Eight local authorities selected for Future Councils pilot

The Local Digital team at the UK’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has selected eight English local authorities to take part in its Future Councils pilot.

The programme aims to create “replicable pathways to digital and cybersecurity reform that other councils can follow”.

The councils – Broadland and South Norfolk, Cornwall, Dorset, Leicester, Lewisham, Reading, South Tyneside, and Stevenage – were chosen from 70 applicants and will receive £750,000 each (US$887,000) for their projects.

Local Digital says that work with councils highlighted three common challenges. One is how to influence factors such as internal processes, leadership and governance to enable change. Local governments also face obstacles in making digital and cyber improvements across the whole organisation, rather than just one team or area. In addition, reforming big, critical services, which are riskier and harder to change, can be particularly challenging.

The six-month pilots will focus on five themes: cybersecurity, staff skills, systems and software, user experience of digital services, and back-end processes.

Miranda Cannon, Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance at Leicester City Council, told Cities Today: “We are delighted to be selected as one of the eight Future Council pilot councils. We look forward to working with the DLUHC Local Digital team on the areas which apply to all pilot councils including support for cybersecurity and ongoing development of staff skills and capabilities in areas such as agile project delivery.”

Transformation trends

Local Digital said common themes that emerged from the applications included the desire by councils to use data and better internal processes to improve adult social care. Submissions also showed a widespread use of robotic process automation which will be explored further.

Shifting to cloud-based solutions emerged as a clear trend, and capacity-building was another area highlighted by councils.

“Some councils were already looking for or using more advanced or technical expertise such as automation or secure by design. Others wanted to embed or strengthen fundamental skills, such as user-centred design, cyber awareness and agile working,” a Local Digital spokesperson said.

The eight selected councils will evaluate their current digital and cyber maturity and create an improvement plan. They will also work towards adopting the Cyber Assessment Framework for Local Government.

Each council will identify at least one key service area to transform through migrating away from legacy technology, and create a plan to address their most significant organisational and cultural barriers.

Cannon said: “We will be working with the Local Digital Team to shape and agree the focus of the Leicester City Council specific workstreams where we want to prioritise work that will support ongoing improvements in the way our residents can interact online with the council and help to address the integration between the range of different systems used across our services, and the use and sharing of the data that these hold.”

Councillor Amanda de Ryk, Lewisham Council Member for Finance and Strategy, explained more about how the borough plans to use the funding.

“The £750,000 funding will go a long way in addressing a key service area – our registrars, to ensure that the user journey is seamless, the customer’s digital experience is free of any barriers and it is accessible to those who need to use this service,” she said.

“People tend to use our registrars at times when they have a lot going on in their lives – births, deaths, marriages – so we want to make sure that their digital experience is as easy as possible. We are looking forward to working with Future Councils to deliver this work and share it with our other council colleagues across the country.”

Local Digital said there will be further opportunities for more local authorities to join the Future Councils programme later this year.