The Local Digital team in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has produced a Future Councils playbook to help local authorities understand complex problems in the digital field.
It has also indicated that it has no immediate plans for a new round of allocations from the Local Digital Fund, but that it will continue to provide some grants.
Local Digital has pointed to the availability of the playbook in a blogpost on its recent work and next steps.
The playbook has been developed from a pilot within the Future Councils programme, involving eight councils and running from May to November last year, to understand recurring barriers to innovation.
It has been designed to: define how a particular problem manifests itself at a different levels across a local authority; identify the root of the problem; distinguish between service- and product-level problems; and understand where to target interventions and improvements.
The tools include downloadable templates on cost impacts, five ‘why’ questions, pain points, and cause, problem and impact.
The blogpost also says that learnings from the pilot will be shared soon, and that the Local Digital Declaration will still be at the centre of the team’s work, but that it will change focus.
Strategic role
“Reviewing our work to date and testing new approaches in Future Councils has shown we can be most effective where we lean into our position as a central government department,” it says. “This means we’ll be working in a more strategic role as a ‘steward’, looking to bring the sector together to deliver modern digital services that enhance citizens’ lives.
“We’re still working out what this might mean in practice—more to come shortly—but broadly it means we’ll work more closely with key partners to draw together expertise, redefine our engagement with suppliers, and support the development of data standards and the scaling of digital solutions.”
It adds that Local Digital will continue to make grants to local government, but that in the short term there are no plans for a new round through the Local Digital Fund model. Its immediate focus will be on helping to deliver the outputs from currently funded projects to maximise their impact.
The team has also said that it is planning a final pilot before its widespread introduction of the Cyber Assessment Framework for local government, and that it is stepping up plans to help the sector share data, expertise and capabilities in cyber security.
