Local Digital recently held its first Digital Transformation Discovery day to provide a forum for central and local government to get together and share ideas on digitising public services. Held in partnership with Land Registry, local authorities were invited to find out more about lessons learned so far from the department's huge digital reform programme and share ideas for working together through the challenges that lie ahead. In these vox pops, speakers introduce the key topics covered on the day.
"It's not just our game anymore".
The country's first local authority Chief Digital Officer says local digital transformation is "an enormous task". The right outcome will not happen by local authorities working alone, but by forming partnerships with others - including central government. To illustrate, she describes as "brilliant" the opportunity offered by the event to see some of the results emerging from collaboration with GDS, her previous employer.
"Everything starts with customer in mind - IT comes later".
Land Registry is undergoing massive digital transformation and used the opportunity of the event to share ideas and aims with local authorities. Having worked with Government Digital Service (GDS) as part of their drive to make information easy to access and reduce cost for customers, he describes the Discovery Day as an "information exchange between central and local government".
"We want to minimise the burden to migrate data".
Rhonda Griffiths has travelled the country visiting over 200 local authorities to hear their concerns about new Local Land Charges (LLCs) models requiring digitisation of paper documents. While the outcome is still under consultation, Griffiths told speed briefing sessions that Land Registry is on hand to help local authorities with the practical issues. "It's a huge task", she says "but it's got to be a collaborative process with local authorities".
"Today is about working together".
In the briefing session she presented, Allison Bradbury covered the impact of changes to Local Land Charges (LCCs) on local authorities. The department is keen to be able to provide a digital, improved service that harnesses the local knowledge and expertise held by local authorities. Land Registry is now on a mission to understand the deeper impact and she says that she wants the department to help them reach "a more digital state".
"Sharing the experience is the most important thing".
Trude Brinck-Johnsen Margel presented an example from Norwegian company Infoland. She says that as the organisation moved from being state-owned to privately-owned, Infoland worked closely with local authorities on land register-related issues, such as standardising fees and improving searches for the system to be "of relevance to the community".
