The Local Digital team in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has flagged up a number of achievements on the fifth anniversary of the Local Digital Declaration.
It has been running its annual Digital Declaration Month showcase of work by signatory councils in developing digital services that better meet the needs of citizens and deliver value for money.
The Local Digital Declaration was launched in 2018 to state a shared vision for local government that includes: redesigning services around people’s needs; breaking the dependence on inflexible and expensive technology; designing safe ways of sharing information; demonstrating digital leadership; and embedding a culture for working in the open wherever possible.
The team has highlighted a number of achievements for the programme itself over the past five years. These include the provision of approximately £42 million in funding for local authority digital projects, including through the six rounds of the Local Digital Fund in areas such as housing technology, services to prevent homelessness and sharing planning data.
It has also launched Future Councils programme to help local authorities become modern and resilient through identifying common challenges and addressing them in effective and replicable ways; and offering training to individuals in areas such as digital and agile.
Achievements
There has been a range of achievements in the individual projects. Among the most notable has been the adoption of the Local Gov Drupal open source content management system by 35 councils, which has enabled them to save up to 80% of costs in building a new website.
The Open Referral Standard is now being used by 20 councils to create interoperability between directories and accelerate the delivery of mandatory services. It has now been adopted by the Cabinet Office as an open standard for government.
In addition, Open Digital Planning has been adopted by eight councils and is a key element of DLUHC’s planning reforms, and the Housing Repairs Service has been set up to reduce the number of calls made to councils and improve the flexibility of bookings.
A number of beta projects are also in progress, including the development of a Digital Inclusion Toolkit, led by Leeds City Council, a project on quality data on children in care led by Wigan Council, and the Scalable Approach to Vulnerability via Interoperability (SAVVI) led by Tameside Council. The latter is aimed at producing national data standards to support vulnerable people and households.
Understanding impact
Local Digital has also undertaken a discovery project with digital transformation specialist TPXImpact to understand the impact of the declaration across the sector, and plans to use the findings in shaping its future direction.
Ben Cheetham of the Local Digital team commented: “What a five years since the launch of the Local Digital Declaration, and with projects like LocalGovDrupal, Housing Repairs and OpenCommunityUK, we're now starting to see real change in the sector.
“There is still a long road ahead of us though, and I look forward to seeing how our work on the NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework and through Future Councils can continue to enable and accelerate change.”
