West Lindsey District Council has adopted a digital strategy consisting of five guiding principles and a blueprint for its systems and technology.
Titled Digital ICT Vision, it is claimed to be different from its earlier strategies in not having any bold statements or restrictions on what it can or cannot do.
“This new approach creates a new Digital ICT Vision with guiding principles with a business planning which sets the focus, framework and plan to deliver and respond to the issues that we need to address to deliver our corporate priorities,” the document says.
The principles are: one council, aligned with the corporate plan; integrated systems and processes; software-as-a-service as the first choice for new systems; an ecosystem of complementary applications and technology; and security.
These are meant to function as a checklist to ensure any decision creates an advantage for the council, and to encourage conversation between teams to ensure any necessary pre-work has been completed.
The blueprint for systems and technology includes Microsoft corporate tools, an increasing use of robotic process automation, AI and integrations, and the use of SugarCRM.
Business approach
The business planning model involves the systems development team, change team and project management team creating a list of achievable projects for each year, and ensuring the right funding along with phased implementation is in place.
Once the business plan has been approved then new projects will have to be resources from current capacity, which is intended to provide financial assurance.
The document also says digital projects will be evaluated against desired outcomes as part of the project management process, reported through programme and portfolio boards with operational delivery updates.
“What this also shows is that digital technology is only ever a part of the solution,” it says. “It might be able to deliver the outcomes, but when we get to the desired outcomes we are looking at digital to enable our staff and service delivery to change too.
“This is why it is key that the Digital ICT Vision is aligned to our transformation and the ongoing continuous Improvement programmes of our council in support of delivering the corporate plan.”
