative that captures the imagination of people and communities, and that enables executive and political leadership to grasp and act upon the opportunities that are presented by reimagining public services.
Reimagining services – trend summary
Overview of the opportunity
- Public bodies should focus on reimagining services beyond the constraints of existing borders by developing ‘connected places’ that simplify, standardise and share technologies and data to improve outcomes for people, communities and places.
- Local government should claim its space as orchestrators of change in their places, harnessing digital, data and technology-related capabilities in ways that are responsible, ethical and secure to target resource allocation and ‘shift the dial’ towards prevention.
- Leadership, cultural transformation, skills and competencies – creating self- sufficiency with a strong focus on equality, diversity and inclusivity.
- Key to all this will be collaboration, redesign and innovation.
Risks and challenges
- Increasing demand for services, such as health, social care and public transport coupled with limited available resources, applies pressure on service delivery, requiring organisations to find innovative solutions to maintain efficiency and effectiveness.
- Complex change associated with service redesign is the biggest challenge. Change requires involvement of all stakeholders – staff, residents, suppliers and partners – insufficient consultation and lack of early involvement in design and development can compromise delivery of desired outcomes.
- Despite the benefits of automation and AI, maintaining the human element in service delivery remains crucial. For sectors like social care, where personal interactions are at the core of the work, it is essential to balance the use of technology with the need for empathetic, human-centered service that maintains and builds public trust.
Where to start
- To address the increasing demands on public services and the impact of budget constraints, public sector organisations need to look beyond traditional boundary constraints and foster collaboration. Place-based strategies, engaging the community and incorporating advanced technologies are some examples; more are listed below:
- Adopt a place-based approach: Focus on place-based service delivery that considers the unique needs, characteristics and assets of the community, particularly as consolidation and collaboration prompted by local government reform and greater devolution gather pace.
- Engage with the community: Maintain open and continuous communication with the community. Use multiple channels, including social media, newsletters and community engagements to keep the community informed and involved in redesign processes.
- Involve all stakeholders: Ensure that all stakeholders, including staff, residents, suppliers and partners are involved in redesign and development processes. Early involvement and consultation can help identify potential challenges and ensure that redesigned services meet community needs. Look at others’ successes, locally, nationally and internationally. Socitm’s resource hub hosts case studies demonstrating real-world examples of service innovation.
- Integrate data and technology: Harness data to create a comprehensive understanding of the social, economic and environmental characteristics of places that can inform where to target limited resources and services.
- Leverage AI for efficiency: Embrace technological advancements but also give the workforce permission to be curious, experiment and grow from experiences.
- Leadership, innovative culture and skills: Leadership that encourages innovation and is supportive of using digital, data and technology (DDaT) capabilities to facilitate change. Creation of organisations and cultures willing to experiment, learn and grow. Recruitment of talent to bolster the skills of the sector. Provision of the necessary tools, skills and literacy for the workforce in response to the continual changing environment and enhanced technological capabilities. Take advantage of Socitm’s Change Agent programme and WeChange.AI service, both of which stress the importance of self-sufficiency supported by external support/guidance.
Can AI Help?
AI is transforming public services by enhancing efficiency, improving decision-making and providing better citizen experiences. Here are some examples:
Public safety and law enforcement
AI can help police departments analyse large datasets to identify crime patterns and allocate resources more effectively. For instance, predictive policing tools can forecast where crimes are likely to occur, allowing for proactive measures.
Public sector example: The San Francisco Police Department is using AI not only to detect threats, but also to uncover links between seemingly unrelated incidents and providing insights on socio-economic factors underlying those crimes.
Traffic management and transportation
AI is starting to help local governments optimise traffic flows. It can be used to reveal driving patterns, dynamically reset traffic signals to prevent long backups, identify roads that need repairs and aid in scheduling road work to minimize traffic disruptions.
Public sector example: Barcelona has implemented an ambitious Urban Mobility Plan that leverages AI and IoT to enhance traffic management. The city uses AI-powered traffic lights, smart parking systems and real-time traffic monitoring to reduce congestion and improve air quality. These technologies have resulted in a 20% reduction in traffic-related emissions and a significant decrease in travel times.
Citizen services
In a growing number of cities and counties, AI chatbots are providing citizens with 24/7 assistance and information.
Public sector example: Derby City Council's Darcie AI Helper is available both - on the website and on the phone - to help with a variety of services, such as council tax, parking permits and other local services. As a result, the AI-empowered front door has generated great savings of resources and is widely applied to non-emergency services.
Urban planning and development
AI analytics can help planners identify more efficient and sustainable ways to use public lands, build infrastructure and manage transportation systems. This includes planning for future needs like electric vehicle charging stations.
Public sector example: Wellington, New Zealand and Shanghai has created AI-driven digital twins, helping city planners visualize development projects and predict impacts, such as how a new sports arena will affect surrounding neighborhoods.
Healthcare and social services
AI is used to predict healthcare needs, provide preventative support and manage resources more effectively. It can also help in identifying at-risk individuals and providing timely interventions.
Public sector example: Norfolk County Council has a five-year strategy for adult social care that focuses on promoting independence innovation in adult social care by improving their preventative offer. Their aim is to reduce and delay the need for formal care.
Environmental monitoring and management
AI is used to monitor water contaminants, soil toxins and air pollutants. Using AI to analyse data from various smart devices can track air pollutants such as particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide faster and more accurately. AI tools can also make waste management more efficient, helping simplify waste collection, improve recycling efforts and identify areas with heavy littering.
Public sector example: Venice faces significant challenges in protecting its cultural heritage and local communities and preserving the surrounding habitat. The city uses AI to monitor water quality and air health in real-time.
Emergency response and disaster management
AI is used to help anticipate floods, wildfires, droughts, blizzards and other natural disasters. AI can also prove useful in crisis management. By processing images from drone or helicopter cameras flying over hard-hit areas, AI analytics can provide faster, more precise reporting to jump start mitigation.
Public sector example: The ALERTCalifornia program [PDF] tests an AI system designed to alert authorities about wildfires before they grow. The system uses over 1,000 high-definition cameras across the state to continuously scan for signs of smoke or fire. The AI analyses the footage to distinguish between regular air particles and those caused by heat, fire, or smoke. If unusual activity is detected, authorities are immediately notified to assess the threat level.
Advice for digital leaders
Basic: Encourage and facilitate multi-agency collaborations to reduce inequalities and improve holistic service delivery.
Good: Harness AI and technologies to support data insights, setting new standards in public services and helping the organisation to understand the potential of technology and place-based digital change to reimagine public services in ways that are responsible, ethical and secure.
Advanced: Be adept at telling ‘the stories’. While budgets define constraints, leadership defines possibilities in ‘connected places’. Invest strategically in place-based governance and innovation, prioritise resources for long-term resilience and develop and leverage technology and data-driven strategies to enhance supply-chain opportunities, resource allocation, service accessibility, social value, public trust and community wellbeing.
Reimagining services – a look ahead
Looking ahead, the impact of these technological and data-driven transformations is expected to be profound. As councils and public sector organisations continue to implement and refine these innovations, we anticipate significant improvements in resource allocation, service accessibility and overall community wellbeing.
Over the next few years, there will be strong competition for skills in areas such as data science, cyber, AI, other smart technology and complex infrastructure management. The successful deployment of AI in adult social care, for instance, is likely to set new standards for how routine tasks are managed, allowing frontline workers to focus more on direct, personalised care. Meanwhile, the expansion of data-focused initiatives like the Social Progress Index (SPI) will enable more informed decision-making, fostering a proactive approach to addressing social challenges. will enable more informed decision-making, fostering a proactive approach to addressing social challenges.
Public service organisations will be expected to meet this challenge, including in how they are working towards better implementation with partners and IT suppliers to deliver a very different solution from traditional ‘IT services’. This will be a big change in the decade ahead.
Case studies: Artificial Intelligence (AI)
London Borough of Hillingdon: AI-driven citizen contact system
The council took a bold step and became the first UK local authority to use voice automation and AI at scale, working in partnership with PwC and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Hillingdon’s goal was to use technology to become a human-centred and digitally enabled council.
Swindon Borough Council: Simply readable AI solution
The council has developed a Generative AI application to convert complex documents into an Easy Read format to help people with learning disabilities understand the information. Easy Read presents information in short, jargon-free sentences, often with clear images to explain the content.
Swindon Borough Council: ‘Translate’ machine learning
The council is continuously reviewing emerging and evolving technologies, seeking to leverage them to reimagine and improve services, lower costs, and enhance efficiency. Using Amazon Translate – a neural machine translation service – the council cut the average translation cost per document by 99.96 percent.
Barnsley Council: Transforming local social care with AI
Barnsley Council faces a pressing challenge – how to serve its residents with increasing demand for services; especially in children’s services and social care with fewer resources. Barnsley is one of the first councils to roll out Copilot for Microsoft 365 and has integrated seamlessly into many of the programmes and apps the council workers already use every day.
Swindon Borough Council: AI in adult social care
AI in Adult Social Care to improve the quality and speed of recording of assessment conversations by their frontline workers. Using a tool called Magic Notes, specifically developed for this purpose by social enterprise Beam, council staff have been able to reduce admin time by 63 percent, freeing up more time for vital conversations with the people supported by Adult Social Care.
Reading Borough Council: Independent Living Technology Enabled Care (TEC)
The council aims to use special digital sensors to help people live independently in their own homes for as long as possible. The council’s plan is to expand its Independent Living Care Technology Solutions, a pilot programme which has been taking place over the last nine months.
Case studies: Multi-agency collaboration
Dundee City Council: The Local Fairness Initiative (LFI)
Dundee City Council in partnership with a range of third sector organisations, grass roots community projects and local community representatives with a shared objective of reducing inequalities within Linlathen, an area with the highest levels of deprivation in Scotland.
Dorset Council: Home care optimisation
The council recognised that there are a high number of individuals who are recognised as needing homecare support but unfortunately unable to receive a package due to constraints in capacity. The home care optimisation programme was designed to cover four areas: brokerage process, zonal optimisation, technology enabled care and trusted practice.
Barnet Council: BarNet Zero campaign
Barnet Council’s BarNet Zero campaign grew from a transformative shift following the declaration of a climate and biodiversity emergency in May 2022. The declaration led to a fundamental change towards community-driven sustainability – engaging the community and encouraging residents to participate in the campaign.
Case studies: Efficiency
London Borough of Lambeth: Reducing invalid planning applications
Application validation and invalid applications represent a common problem for all planning authorities. Around 50% or more of all applications are ‘invalid’, meaning the application needs to be resubmitted. The project aims to produce a planning submission service pattern that will reduce the percentage of invalid applications received by planning services.
London Borough of Brent: Tech-tastic tale! Ctrl+Alt delivering digital transformation
Brent Council refreshed their digital strategy to become a digital place and a digital council. They refocus their priorities by changing the way they think and do things and prepare better for the future.
Case studies: Data as an asset
Hertfordshire County Council: Data inspired living
In response to the growing health and social care challenges across the country, the council developed a ‘dashboard’ that provides a near real time online view of residents’ routines at home using various data points which are gathered from a highly diverse set of sensors to enhance residents to live independent lives.
Lichfield District Council: Data to impact
Lichfield District Council was facing significant challenges in understanding and addressing the social and economic outcomes within the district. One of the main issues was the lack of detailed data on health, education, housing and wellbeing, leading to inefficiencies in resource allocation and targeting interventions. The Data to Impact project explored how localised data could address social challenges and inform policymaking.
Leeds City Council: Fostering inclusive growth
The city of Leeds faced challenges related to a lack of understanding of population outcomes and the absence of outcome data to inform an inclusive growth strategy. The Head of Economic Policy sought Impera’s expertise to build a Social Progress Index (SPI) at a ward level, consolidating 50+ outcome datasets and providing training for key staff and councillors.
London Borough of Hackney: Better outcomes for children and families
Faced with financial pressures and operational inefficiencies, the Children & Education Directorate of the London Borough of Hackney (LBH) sought Impera’s expertise to redesign their Performance & Monitoring Function. The project aimed to address challenges related to team structures, manual data processing and the need for a more data and evidence-led approach.
Useful links
- Reimagining local government through advanced technologies (LGC)
- Transforming public services: Oxfordshire County Council’s digital transformation with AI & IoT (Government Transformation Magazine)
- Small wins and big transformations (Apolitical)
- Collaboration: Ground breaking health data partnership formed with NHS (Lichfield District Council)
- Storytelling: Own your story or someone else will (Ianka Fleerackers)
2. Technology for public good
Digital, data and technology (DDaT) services can be a force for good but there are also pressures that can take them in the opposite direction. For example, technology often has a significant carbon footprint, adding to global warming and electronic waste problems and paying no regard to existing cultural, administrative, organisational and structural borders. Many of today’s biggest social challenges relate to technology and data abuse or dependency, such as social media and information misuse and erosion of democratic rights.
These negative impacts have been brought into the public eye, in particular risks and opportunities of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), growing cyber risks that threaten privacy and security and the persistence of the ‘digital divide’ – applications of technology leaving behind significant and often already socially excluded groups.
For these reasons, we see an increasing focus on responsible, secure and ethical use of technologies and data; use for public good and community wellbeing, accompanied by mitigating negative impacts. As Socitm’s work on digital ethics demonstrates, organisations need to identify what is unique and different about an ethical, place-based approach to using emerging technologies and data. An ethical approach can help to design better services, leveraging benefits and better outcomes, while maintaining and building public trust.
Making IT a force for good
Climate change, net zero, sustainability and carbon reduction
- Tackle e-waste and ensure safe and responsible reuse, recycle or disposal, tracking carbon footprint and sustainability credentials of all IT suppliers and services.
- Demonstrate the use of technologies that help with energy saving and promote clean energy industries.
- Consider the impact of technology in areas of heavy processing, such as AI.
- Promote good practice by being transparent in publishing data and guidance.
- Consider the potential of ‘natural capital accounting’ to demonstrate the wider effects, positive and negative, of new IoT and digital practices.
Jobs, skills and the impact of a digital economy
- Promote digital and IT apprenticeships in an area, linking to centres of learning. This can help to build a local skills base in new technologies such as AI, cyber and infrastructure design.
- Work with suppliers who offer high social value in mitigating the impacts of digital change and ensure that human rights are monitored in the supply chain.
- Create local partnerships with organisations who share the same values and create new jobs locally.
- Offer retraining and skills development for those impacted by digital developments.
- Consider how local economies can be shaped to benefit digital citizens and workers.
Data and information – risks and benefits
- Ensure broad and deep cyber practices that protect people, data, services and com munities and ensure an understanding and tracking of current risks.
- Ensure transparency in data practices to build public trust in how data is used, shared and stored.
- Be clear on the risks and benefits of ‘data’, through clear policies, accreditations and auditable practices, particularly as AI is introduced.
- Tackle the risks of data bias, ethics, digital exclusion and inequality in how digital systems are designed, managed and promoted.
- Work with suppliers and partners who support and deliver high standards in data and information management.
- Always ensure digital change programmes focus on minority interests and risks, not just big efficiency or productivity gains for the majority.
People
(staff, residents, partners, citizens, voters, clients, users) at the heart of digital design
- Promote digital and IT innovation in areas with the biggest human benefit and measure that benefit (health and well-being, equality and opportunity).
- Use digital and technology to protect public services for the future by strengthening business change capabilities and digital leadership skills internally.
- Prioritise projects that help ‘people and society’, not just being driven by large suppliers, profits and narrow economic prosperity.
- Encourage everyone to play their part in developing digital and technology capability and mitigating the risks that come with this.
- Use digital solutions to empower people to be in more control of their interaction with public services, not constrained by outdated service models, processes and cultures.
Public service organisations will be expected to take a lead on harnessing technology for public good, setting the policies and organisational standards, with which suppliers will need to comply.
Technology for public good – trend summary
Overview of the opportunity
For public services, the opportunity is to demonstrate an understanding of the impact of digital change and technology, both positive and negative, internally and more generally.
This will help to protect people and the communities where they live from the impact of technology changes, building public trust and setting out examples of best practice for others to follow.
Risks and challenges
The biggest challenge comes from those who believe that harnessing digital change and technology is all too difficult or simply politically driven dogma. Being able to present a coherent story will help to mitigate this risk.
In practical terms, unchecked technology will create negative impacts, locally and globally, particularly in areas such as mishandling of data, unethical use of AI, carbon impact of IT, digital disruption and the human cost of embracing digital ways of working.
Early benefits
Having a clear vision for the role of technology and digital services in delivering ‘public good’ and mitigating its downsides will demonstrate to partners, suppliers, staff and service users that the organisation understands the impact of change and how to harness the benefits that technology can bring.
Application areas
- There will be a focus on the impact of AI and other emerging technologies and how to ensure a balance in favour of their benefits.
- Open engagement with the public, staff and suppliers will be helpful in explaining plans.
Advice for digital leaders
Basic: Develop policies for responsible, secure and ethical use of technologies, artificial intelligence and data, digital design, supplier engagement and information handling.
Good: Set clear criteria for the role of digital – culture, technologies and data - in combating climate change.
Advanced: Be clear about the purpose and set criteria for digital projects, assessing and prioritising the positive effects and mitigating their negative effects.
Case studies from around the world
South London Partnership:
InnOvaTe ‘Internet of Things’ Programme
The InnOvaTe Programme is using the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) to help South London Partnership boroughs manage and mitigate new challenges arising from Covid-19, drive economic recovery, and pilot solutions to help people live better and healthier lives.
Christchurch City Council, New Zealand/Aotearoa: Smart poles project
This video describes the Kōtuitui smart poles project in Naval Point, Littleton, that is designed to lace, interface, interlink and connect to enable better service provision and emergency response by stakeholders as part of a redevelopment of the area.
DuPage County, Illinois, USA: Winter weather solution
The DuPage County Division of Transportation (DuDOT) needed a solution that would provide operational awareness during snow events. ESRI’s winter weather solution was able to provide a real time solution to meet the data needs for operational awareness, improved material tracking and post event analysis.
City of Prato, Italy: Weaving the digital future in Prato
In his presentation to the Major Cities of Europe annual conference 2023, Paulo Boscolo sets out a pragmatic approach to curating a string of digital and ICT projects into a digital strategy serving the people of the city.
Socitm Says podcast: Green and sustainable IT with Alex Bardell and Nathaniel Comer
This episode of the podcast will focus on the global problem of electronic waste, the IT lifecycle emissions and the responsible disposal of electronic waste to reduce environmental impact, thereby contributing to achieving net zero targets.
London Borough of Hounslow: PETRAS – Taking IoT for a walk
Together with the digital and IT team, the leader of the council and I had a few councillors, residents and colleagues join us on a walk around Hounslow looking at sensors and internet of things devices – some real and some made up – to generate debate.
Wrexham County Borough Council, Wales: Flowerbed savings from smart sensors
Sensors have provided street operatives with real time data on whether a flower bed needs watering and have generated savings of approximately £32,000 over the seven months of the pilot project.
Technology for public good – a look ahead
We will see a gradually increasing focus on this topic, but not a revolution. Ensuring that technology is used for public good will become more critical, for a variety of reasons:
- Public pressure for greater transparency, growing concerns over data risks and the demand for better digital services.
- Emerging technologies, such as AI, will enable new insights into the causes of a range of societal ‘ills’ and opportunities to redesign public services to mitigate and prevent their occurrence.
- Worsening climate change will be monitored by new AI, showing impacts and causes, with ever-more accuracy and predictive powers. The public will expect “green” choices to be made by the public services that serve them and their partners.
- Digital disruption impacting jobs and skills will grow with greater automation. Inequitable impacts on communities and places will need to be avoided.
In the next few years public services will need to show that they are taking a lead on the use of digital, data and technology (DDaT) for long-term public good, not just short-term automation and efficiency.
For example, Forrester research predicts that there will be a big fall in trust in governments globally in the decade ahead, particularly in respect of their role in infrastructure management. Western leaders have an opportunity to set a global example in digital, data and technology infrastructure investment and how the IT industry can support new jobs, new opportunities and social value in areas such as personal data use and management.
Environmental, social and governance reporting (ESG) will develop over time and be augmented by the ability of tools, such as AI and digital and data analytics to develop natural capital accounting measures to better quantify the impact that public services have, through technology, on their populations and places.
A strong grip of this topic will drive economic, social and environmental benefits, leading to wider prosperity and value. But the reverse is also true, so planning now is essential. There will be a key role for digital and IT leaders in this, being able to describe and lead a measured route to ‘IT for public good’.
This message needs to be a positive one, balancing risks with benefits and cost with opportunity, whilst always placing people at the heart of digital design.
3. Community resilience
Community resilience is a wide-ranging topic that transcends existing cultural, administrative, organisational and structural borders. In the England, Local Resilience Forums and their equivalents in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, have a statutory responsibility to identify potential risks and produce emergency plans to either prevent or mitigate the impact of any incident on their local communities.
Risks facing communities can include extreme weather events, flooding, forest fires, marine and traffic accidents, pollution, cyber and terrorist attacks, and pandemics. The scope is well illustrated in the Doughnut Economics Framework which spans social, economic and environmental areas of risk and has been deployed in many parts of the world.
In the context of ‘digital and IT’, public service organisations have traditionally focused on cyber threats – protecting their perimeter network defences and being vigilant to internal malpractice. Stronger IT intrusion detection and a better educated workforce have all helped organisations to prevent, detect and deal with cyber risks.
Shift to community resilience
We are seeing a significant change in this agenda for public services, with a focus on the contribution of digital and IT to the mitigation of a community-wide risks, as public services operate in a connected system of inter-dependent services, communities, geographies and infrastructures.
Protecting this wider system is key to the resilience and functioning of public services:
“These new innovations are enabling emergency planners to model risks affecting the county to maximise response, improve communication and coordination and reduce, as practically as possible, the impacts on the wider communities of the county. Creating the new caravan dataset in particular will dramatically improve intelligence.”
Steve Eason-Harris, emergency planning officer at Lincolnshire County Council and Lead officer for geospatial information and resilient communities for the Local Resilience Forum
We will see a growing trend for public bodies to look to their digital supply chains, local partners, national bodies and community organisations to collaborate on digital solutions that help to build greater local resilience and community response to changing threats of all types.
Community resilience – trend summary
Overview of the opportunity
The integrated nature of whole system working and the benefits that this integration can bring are evident in many areas. By addressing wider risks and dependencies, public services can be bolder in their digital developments, confident that community resilience and public trust are protected.
Risks and challenges
- It is no longer enough to focus solely within your existing organisational boundaries in contingency and resilience planning. Public service organisations in connected places need to work together to ensure robust, resilient and responsive services that work together.
- Technology, data and digital infrastructures are enablers that serve and protect community interests and must themselves be treated as key risks.
Early benefits
- Early benefits always become clear if an incident occurs. However, being transparent about the risk and the benefits and the role of digital in building stronger community resilience, can help to avoid a crisis.
- This preparation will also reduce the impact of an incident should one occur, whilst building trust and confidence in the security of community infrastructure and responses to crises for services, partners and the public.
Application areas
- It is important to consider IT security and business continuity planning within the organisation, but then to consider the wider, distributed digital infrastructure that serves and protects communities.
- Consider how supply chains and key relationships with partner organisations can share data, technology and digital practices to strengthen resilience collectively.
Advice for digital leaders
Basic: Conduct desktop scenario exercises to demonstrate how digital, technology and data can provide new insights and methods to strengthen community readiness to civic disruption.
Good: Bring emergency, business continuity and IT disaster recovery together, across services and organisations, building an auditable, continuum of services and community resilience plans. Engage with local WARPs and partners in public service organisations, to share experiences of where collaboration could reduce risks and costs of resilience investments.
Best: Consider risks beyond IT and to ensure appropriate political and executive oversight. Communicate clearly, in business terms, the nature of community resilience and the role of public service organisations in relation to this.
Case studies from around the world
Lincolnshire County Council: Lincolnshire Resilience Forum extends use of geospatial tech in emergency planning
The council deployed image recognition and drone applications with a real time mapping dashboard to identify static caravans in the event of emergencies such as flooding and severe weather.
Doughnut Economics: Stories
How Doughnut Economics is being put into practice around the world.
Bristol City Council: Bristol One City
The Bristol One City Approach brings together a huge range of public, private, voluntary and third sector partners to work together to make Bristol fairer, healthier and more sustainable.
Christchurch City Council, New Zealand/Aotearoa: Smart Christchurch Strategy
New technology, innovative citizen engagement and strategic solutions to help make the city a smarter, safer and more resilient place to live, work and play.
Wellington City Council, New Zealand/Aotearoa: Climate adaption digital city model
Video describing how the city council is employing a data-driven climate adaptation roadmap to engage communities and stakeholders, using compelling digital tools and visualisation technologies to help build resilience.
Catapult, Connected Places: Best fit climate innovation – Solutions for India, Mexico and Peru
The Morgenstadt Global Smart Cities Initiative (MGI) worked with three mid-sized cities to co-designed prioritisation metrics and implemented solution across buildings, mobility, and urban planning sectors in three innovation districts.
Guidance
Secure connected places international evidence project - Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT)
The report provides an overview of the initiatives that countries have adopted at a regional, national and international level.
Community resilience – a look ahead
The unceasing migration towards digital public services, whether replacing direct human-to-human interaction or enabling it and the growing dependency on connected community infrastructures built on digital foundations, mean that the role of digital and IT in community resilience planning will continue to grow and mature.
Public service organisations have a central part to play in this beyond simply the provision of their own digital services on a resilient and secure basis. Their role will extend to the use of technology and digital methods to mitigate wider risks to social, environmental and economic stability for the communities that they serve.
4. Local and national leadership
As we look beyond the borders of the UK, common themes apparent in many of our LOLA and MCE countries are:
- Disconnection between local and national leadership.
- Shifting patterns of devolution and structural arrangements in relation to harnessing digital infrastructure, standards, technologies and data.
In 2022, the UK’s Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) released a whitepaper, entitled ‘Transforming for a Digital Future: 2022 to 2025 Roadmap for Digital and Data,’ outlining a unified vision for digital transformation across UK central government by 2025. Like many other papers before it failed to consider the alignment of local and national in ways that would deliver better outcomes for people, communities and places.
The situation is further compounded in the UK by the government’s stated intent to reorganise English local government with greater devolution of responsibilities to ‘strategic authorities’. Key proposals include:
- Implementing a statutory framework that makes devolution the new default.
- The reorganisation of local government into a single-tier structure.
- Integrated funding settlements.
- Devolving key areas including transport, skills, housing and climate change.
- Joining up public services to focus on prevention.
- Impacts on local government elected members and workforce.
Elsewhere, in New Zealand and Flanders, various approaches to combining small local government entities and shared technology and data provisioning are either in operation or are being actively considered.
The leadership challenge
Whilst these attempts to drive more joined-up and strategic approaches are welcome, the real challenge for digital – strategies, ‘roadmaps’, ‘playbooks’ and ‘blueprints’ – lies in their implementation and focus on achieving public value. Looking beyond cultural, administrative, organisational and structural borders, the leadership task facing public services in all countries is to address:
- The needs and interests of people, communities and places.
- Social and digital inclusion.
- Local determination of priorities in diverse places.
- Hyper-local, local, regional and national service design and delivery.
- Regional development – social, economic and environmental.
- National government interests.
The leadership challenge is to bring together national, regional and local priorities in joined-up digital projects that depend upon a range of factors, such as:
Skills and capability: Do we have the necessary skills and understanding to implement complex change programmes that reflect national ambition and local needs? More than simply being able to buy in skills, a range of internal capability and experience is required that understands digital and IT opportunities from a national and a local perspective.
Authority to act: The pace of change generates a need for governance and decision-making processes that can move in an agile and confident fashion. These require appropriate reward structures, as well as accountability for decisions, that cross traditional service boundaries. And they require sufficient devolution of ownership from ‘central’ to ‘local’.
Resources and money: Often seen as a limiting factor, the realignment of scarce public sector resources towards digital development and technology investment is not easy, depending on business cases that are difficult to construct and learning lessons from past problems. Underinvestment in both digital and IT remains a challenge for public services, along with a tendency to over-centralise.
Place-based leadership: The need for strong, place-based leadership, within a national and regional framework and local implementation teams, is critical for successful embedding of digital cultures, technologies and data in public services. Digital programmes that lack strong sponsorship from executive leaders, nationally and locally, are often held back by politics or practical challenges that could have been avoided.
Joined-up policies: Connected places and ‘whole system’ working require national and local policies to be joined up across traditional spans of responsibility: geography, organisations, services and systems. Sometimes national policies and developments fail to understand the complexity of local implementation. Local implementations can be constrained by undertaking them through the lens of specific services or institutions.
Public service organisations will need to focus collectively to address digital planning, programme delivery, holistic policies, leadership and governance spanning different tiers of delivery. This is critical for maximising ‘IT for public good’, ‘community resilience’ and ‘reimagining public services’.
Local and national leadership – trend summary
Overview of the opportunity
- Emergence of a range of new and rapidly maturing technologies and a desire to redefine public services to optimise digital operation presents unprecedented possibilities requiring careful consideration and leadership.
- Harnessing this opportunity depends less on technology prowess than it does on strong, experienced and forward-thinking leadership that can span national, local and community interests.
Risks and challenges
- There are many risks and challenges in this area, particularly regarding the ability to break out of traditional hierarchies and spans of control, often with centralised resources and decision-making.
- New governance models will challenge both individual leaders as well as the traditional powerbases on which their organisations have operated.
Early benefits
The benefits of collaborative and modernised leadership of digital developments are clear to see in regions that have made most progress.
Application areas
There are many areas, but the most commonly emerging include:
- Health and social care integration
- Transport and mobility
- Environmental and economic regeneration
- Data sharing and common interests
Advice for digital leaders
Basic: Start conversations, which focus on the possibilities and best practice examples, to demonstrate benefits. Highlight areas where there is a clear link between national and local priorities and identify the policy dependencies.
Good: Describe the models of leadership that work, the skills required and the governance arrangements that can make a difference, respecting but clarifying boundaries of responsibility.
Advanced: Establish collaborative governance arrangements and digital roadmaps for integrated services designed to deliver better outcomes for people, communities and places.
Case studies from around the world
Matt Masters, former Chief Executive at South Lakeland District Council: The Truth about Local Government by Matt Masters
Podcast talking about the need for fundamental transformational change within local government. The factors that need to be addressed before true change can take place and why change has not been widespread engaged with at this point in local government.
Region of Tuscany, Italy: Digital innovation in Tuscany
Gianluca Vannucinni sets out a digital roadmap for the region, working with a wide range of stakeholders including citizens, local governments, regional agencies and national organisations in his presentation to the Major Cities of Europe annual conference 2023.
West Midlands Combined Authority: West Midlands Plan for Growth
The West Midlands Authority has been working for some years to integrate transport, health and social care and other public services to benefit people living in connected communities. This has been dependent on new models of governance that combine local and national leadership, policies and decision making.
Local Government Management Association, Ireland: Digital Local Government – Working for Everyone (video)
Irish local authorities provide more than 1,000 services. To harness the power of digital to deliver our services more efficiently. Better services for the public, better ways of working for our staff.
Local and national leadership – a look ahead
In the UK and elsewhere, there is a growing realisation that the social, economic and environmental challenges facing communities will require a radically different approach to achieve sustainable change, improvement and growth. It will be an approach that is holistic and place-based. It will be a different and outwards looking mindset, one that is both strong but also authentic, humble and collaborative. And, it will require a ‘left-shift’ to focus on prevention rather than constantly trying to ‘fix’ an ever expanding scope and volume of symptoms.
This is equally relevant when thinking about the enabling role of digital – cultures, technologies and data in a place. Infrastructures can be shared, standards agreed and adopted, data and systems integrated, insights created, services co-designed and built, and skills developed and capabilities harnessed.
It also means that the design and delivery of national systems, policies and standards must have sufficient involvement and influence at a local level at formulation, not as an afterthought merely to ensure consultation has ‘ticked the boxes’.
New models of devolution that maximise the potential of digital, whilst ensuring compliance with national standards and regulations, will free local communities to develop and implement services that reflect their own unique position. These models will break through existing cultural, administrative, organisational and structural borders to consider the interaction of geography, politics, demography, population, health and density, and economic, social, and environmental priorities in places.
In England, Integrated Care Boards, Combined Authorities and devolution plans to create Strategic Authorities are symptomatic of this trend. Similar approaches are unfolding in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as the wider international context represented by our LOLA and MCE partner associations.
All this will require:
- Leadership that is collaborative and externally focused
- Leadership that spans traditional closed borders of responsibility
- Leadership that brings together currently disparate local, regional and national perspectives and ‘ecosystems’ of stakeholders and communities within individual places
5. Skills and capacity
Dependency of public service organisations on digital skills and capacity has become a major worldwide challenge. This is driven by:
- Market pressures, where demands for scarce digital and technology skills are outstripping supply.
- Technology developments, such as AI, cyber and data science, which require new skills and job roles.
- Lower pay in many public service organisations compared with the private sector, sometimes because these skills are undervalued or misunderstood.
Public service organisations are combatting this challenge in a number of innovative ways:
- Pay
Innovation in rewarding talent and performance, recognition and awards, performance pay, pensions, position impact of job with suitable benchmarking. - Marketing jobs
Role of IT, dependency and impact of digital, location, exciting projects with real public impact, imaginative adverts, winning awards. - Digitally mature
Leading edge work is attractive to IT and digital specialists. Led from the top, strong vision. Modern vibrant ‘digital business delivering public service’. - New roles
Data science, AI, digital architects and engineers, agents of change – IT and digital jobs are maturing, changing and important. - Flexible working
Don’t force ‘back to the office’, promote part time, support outside work interests and partnership working, balance work and life, offer new contracts models and job share. - Training and skills
Creative approaches to job sharing, secondments, apprenticeships, career development and planning, mentoring and coaching, and time for skills transfer and growth.
By keeping up with digital, technology and data developments, public services organisations are more likely to build and to stimulate innovation, creativity and digital leadership.
Simply paying more for scarce digital and IT skills is not likely to be an answer. For most organisations, other tactics must be deployed to make public services attractive: marketing benefits, career opportunities, positive cultures, flexible working, valuing contributions and innovations.
For many people pay is not the main or only motivator; they are often looking for a great place to work, to live, to bring up a family and spend their leisure time. They want flexibility and exciting work with prospects. Power lies with employees, especially younger members of staff, while activities such as employee productivity monitoring with flexible working, should be treated with care.
Skills and capacity – trend summary
Overview of the opportunity
- Being creative can attract and build a dynamic and capable digital and IT workforce, blended with external resources.
- This is an opportunity requiring imagination from HR, politicians and digital leaders to promote the benefits of working in the public sector and to be creative about recruitment, pay and working practices.
- Developing and attracting the appropriate and necessary skills, competency and digital literacy within organisations and the communities they serve.
Risks and challenges
- If public service organisations misunderstand the role or value of digital and IT in a modern public service organisation, they will struggle to recruit and retain the skills they need.
- Outdated HR practices – pay, recognition, flexible working, career progression – are the biggest barrier to being able to compete and to avoid the costs of dependent on bought in services.
Early benefits
Sufficient capacity and capability in IT and digital will provide immediate value, particularly in optimising IT infrastructures, cyber and information protection and delivery of successful digital programmes that generate service and public value.
Application areas
- Flexibility and organisation of recruitment, retention and recognition of policies relating to digital and IT.
- Consideration of where skills are lacking and what needs to be done about this: for example AI, data science, infrastructure, cloud and cybersecurity.
- Onboarding of apprentices.
Advice for digital leaders
Basic: Consider IT itself – both internal and external: its current capability and benchmark performance. Is it a blocker or barrier? Why? What needs to change?
Good: Skills will be hard to attract and retain, staffing budgets will be constrained and external costs will increase. An imaginative and flexible approach will be needed to deliver what is required.
Best: Engage the Executive Board and political leadership in understanding the benefits of recruiting and retaining digital and IT skills to contribute to local priorities and better outcomes for people, communities and places.
Case studies from around the world
Norfolk County Council: Apprenticeships to provide a talent pipeline
The apprenticeship programme can help to increase the number of work opportunities, improve the services we deliver ed by the council and increase digital skills across the county.
Public Service Commission, New Zealand/Aotearoa: New Zealand’s spirit of service
The Public Service Commission promotes the “spirit of service” which is underpinned by the country’s Public Service Act 2020 and since 2018 has included an annual public service day and an awards programme.
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey: Strategic skill building for public sector employees and managers
This initiative aimed to equip high-potential employees with the confidence and skills necessary for their current roles and to prepare them for future managerial positions within the organization.
Skills and capacity – a look ahead
Ensuring that the public sector has the resources it needs to fuel its development of complex digital programmes, including internal digital and IT skills, will continue to be a challenge. Over the next few years, there will be strong competition for skills in areas such as data science, cyber, artificial intelligence, and complex infrastructure management. This is in addition to the ongoing need for project, programme and supply chain management.
Public sector organisations need to determine what skills they need to retain in-house and where it would be more cost-effective to use co-hosted skills, apprentices, contractors, or private sector partners, dependent on factors, such as size of organisation. Failing to address digital and IT skills planning will result in an expensive dependency on external resources.
Local partnerships can potentially be used to share scare skills and roles across organisational boundaries, while greater clarity on the difference between IT and digital can allow more precise identification of resource needs, accountability and prioritisation.