Digital dreams

In my other start of the year post I talked about some of my democratic and design dreams for the year – in this one I want to share my digital dreams.

Stepping back from devolution question and into the reorganisation one, the opportunity for modernisation which comes with the creation dozens of new organisations is huge. I think the question is whether we are ready as a sector to take advantage of the opportunity. We could be – there are more of us with a digital background in senior positions now and the government is clearly interested in technology – it may be that we just need to mobilise….

If you look elsewhere, its tantalising to see signs of real innovation popping up around the test and learn innovation fund and the ongoing rumbling with respect to missions – not to mention the interesting signals coming from the digital work that Martha Lane Fox is once again involved in.

The fact that this thinking is there makes it even more frustrating to have a one in a life time opportunity to set local government to thrive into the future and to be trapped in a process that feels very much of the past built on false hierarchy and old assumptions. So what would I do about it? Allow me to dream because I think there are a few things we could do collectively in order to tip the balance towards the opportunity:

• I’d really like to see proper modernisation brought into view with the creation of place based digital services being developed on the footprints of the new mayoral authorities – perhaps learning from the work that LOTI have done across London but also diving into more practical problems like system integration and re-platforming rather than every new unitary having to sort this out for themselves.
• I really want us to create shared procurement frameworks and align purchasing power with the economic growth agenda. This is another thing that will work really well at the size and scale of the new devolution footprints.
• I’d like us prioritise areas like planning in terms of digital transformation – going back to my desire to buy better stuff – as the combination of demand pressure, policy changes and the fact that MHCLG have already been doing great work in this space make this an area where huge progress could be made quickly if we work together.
• Part of this is to make sure that the spending review really looks at how best we fund services with technology as part of that service delivery cost rather than assuming that progress and investment is a capital bolt onto to the budget
• This is a moment where we could recommit to the need for open data and systems – the vast amount of integration and moving g stuff around this will all need (to use a technical term) will only be made better by first opening things up – and that also creates an excellent foundation for us to really develop an AI strategy in place.
• Health! Health are on their own digital journey – lets join it up
• And a word of caution – pick your advice carefully. Have no doubts – we are about to be overwhelmed with offers of help – but there is a real question in my mind about how we make sure that help is tech savvy and able to deliver real change. This isn’t about getting tech people to advise on the tech – this is getting people who understand how to create digital organisations into the design of new operating models and organisational designs. How do we influence the process of picking those people supporting this process?
• Finally – and on a related but slightly different topic I’d like to see this process developing local government capability in a sustainable way – many of us have cut back in the policy space in order to protect frontline services and I would hate that to mean we end up with a feeding frenzy from consultancies. I also have a personal fear of being leant a 21 year old civil service fast tracker to ‘help’ – I’d really rather have the cash and shared talent pool for us to develop. This would mean taking the time to create public service workforce strategies which are bringing together everyone rather than having us compete for talent.

All of these ideas would have impact in the context of a devolved footprint (which makes sense – thats the point of devolution to get benefits of scale AND place) and I will pitch them into my local system – but keen to know if people think these are ideas which could have more universal application?

Finally finally – the ideas are the easy bit – there is a lot of graft contained in here but as we say at Adur and Worthing – better to do something that is hard, interesting and future focused rather than just hard….