Digital leaders at Westminster City Council and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) believe they have broken new ground for local government with a new IT contract.
It is the latest step in the evolution of the bi-borough partnership – under which they have been sharing a range of services since 2011 – following the appointment of chief digital and innovation officers for each of the two councils over the past year.
They are placing an emphasis on the need for innovation and ambitions in digital inclusion, as becomes clear when UKAuthority talks with Aruj Heider, CDIO for Westminster, her interim counterpart for RBKC Claire Priestley and the chief information office for the two councils Mark Duff.
The conversation comes soon after the publication of a contract notice for their IT Digital Partners Framework, under which they have appointed single SME partners for each of six lots with three larger companies for a seventh lot – which takes in a wider range of functions such as service design, project and programme management, DevOps and third party integration. It is set to run until May 2023 with an option for two more years, and is valued at up to £10 million.
They say they haven’t seen this elsewhere in local government and that the structure should provide a foundation for plenty of innovation in dealing with local challenges.
The partners for each lot are Perform Green for smart city technologies, Codec DSS for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Nudge Digital for user centred design and digital delivery, Zoocha for Drupal based web technologies, Head Channel for application development and integration, Actica for cyber security, and for the general lot Infosys, NetCompany and Version 1.
Role for smaller players
“At first we were going to have three to five partners in a general lot, but we realised it would not give a good chance to smaller players,” Heider says. “That’s where more specific lots came in with criteria around size of companies. We want to do business with them to promote innovation and help the economy.
“There is one supplier with specific skills for each of the lots and we can call off services for as long as needed. It has a governance framework but a light tough internally.
“They send us details of the people, skillsets and deliverables, and so far the quality of people brought onboard has been very helpful.
“We want to make sure they are true strategic partners, so we don’t want to be just sending them random requests. It’s very important we take our time to get across what our vision is, what outputs we’re looking for and how they can be proactive.
“When we go to them with a request it might be for a project in a moment of time but it’s also important that they understand the bigger picture. That’s where the true value of this is.”
Core tech
The framework will provide a foundation for dealing with specific projects while the core technology for partnership remains in place. BT has been providing support in areas such as networking, telephony, cloud services, unified communications and online conferencing under a deal agreed in 2018 – when Hammersmith and Fulham was also a member of the partnership – the councils are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM and moving cloud services to Azure, but also keeping options open to use Google and AWS where appropriate.
Duff comments: “As each of the boroughs looks to other partners to deliver their smart city programmes we’ll look to enable those to move quicker, so we’ll spend a lot of time on enterprise architecture to see how we can enable them to move quicker. The faster we can speed up instances the quicker we can build the building blocks.”
The structure of the management team has evolved. While there has been a joint CIO for some time, the CDIO roles have been created in the past year, reflecting the need to address different priorities for the two councils.
“We have subtle differences in culture, ambitions and specific needs, and my role (for RBKC) is to define a strategy and ensure the operating model is appropriate for fulfilling those nuances,” Priestley says.
“Ultimately we are local authorities providing similar services, but in different places concerning our residents and community demographics.”
Positive relationship
Duff says it has created a relationship that is working well.
“If you look at the evolution of the two CDIO roles and CIO role it shows how they are working together and identifying differences,” he says.
“For me, coming into a role with two strong digital leads is hugely advantageous, lifting a lot off the CIO and allowing them to focus on their own digital strategies. We meet all the time to see how we can look at the similarities and make these things work in a more streamlined way.
“And for the digital partners in the framework it is an opportunity for them to grow and they’re working with two well established boroughs and get to learn from that, give the expertise back to us and other customers.”
He adds: “From the CIO point of view it’s about managing the bi-borough technical teams in supporting the systems in place, and the teams that enable the exciting stuff. There is a double challenge of keeping the lights on but also getting involved before the requirements are fully formed.”
The two councils share some legacy systems and applications, face a lot of the same issues, make priorities of customer-centricity and digital inclusion – they are both involved in a project backed by the London Office of Technology and Innovation to map digital exclusion across the city – and have smart city ambitions that need to be aligned. The three officials say that in addressing these they want to foster a mindset of innovation together.
Innovation hub
Westminster has taken a significant step towards this with the recent launch of an innovation hub that provides an online or physical venue in which to bring people together to come up with new ideas and to run internal engagement sessions. It has already attracted plenty of internal interest, with over 50 bookings in place at one point, the council is encouraging RBKC and its technology partners to use it.
“I don’t think we’ve done enough on innovation, but Covid showed that we can do it, that if we want to deliver the right outcomes we have to move fast” Heider says. “So we want to implement a culture of innovation and learning from our partners.
“With the innovation we want a shift in mindset. For example, there are topics such as assistive technology or electric vehicle charging points for which we can bring in companies and invite people from different services to be part of the discussion. We’re also collaborating with the likes of Microsoft and Google.
“At some point we also want to bring in our communities and take time to understand what is bugging them. So we’re doing a Public Innovation Challenge and Smart School of the Year. We want to see what they think could be solutions.”
Westminster has some projects in the pipeline, including extending the use of its digital card beyond access to leisure services and libraries, installing air quality sensors in streets near the borough’s schools, and developing a virtual wallet for adult social care that will enable users and their families to choose the care packages they feel are right for them.
“This is one of those that has come to IT and we’re trying to get squads to work in more agile way and become part of solution,” Duff says.
Apprentice experience
There is also a project to encourage more local people into digital jobs by giving apprentices in areas such as software engineering, digital marketing and data analytics the chance to spend ‘experience days’ working with its teams.
As the trio talk about this they make repeated references to the drive for innovation, and it becomes clear that it is an underlying factor of how they have structured their approach to digital, in their internal organisation and the new framework.
“You can’t do innovation without IT, and you can’t do IT and digital in an effective way without innovation from the service end,” Heider says. “That’s why the roles have been created in both councils to bring back the fundamentals.
“Bringing the two things together to have a customer lens, service lens, innovation and digital and bringing the two things together is what we are experimenting with.
“We are still learning but we are all very keen, want to make stuff happen, and driven by wanting the right outcomes for our communities – residents, businesses and visitors. In doing so we might make some mistakes but that’s OK as we can learn from them and do something much better.”
Image from iStock, metamorworks
