The director of the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) has proposed the creation of a sandbox in which local authorities could test new technology and service solutions.
Eddie Copeland has outlined the proposal in a blogpost, saying it could help the sector to overcome current shortcomings in its capacity to design, test, evaluate, adopt and scale new solutions – and that LOTI could run a trial of the concept.
This could help local government to go beyond incremental improvements in dealing with systemic pressures, especially in adult social care, that are severely undermining its financial sustainability.
“My pitch is that LOTI and willing partners could trial an LAS in London, where we have a highly motivated and talented group of council colleagues wanting to find new solutions – but a similar approach might benefit the whole sector,” he said.
Copeland said the Local Authority Sandbox (LAS) would be a physical space – possibly a pop-up – in which new technologies and service innovations could be tested and evaluated on realistic mock-ups of local service areas without risk.
Several steps
It would involve a number of steps, beginning with identifying service challenges, followed by mapping current processes and technologies, creating a physical mock-up of them then inviting technology companies and other innovators to see a ‘performance’ of the current service model carried out by actors or volunteers. The owners of individual challenges would be on hand to answer any questions.
It would be followed by an open call for solutions, then a design and testing phase of two to 12 weeks in which LOTI would provide service designers, synthetic data, access to service staff from the challenge owners, evaluation and procurement support.
Once solutions are refined they could be subject to a ‘show and tell’, including details of the evaluation, followed by the provision of toolkits on procurement and implementation.
Copeland said this would completely de-risk the trialing of new technologies and service models for councils, enable the testing of an expansive range of solutions, enable local authority staff to see and feel solutions and attract investment from the private sector. Also, an insistence on only testing technologies that enable free access to system data and interoperability would help to promote these causes in the market.
There would also be benefits for innovators, including a tangible means of connecting with local government to show and test solutions, and helping small suppliers gain access to the market.
Copeland has asked local authorities to provide feedback on the idea and if possible to help put it into practice.
