Digital Strategy 2022-2025

Vision, Worksteams, Principles and Approach to delivery

Vision and workstreams

We will be an agile and data driven Council, using the best of modern digital design, technology and ways of working to deliver excellent user centred services that make a difference to the lives of our residents.

We will achieve this through 5 workstreams led by different officers across the Council. The Head of Transformation and Property will act as the overall senior lead for the whole strategy and programme of work. The workstreams and lead officers are as follows:

• Workstream 1: Provide simple, accessible, end-to-end services that are easy to use and based around users’ needs - Transformation and Digital Services Manager
• Workstream 2: Giving our people the tools they need to do their jobs - ICT Programme Manager
• Workstream 3: Making data work for us - Corporate Insight, Communities and Governance Manager
• Workstream 4: Digital inclusion - Head of Policy, Communications and Governance
• Workstream 5: Creating a digital culture across the Council – Head of Transformation and Property

The digital landscape changes quickly, and digital strategy documents can date even faster. Therefore, this strategy sets out a high level framework for where we’re going and how we’ll move forwards over the next few years.

Our Principles and approach to delivery

The following principles will guide all of our digital, data and technology transformation work as we deliver across our 5 workstreams.

1. A continuous focus on meeting user needs

We exist to meet the needs of our users. Service transformation will focus on meeting the needs of our residents, particularly those who are most vulnerable. We will use research and data to better understand needs in our borough and will use this to build 88 and develop products and services to meet those needs. We will design services that take into account all users of a service, including our internal teams, but the end user - our customers - will always be our top priority. We make sure our digital services are accessible to all users, including those with disabilities, and work to improve our digital inclusion and not leave anyone behind. We will test all services to make sure they are simple and intuitive, and support those who are unable or unwilling to go online.

2. Being data-led and basing our decisions on evidence

We will use the data we hold better. We will share better internally and share with partners and more openly where appropriate. Better use of data will support every aspect of our digital strategy. We will base our decisions on the insight gained through activities such as user research, service performance metrics, user feedback and other available evidence. We will prioritise projects and interventions based on evidence of what will deliver the best outcomes for users and best support the Council’s medium term financial strategy.

3. Continuous development and improvement of our services and products

The needs and expectations of our customers and our staff change over time. No service or product is ever perfect; there are always improvements that can be made. We will embed the concept of continuous improvement into our work as much as our resources allow, putting working products into the hands of users early so we can test how well they work, providing us with the insight needed to improve them over time. We won’t be afraid to experiment and fail, delete things that don’t work, learn from them and try new approaches

4. Fast and effective agile project delivery

We learned a lot from having to design new services and deliver projects at pace during the pandemic. We will expand the use of agile project delivery and techniques, maximising collaborative working with staff and customers, delivering products in several iterations or incremental steps, as well as making sure the right people at the right level are available to make decisions in a timely fashion and waiting for decisions does not slow down delivery. This will ensure that benefits from a project begin to be released throughout the process rather than just at the end.

5. Working in the open

In line with our commitments in the Local Digital Declaration, we will aim to work as openly as we can on all our projects. This means we make key digital and transformation decisions corporately rather than in silos and tell our people internally about what we are doing and engage with them about digital improvements. Externally we will learn from others and what has worked elsewhere and we will share our ideas widely to get feedback and suggestions. Where we can, we will share code, learning and other products we create, enabling others to benefit from our efforts. This helps us to do better work, as it creates a much bigger community around what we are doing than just an internal audience.

“A truly digital Council will be more connected and integrated, using digital to reimagine service delivery that is user-centric and meets users’ needs – with citizens, communities and businesses reaping the benefits.”

Council of the Future: A digital guide for Councillors – Tech UK 201