The Local Digital team in the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has allocated around £2 million to 16 projects in round six of the Local Digital Fund programme.
It said they are all agile projects, albeit at varying stages of maturity, were selected from 50 applications and take the total provided by the fund since its launch in 2018 to over £16 million.
The largest allocation of £350,00 has gone to Southampton City Council to develop and implement automation tools for starters, movers and leavers processes.
Other large shares have gone to: Kent County Council, with £218,200 to develop a data platform for strategic planning and infrastructure provision; Cumbria County Council (£139,000) to scale a digital tool for emergency teams to identify a vulnerable household during a crisis; and Rushmoor Borough Council (£138,150) to test a prototype licensing service.
The choices were based on how they will make local government services safer, more resilient and cheaper to run, demonstrating the potential level of savings and how the projects will be financially resourced and deliver in line with agile principles.
Tech as enabler
“These projects will help us to create the next generation of local public services, where technology is an enabler rather than a barrier to service improvements, and services are user centred,” Local Digital said.
The other authorities to win funding are:
- Redbridge - £100,000 to identify opportunities for preventative interventions and triaging in adult social care;
- Kingston Upon Thames - £100,000 to investigate the automation of social care triage, assessment and prescription;
- Greater Manchester Combined Authority - £100,000 to develop processes to capture and share data when vulnerable adults go missing;
- Lambeth - £100,000 for the development of building controls software;
- Stockport - £82,000 for the development of an adult social care digital patient journey management system;
- Newham - £100,000 to inspect data factors to help identify people at risk of homelessness;
- Southwark - £93,300 to develop a digital support tool to help carers navigate information and services;
- Nottinghamshire - £95,000 to work on data science methods to identify characteristics of parents willing to adopt siblings from ethnic minorities or who have complex needs;
- South Ribble - £35,175 to explore streamlining requirements for people to access council services;
- Wakefield – £97,000 to develop connected places technology for a real time surface water flood warning system;
- North Tyneside - £93,500 to investigate machine learning in assessing the variables of bulk waste collection;
- Epping Forest - £69,000 to assess the sharing and use of planning consultation data across councils.
Figure for Greater Manchester corrected on 14.3.23
