The London Borough of Hillingdon has set out four principles and five workstreams and committed to a £9 million investment as part of a new digital strategy.
Its cabinet agreed on the strategy last week, setting out its vision for the effort over the next three years.
The principles include: prioritising residents’ needs; carrying out an agile approach to delivery; delivering new business models driven by data; and adopting a ‘One Council’ approach by creating project teams and shared goals.
The workstreams will focus on: building services online by default; sourcing better data to make better decisions; modernising council infrastructure and systems; building digital capacity and inclusion; and delivering a digital place.
Elements of the infrastructure steam include a review and refresh of back office systems, ensuring that any new systems procured use open APIs, working towards a small number of specialist systems with shared components, and ensuring systems are secure by default.
Ambition for apprenticeships
The council is also aiming to create a permanent rolling programme of digital apprenticeships, working with local higher education institutions.
The strategy also sets out a number of key performance indicators for areas including user adoption, task completion rates, customer satisfaction, website performance, operational efficiency and conversion rates in digital services.
Announcing the strategy, Hillingdon claimed it had already made considerable progress through steps such as the introduction of an automated voice and web chat function on its phone lines and website, quickly adapting to hybrid working and improving connectivity across the borough.
Propelling the vision
Its cabinet member for corporate services, Cllr Douglas Mills, said: "While we have, to date, already made a host of digital improvements, this new strategy and investment of £9 million in digital technologies will significantly propel our vision of being a more digital council into reality and immensely improve our resident, visitor, business and staff experience.
"The document provides a broad, overarching framework for effective business planning and strong performance management within the council to drive the transformation of services to continue to meet the changing needs and expectations of our residents and allow people to transact with the council quicker and more effectively."
