welcome to the local digital project lightning talks this is the last of the local digital collaboration units events
0:06
this week the digital leaders um ugly would you by skipping slides for
0:12
me thank you i've got two of the same um i'm sam i work in the local digital collaboration
0:18
unit i'm a collaboration manager so that means i work with our funded projects and support them to
0:24
deliver um some of the great work that they're doing out there in local government uh not taking credit for it i i sort of
0:30
mostly sit and watch and help where i can um and ugly uh he's joining me and is um kind of doing
0:37
some of the administration and charlotte who are here as well they're both in our team too and working with local government uh
0:44
next slide please thank you so um first things to say is that we are recording this session
0:50
today so if you don't want to appear on the video at all um i would recommend that you turn your
0:56
video off uh so that you're not included in there and also please just for the sake of our speakers today
1:02
make sure that you're muted during the session so that there's no sort of background noise that puts them
1:08
off or anything like that and then finally any q a because we've
1:13
got several different speakers and only a limited amount of time q a um will be via the chat so if you
1:18
have any questions for our speakers um please pop them into the chat and somebody will pick it up and
1:24
get back to you there are several different people from the project teams here so you should hear back
1:29
um when they have the opportunity and next slide please so our agenda for today
1:37
like i said we've got a really packed uh agenda um and we're going to be um hearing from
1:43
some of our projects that we funded as part of our kovid 19 funded route funding round
1:48
um first up is will from our local girls drupal project and then we've got eddie and becky from
1:55
the future work design project glenn from the income management system project fraser
2:00
from housing repairs sarah's going to be presenting for the digital inclusion toolkit project with jason i think is
2:07
answering some questions in the chat and now we'll just close so hopefully that will be a good
2:12
well packed hour of your time and hopefully well spent um next slide please so a little bit
2:18
about us in the local digital collaboration unit in case you don't know you might not know um we do uh three different things we
2:26
have the local digital declaration which is like an aspirational uh way of working that we ask local
2:33
authorities to work with us on and it basically describes the ways that we think that digital technology
2:39
and service projects should be run in local government and we help councils to to work in those ways um the next one
2:49
thank you ugly so we currently have uh 223 councils signed up uh and this map
2:55
gives you uh an overview of where those where those councils and organizations are so we've got good coverage
3:01
around the country at the moment which is lovely um next slide please oh yeah and um last year as part of
3:09
um covered 19 response and kind of working out how on earth to meet the
3:15
challenge of local government within uh token 19 we ran the c19 challenge
3:21
and funded a number of projects so some of the projects you will be hearing from today uh are um responses to that
3:29
and and supporting local authorities through that uh i wanted to say pandem uh crisis but i
3:35
think pandemic is is probably better terminology so um without further ado
3:40
i'm going to pass over to will uh to talk a little bit more about the local gap drupal project
3:46
ugly do you want to stop sharing and then wilkin who can drive himself is that okay
3:53
yes i will drive myself
3:58
which i will try to drive myself hello everyone thank you sam for that that great introduction uh we're local of drupal and i'm will
4:05
callahan i'm the project lead i might tell you more about the cat later if you're interested um before we in fact i think
4:14
i've skipped through a few sides sorry before we start sort of telling you about what we're doing now i thought i'd give you a
4:20
little bit of history if you've been to one of these talks before you've probably heard some of this stuff so apologies
4:25
but there might be new people who've not really heard where we've come from why we're here um and the problem you if you're in
4:31
local government you'll know about this already there's there's 400 odd uk councils they all need
4:37
gov main websites and there's a lot of money in time and effort and expertise
4:43
spending you know money every three to five years to rebuild these things um and using these are similar or the
4:50
same the technology might change but the needs are very similar as time goes on the councils aren't really swapping
4:56
notes or collaborating overly um i mean from my own point of view i generally have a bill murray slide here
5:02
because for me it feels like groundhog day i've built seven of these things all together and i just feel like i'm sort of
5:07
reinventing the wheel constantly um i think the story goes back further
5:13
than 2019 but i guess the there are lots of talented colleagues in brighton and elsewhere that really
5:18
helped us get started but i guess the start of the project proper was was that this
5:23
this article and the agreement that croydon and brighton hove councils made
5:28
to basically stop reinventing the wheel croydon said you've got a really good publishing platform uh right
5:34
and we want to start using that and it's the credit to some of the people on this photo so the product
5:39
manager tom steele and colleagues that we got on and did that i think it wouldn't have been possible
5:45
without the local digital uh digital declaration which sam mentioned so bro brighton and croydon have signed
5:51
it and many other people have signed it but in that it talks about reuse of technology rather than reinventing the
5:57
wheel and we're really able to lean into that and talk to our colleagues about why that's really important and they
6:02
accepted it they went for it um sam didn't mention the local digital fund but i mean that's played a critical
6:08
part part in our work we're able to go to a fund and say we are using some code already we
6:14
sharing code can you help us grow this can you help us explore whether other councils want to do it too
6:20
and the little badge for the discovery work that we did um you know it was kind
6:26
of the start of that um do councils really want to work together and we found that they did
6:32
uh fast forward to today there are 12 councils in our partnership
6:38
i guess right now um and they're all over the country uh there's a lot of london councils but
6:43
there's a lot of council sort of in other parts of the country as well um i'm based at cumbria county council
6:49
right now they've been a brilliant home for us they take this very seriously and we're supported by a lot of
6:55
suppliers in each of these different councils and the main project is supported by it by an oxford
7:01
based drupal agency called agile collective finn my colleague is in the chat if you want to ask any questions
7:07
so thanks for that finn what we're offering today and you can go and get this stuff today is a kit of drupal
7:13
parts that any council can download and create the website publishing platform you really need
7:19
um there's a slack community very active with 105 people in it right now um and you can get a test of
7:26
this running in 15 minutes i mean ultimately you want to do more work on it but you can try it in 15 minutes
7:31
and it's very easy for a developer to add new features to it uh benefits i mean we've found all sorts
7:38
of benefits there's reduced time and cost obviously particularly we're starting to explore
7:45
now around sort of microsites or satellite sites that we all have we think we're going to see a lot of savings there the fact that we
7:51
collaborate means we can build ones for everyone and we find that we're doing that more and more and we're learning from
7:58
each other a lot lots of tips and tricks that we all use and ways of working that we're sharing
8:03
um the content formats that we're producing they're based on good practice we we
8:09
look a lot of what wk is doing and elsewhere the work's all accessible it's responsive and we're seeing in call
8:16
centers where we're starting to measure this now that it's reducing failure demand so it's kind of win for everyone
8:23
um as i said we're in beta these are the things that we're looking at other things but these are the highlights
8:30
so we've got content lifecycle workflow type tools already but we want to do more with it we think
8:36
we can introduce scheduled publishing and better review links and better workflow so we're going through that now we have
8:42
almost like a mini product within local drupal called directories and
8:48
another clg project called open referral we're implementing that standard so you know proper data shareable
8:54
structured data which is great um we have a feature called subsite which is basically
9:00
you know make a microsite we're doing a lot more with that um we want to be able to sort of you
9:06
know to spin up site quickly give give the power to content designers and service designers and teams to do
9:11
this we're doing a lot more work on forms drupal web forms in drupal 9 which we're
9:17
all in is is really good it's a good starting point for this kind of work we're also thinking about what happens
9:23
long term you know maybe we're 20 councils or 30 councils and how do we manage this how do we how
9:29
do we sort of keep it all together and very happy to talk a bit more about that in the chat
9:35
we're also trying to develop tools that we can all share so this is you may well be familiar with this this is
9:40
the design council double diamond process it's been really useful for us how do we all design together
9:47
what common frame of reference do we have so things like that are great and we're not reinventing it it exists
9:53
it's useful we'll use it um the biggest problem that we have in beta i think
9:59
the challenges but i think this is the biggest is we've got 12 councils now they're all busy they've got their own priorities
10:05
how do we get them to collaborate meaningfully together and it it's handy that we've got there's
10:12
a we've got a lot in common already so even if councils aren't using scrum which is the left-hand side picture
10:19
at least they know about it and we can talk about the concepts within that and refer to them
10:24
also i mean this page on gov uk i think i've looked at it sort of twice a week now but what are the jobs what are the
10:31
skills that we all think we need what are the capabilities we need so even if you don't have a product manager in your
10:37
council you can talk about the kind of skills that that involves and we're all heading in this direction
10:42
and gathering more of these skills hiring more of these people we're also looking at um sort of concept
10:49
maybe outside of sort of digital land there's a really interesting thing called sociocracy which you know has
10:56
roots that go way back but it's about sort of um decentralizing
11:01
decision making there's a lot of us and our groups there's one group we have called the product group which is really
11:06
big it's got sort of 30 to 50 people that come along every month it's too big to make a decision
11:12
so what we're starting to do is is make working groups who want a better phrase so our product groups
11:19
and technical groups sit at the center where we we talk about bigger picture things and we give we give our work a
11:24
bit of direction but the decision making is made around the outside we had uh we're about to have a working
11:31
group for microsites or subsites for forms for front end and for back end and we're
11:36
pushing decisions out to the people who are best placed to make them giving them the time to make these decisions and that's proving really
11:42
interesting it's a model that we're going to sort of keep working on and use in the future
11:48
one final thing before i sign off we've got a survey right now and you can win john lewis vouchers so if you feel like
11:55
that and if you want to tell us more about how you do collaboration in your council how you use cms's how do
12:02
you make decisions about buying them we'd really love to hear from you and it will definitely help our work
12:08
so go to bitly lgd survey and you can tell us more fantastic please do get in touch if you
12:15
like what you see we're on twitter at localgooddrupal or you can reach us on email
12:20
and thank you for listening thank you so much will that's excellent
12:27
no no questions in the chat which might just mean that you've explained everything perfectly but if you do want
12:33
to chat to will and finn then just pop things in there and people will get back to you um next up
12:38
we have eddie and becky from the future work design project so eddie becky i'm not sure
12:43
which one of you is sharing your slides but crack crack on okay it's myself
12:50
so hopefully this is just this into presentation mode is that uh
12:56
does that come across can you see that okay yeah that's all working perfectly brilliant we'll crack on then
13:02
uh so thank you for inviting our team to present our project to future work design on this great
13:07
event today you have myself eddie nibblet the ict strategic business solutions
13:12
manager from the east riding of yorkshire council and becky coulton senior transformation officer from hall city council
13:19
our project team also includes specialist roles from microsoft university of hull north lincolnshire
13:25
council north east lincolnshire council and obviously support for our funders the ministry of housing communities and
13:30
local government uh so um background phase one
13:37
so kovid 19 there probably hasn't been such a significant uh change in working practices maybe
13:43
since the introduction of computers and although changes in the systems and processes of the last 18 months
13:49
have been planned and controlled by the organization and with such large-scale changes it's
13:55
important to understand the impact on staff themselves we need to understand the
14:00
experiences of staff what were the challenges and how have they overcome them or are they still challenges and
14:07
recognize and potentially adopt success where it's emerged holistically this will then all support the future
14:14
design of sustainable working practices that understands and takes into account the impact on staff
14:20
which is obviously the organization's most valuable resource so phase one of the project aim to
14:26
develop an evidence-based risk assessment tool the staff could easily complete but still provided us with enough data
14:33
that could be analyzed to provide us with a clear insight into the thoughts feelings and experiences of our staff to support
14:40
the evidence required to inform and shape strategies and management decisions
14:45
although focused on councils this has been shared with over half a million organizations
14:50
through hse and across three other countries i think it's romania sweden and italy
14:57
some of the initial responses we've received from staff that were captured in the white paper
15:02
included you know i'm sure everyone could refer to these there are too many meetings in diaries
15:08
meetings that would have been five minute conversations are now 30-minute meetings uh you worry you might have missed a
15:14
call or someone might wonder what you're doing while you're sat at home and they try to contact you and you're
15:20
not sat at your desk at that moment in time well i do seem to think i've lost some of my identity
15:26
i do need to go into the office occasionally to feel part of a face-to-face team and get a connection but there are some positives as well
15:32
that we need to take into account and work is more flexible uh working earlier means better evening
15:38
work life balance and you can deal with minor interruptions like deliveries
15:46
so phase two um it was the question was so after phase one the what now if the initial analysis of the responses
15:53
is indicating that staff are experiencing pressures due to the new remote working approach how do we
16:00
support them so the idea was to look what the four authorities already had in place
16:06
identify the best way to use the functionality and understand if it was actually effective or if we needed to
16:13
develop it further provide further training or change the way it was adopted
16:20
it was fantastic a real success to get microsoft on board and they didn't need a lot of persuading
16:26
as this is a challenge that's emerging from authorities across the country and there's been many
16:31
conversations already ongoing as to how we address this the the concept itself was to use my
16:37
analytics as a personal well-being intervention tool that gives staff the choice to use
16:43
various data sets that reflects their working practices
16:50
so like head said that um as part of the phase one we carried out some research and report
16:57
um was published and as part of that some of these challenges that came up
17:02
as part of that and as part of the stress risk assessment tool was that staff was experiencing was
17:08
back-to-back meetings and that was staff was finding that due to not traveling in between meetings
17:14
there was getting meetings booked back to by your team so it was more easier for people to go into the calendars
17:20
and book them back to back which is resulting in exhaustion the difficulty finding time to focus if
17:27
you're not having that time to have breaks in between your meetings you're not having that focused time to
17:33
actually do the doing breaks staff are not having sufficient breaks they're working later
17:39
they're working longer hours they're not switching off which again is resulting in brick in
17:45
britain um extreme but also that's really bad on both physical and mentally always
17:53
available so staff feeling like they have to be available all the time they're worried that because the system's showing that
17:58
they're they're away from the desk that they're not doing the work or that they don't answer a call that
18:04
the managers or colleagues might feel that they're not doing some work and then there's to do the decompression
18:11
tab as well and there's that tab where just in between meetings you just want to go huh you just want to breathe and you just
18:17
want to have time to relax and reflect and i think that's really important is that time in between
18:22
meetings to breathe and reflect because you want that time to talk about your problems or talk about the meeting
18:28
or time to be innovative and time to bounce ideas off your colleagues
18:33
so some of these were the key challenges that have been coming up through this research
18:41
so what's our approach the aim of this is to explore the efficacy of an
18:46
intervention that aims to nudge people towards a healthy way of working we know that i can't take it away but we
18:52
want something that's able to nudge it that can support staff's health and well-being so how we're going
18:58
to do this so we're going to train people in the use of one such intervention which we've already said is my analytics
19:05
and we're going to measure any impacts on feelings about work and well-being the process of this is
19:12
going to have 320 participants 160 of these this is across the far
19:17
local authorities 160 of these are going to be part of the intervention group they're the ones who are gonna carry out
19:23
the testing of my analytics during that eight week period then we've got 160 are part of the control group
19:30
the contrail group will not get access to my analytics it will only be the intervention group
19:36
we're going to train the intervention group in the use of my analytics and underpinning digital skills
19:41
throughout digital maturity we're going to then collect data about digital skills
19:46
personal characteristics stress and well-being and we're also going to carry out some pre-purse and daily diary
19:54
also the control group who aren't doing the my anyone getting changed on my analytics we'll still do a daily diary
20:00
too following that we're going to do focus groups to understand the experiences of the staff
20:10
so what do we have to achieve so as part of the well-being we really want to empower staff with a
20:16
simple tool that enables them to view current activities and it's to give them that choice to
20:22
make changes to the health and well-being it is only the staff members who get
20:27
access to this data so it's their choice whether they want to share this information with their managers
20:33
are part of their one-to-one rpg pr's because support with that health and well-being
20:38
want productivity so if staff feel less stress the more motivated this could result in
20:44
less sickness time not having rush not having to wish to do work more time to focus and what we said
20:52
earlier on in the side of them that focus time is really important if you've got more time to focus that quality of your work
20:58
and the productivity it's more beneficial for that this just doesn't benefit the
21:03
organization it benefits our staff and it also benefits importantly our residents as well
21:09
in terms of sustainability as we know from phase one our staff wants continue um with a
21:16
blended way of working but enable us to sustain this we need to really support our staff with their
21:22
health and well-being as we said the staff our own asset
21:30
so in terms of the intended outcomes we are able to turn on my analytics we've got the the four local
21:37
organizations the world not microsoft 365 but we don't want to do this yet we want to make sure it's the right tool
21:44
it does support staff and it does help with that well health and well-being to reduce the pressures that staff have experienced
21:51
that we know they're experiencing from phase one so some of this is around um my analysis is do people tend
21:58
to use it regularly if i do does it have any impact on the ways of working
22:03
if it does is there any relationship between working in healthy ways and levels of well-being
22:13
so thanks becky um so finally uh there is a potential phase three so
22:18
phase one was engaging with staff understanding their challenges and experiences phase two is a a
22:25
response to that so how do we support the staff and then hopefully we'll be looking at a phase three
22:31
um to look at culture change so it's okay the staff adopting change if the organization itself doesn't so if
22:38
you put in lunch breaks but the organization still expects that you'll accept meeting requests through that period
22:44
it's not going to embed so that's where we're hoping to take it next we do have quite an in-depth
22:50
website to support all this work it's got the phase one tools on there which are free to use for
22:55
everybody so please go on there you download them if you want or read the white paper there's a lot of interesting
23:01
information on there the link is there on this screen and obviously i believe it's going to be shared later
23:08
and thank you for taking the time to hear about our work thank you thank you eddie and becky that
23:16
was really really informative i really appreciate it um again really quiet in the chat everyone so
23:23
either you're just too shy or the speakers are too good but please feel free to add questions in
23:29
there um we are now going to go across to glenn um to talk to you about the income
23:35
management system lenny you were happy to um share your camera and um slides
23:41
indeed i am yes thank you hopefully everyone can see that
23:50
thank you very much thank you very much everybody um so my name is glenn conroy uh and i'm working for dorset council
23:57
and i'm going to talk a little bit about the income management system that we're working on um
24:03
people we're working with uh so uh we're partners with uh barnsley and huntington shearer as
24:10
well and obviously our uh uh mhdlg as well as uh uh support and funding the project as
24:16
well so that's what we look like um tony and richard are on the call as well so
24:22
please post any questions into the chat and hopefully they'll be able to uh answer any questions that you do have
24:29
so we'll move off that slide pretty quickly um so income management system ims what is
24:35
an income management system well we did a lot of work to try and work out what it is and it does lots of things
24:40
but ultimately it's everything and all things income so interfaces with uh various um software and
24:48
platforms that receive income it captures transactions and it also interfaces with um any
24:56
finance applications you might have or erps so there's lots of things there and
25:02
basically it serves as an engine as a hub to pull all those different things together
25:08
now we're starting in quite an unusual situation here where uh barnsley already developed a system
25:15
so you'd think that might mean okay we're done tick let's roll it out and essentially
25:20
that is where we are at um so barnsley have their system um and
25:25
richard kindly put a a message out to everybody saying hey we've got a system does anybody want
25:31
to share and there was lots of interest which was which was really good so um i think it sort of resonates with
25:37
a lot of what the local gov drupal project are doing as well so there's there's a lot of similarities
25:42
there so we produced a vision and our aim is
25:48
to offer an ims that provides value for money and is open by design um so as people may or may not know
25:55
um there's a couple of big players in the ims market um and a lot of authorities and
26:00
organizations use those big players um and i think it was just to an idea of trying to offer an
26:08
alternative to those big suppliers um in in with regards to an income management system
26:16
um so a lot of work's happened so far uh as i said including barnsley having already developed a system
26:22
but what else did we do so through discovery um we we talked to a lot of organizations
26:28
to test the hypothesis of you know is is this going to be something that people are interested is this something
26:34
we want to try and build this community of organizations using a system trying to give something um that they
26:40
can use and is going to provide value um so we tested that hypothesis and we gauged the amount of interest
26:46
and you'd be pleased to know that there was a lot of interest so that's good so that moved us on into alpha and some of the things we did
26:53
there we captured some more of the user journeys we tried to put a lot more detail around how this is going to work and how
26:58
this is going to happen we developed an indicative reference architecture as well
27:04
and we also uh looked at some of the support models that could work with this um and this is this is quite a big thing
27:11
in in some of the things that we are talking about so there's various different options that we have um as you can see
27:17
uh open source at one end of the spectrum where basically we say here's the code off you go and enjoy and at the other
27:24
end there's the option of a hosted and sas solution so basically an authority
27:29
could call upon a supplier to to implement and manage that system
27:35
on their behalf we also looked at the various personas of of uh different councils and
27:41
organizations that that may exist as well and basically it's stemmed along uh a spectrum of digital and i.t
27:48
capability from people that are completely self-sufficient to other organizations that that rely on
27:54
others to to support that for them so then on to beta which is where we find ourselves now so what's our plan
28:02
um well ultimately we decided that our initial focus is going to be on the
28:07
open source model so what do we need to do that well as we said barnsley have already
28:12
developed their their system so essentially we've termed the coin of
28:18
uh de-barnslifying the code um so we need to take out any other secrets in there and anything specific
28:24
and containerize it and basically make this uh a code base that we can publish um but
28:30
then we need to start building the community we need people to start actually picking this code up and start using it implementing it with their systems
28:36
integrating with their current systems with their finance systems their erps and start collecting the income and
28:44
managing those transactions so that's a lot of what we need to start doing that's our that's our objective right now but after
28:51
that we're going to start looking at the other uh the other end of the spectrum with a hosted solution so this is where we'll be working with
28:58
uh partners and engaging with partners and develop a supportive model
29:04
where people can then call upon those suppliers to say yeah i want to use it but i want you to do it
29:09
for me so that's kind of the idea there so again further building the community
29:14
so we're talking about the community a lot um and i thought it might be useful just to try and visualize what we're talking
29:20
about this community so essentially right in the middle you've got this code repository
29:26
and then that kind of splits so you've got that open source model that i've talked about where various organizations councils may pick
29:31
up that code repository and use it use it themselves and then on the other side of that
29:36
you've got the supported model where you've got suppliers but pick that up but the whole idea of the community and
29:42
this this is um very similar to the local gov drupal project as i said
29:47
um and we will be picking their brains so we'll um watch out for the emails coming through
29:52
we're going to be picking your brains um where we're going to be working out how we can build that community and how
29:57
we can make this work so ultimately yes there's there's going to be feature requests there's going to be changes that are needed
30:03
there's going to be legislative changes that are required there's going to have to be that level of governance again similar to what will
30:10
was talking about with the drupal project and how that is then managed and how that then feeds through and and
30:16
further field feeds the project and a product sorry um so yeah
30:23
open model um we're concentrating on that side um at the moment um and then later on
30:29
we'll look at the supported supported model side
30:34
and for the personas that we feel that um that would match um so the organization's councils that
30:40
would would match uh that model would be more towards the self-sufficient side of that digital and
30:46
it capability so um those personas has been in-house i.t or outsourced technology delivery but
30:53
um have have that control over what they're able to do so we're looking for you come talk to us
30:59
um how can you well there's our there's our information there local gov ims uh the the website there
31:06
local gov ims.digital and you can email us at hello localgov ims.digital
31:13
so thank you very much hopefully that was useful um
31:18
that's me thank you glenn that was amazing um
31:24
really lovely i i really really like that we've got two projects talking about
31:30
open source community building so good i live for this um and next up we have
31:36
fraser um who's going to be talking about our housing repairs online projects
31:42
fraser are you okay to share your screen i am indeed all being well i'm going to try the new 365 um
31:49
kind of picture in picture thing as well let's see how this goes am i going to be on the slides it's the
31:56
moment of truth doing something yeah there you are amazing okay
32:05
hopefully this is going to progress with everybody and with the way that i've shared it okay so yep repairs online digital fun
32:13
project sadly there's only a couple of partners left as we entering into this beta stage
32:19
which i'll come back to in a minute but if anybody wants to get involved please get in touch with me i've got my
32:24
twitter feed on there as well my role for this project is the product owner and i work with ct lincoln
32:30
council has that slide moved over on for everybody
32:37
yeah it's all good fraser cool thank you very much okay yeah so the problem that we're facing
32:43
here is that for anybody that or for any authorities that deal with council repairs will
32:48
know and that it's likely going to be your highest core volume reason and not just with people logging new
32:53
calls it's people chasing up finding out what's going on there's a lot of failure demand around this
33:00
and we have calculated that it's costing us over 30 million per annum in handling this
33:06
across our sector but we've also got lots of barriers to adoption from customers like lack of trust in our
33:12
digital services and the demographics that go alongside this so there's got lots of problems that we need to solve
33:19
this project and we started this process off we've already been through discovery
33:25
and alpha and then we spent a bit more time in a technical alpha trying to understand the well actually all of this is a great
33:32
idea we've got a real good comma service pattern in place now we understand our user needs
33:37
we've been following the agile rules but it's kind of what how do we actually make this become a reality
33:42
so we've spent time talking with some of the market leaders in terms of civica northgate capital drs total mobile
33:49
et cetera et cetera and we've had lots of authorities involved with us as we've been through
33:54
this so we started in 2019 with discovery and also in 2019 we went through alpha
34:01
and then it was just last year that we completed that technical alpha to think about well how do we make this
34:06
thing a real product for us we've been trying to work in the open as
34:12
much as we can do um for me certainly it's something kind of new and getting used to that but we've
34:17
set up a blog website i'm sure these uh slides will be shared out but the links are in here so you can kind of follow our story on
34:23
there we've got a youtube channel with the show and tells etcetera on there we're also trying to be engaging with
34:30
the kind of support sectors around this so we've reached out to tech uk had a session presentation with those
34:37
we've had a real good relationship with hacked and understanding how we can build upon their apis
34:42
and jem a colleague on here representing the thistle group from london councils so we're just trying to
34:49
reach out to as many people as we can and engage as much as as possible and obviously attend to things like today
34:57
so what we have been through is quite a journey so far we've had lots of user interviews over 80 people
35:04
we've spoken to over 500 000 lines of data gone through i've already mentioned some of the
35:10
suppliers that we've talked about you can read the rest of yourselves on there
35:16
um so what we have learned is that the current process that most councils have in place are designed around
35:22
our needs i i hear the council's needs and one thing that's been common across all
35:27
the partners we've worked with is our housing management system is at the core and center of all this
35:33
process which is kind of why it's designed around our needs to be honest
35:38
so what we're trying to do is challenge that look for that opportunity to disrupt the market think about is there actually a
35:45
better place that we can talk to in terms of creating that repair that leaves the customers with that all-important appointment time
35:54
and for the large part the customers that we've spoken to really don't want logins to go through this
36:00
process they see it as a barrier it's just another set of um usernames and passwords for them to remember
36:06
and as it's a really important subject for them they just want to be able to get on and do things quickly
36:13
and there is a lot of different systems across all of this as well although we all quite commonly use the
36:20
same few it seems that we've all somehow bought the different ones of every component
36:26
and are all on a slightly different version so we've gone through some uh
36:33
prototyping as mentioned earlier we've tested this with a large number of customers again the links on there you can click
36:39
on it take a look have a play with this happy for any feedback but this is built on those principles that were learnt in
36:45
discovery that customers don't want that login that actually using tech space instead of pictures is
36:52
a much better way for people to select the repairs on here and we're also
36:57
trying to enrich that reporting process so that customers can either submit videos
37:02
photos of that problem rather than trying to get the customer to just always tell us in sorr words if any
37:09
of you know that world how complicated that can be i mean one of the things that we did
37:14
find as well is that there's around 2000 sorrs in the schedule of rates between lincoln and
37:19
subway out of the top 100 so ours we use we shared five i mean just give you an idea on how each
37:27
council can set this up so differently
37:32
so what we're trying to do next is moving to our beta phase to build this thing we're just going
37:38
through our procurement process at the moment it's just closed the other day so we're just going to go through the short
37:44
listing hopefully we're going to get the project kick off in late july but the thing that we're really focusing
37:49
on here is that we're scrapping that building it around our needs or the council's needs and
37:55
we're going to trial building this integrating with the scheduling software because as far as the customer is concerned
38:01
it's that appointment date and time that's the important thing to them and it's the kind of assumption that we
38:06
have at the moment that that's the main reason that this isn't used where um authorities do have
38:12
a logging process in place at the moment because it goes into housing management system it seems to leave that bit of the
38:17
puzzle out of it and there's often a oh here's my repair and somebody calls you back and gives you an appointment date and time which
38:24
doesn't drive that kind of culture of a common contact point in there and so
38:29
we're hoping that we can get that digital contact as that first one leave the customers everything they need
38:35
and we're really going to be looking to leverage tours like gov notify throughout this so that we can keep the customers
38:41
informed and up-to-date of their repair process so yeah in summary we're going to be
38:48
hitting this phase one running with one software supplier in
38:53
that first instance hopefully in sandbox environment considering how we're going to build our common api out from there and build this
38:59
product out we'll be looking at phase two to expand that to the other authority partner that's
39:05
involved and consider how we actually get more sor type classifications built
39:11
in and make it configurable for customers uh for the council's picky pardon
39:17
and lastly it's about well actually how do we make this a reusable thing so this is a real big and important part
39:22
of the project and where we really need people off this course input to get involved with us
39:29
if you're interested in being a part of this later on down the line about how we can kind of share this package it up and get
39:36
people using it and take on the learning that we've gone through so far so if you do want to get involved
39:45
that was a slow transition um there is the website that link on there will take you to our contact form
39:51
or you just email me direct there's my twitter handle as well at the beginning but i've got to be honest i'm not very
39:58
good on twitter so i'd rather you email me uh but please feel free to reach out get in touch have a look at all the good
40:04
work that's gone on so far throughout this yeah drop us any questions if you do have any
40:11
thank you fraser and don't worry about not being great on twitter eggley and i are all over that for you
40:16
so that's all okay it's something
40:22
um last book by no means at least we've got sarah lyles from the um digital inclusion toolkit project
40:28
sarah are you okay to share yeah let's give it a go make sure this works
40:37
lovely you can see that wonderful all right hi my name's uh sarah lyles and i'm here
40:42
from lucy council along with uh jason tooten who's in the chat to answer some of your questions
40:47
uh to talk to you about the digital inclusion kit project which you can now find live online at
40:53
digitalinclusionkit.org so this is the second phase of this project uh the first page
41:00
phase was a lot of development and getting the site online as you can find it now
41:06
the partners in this project are the mhclg um lee city council
41:13
croydon council and tech resort and during the first phase of the project we also had help from age uk croydon
41:22
so this is an mhclg funded project and it was part of the local digital cnt and challenge fund
41:28
that sam mentioned earlier in response to the increased demand for digital services resulting from
41:34
the reduction in face-to-face contact due to the covered pandemic
41:41
so digital inclusion plays a vital role in ensuring that people who might be vulnerable and socially isolated are not further
41:48
disadvantaged by the restrictions imposed by the chronovirus and pandemic and this toolkit serves as a
41:53
how-to guide on strategies that can be used when tackling digital exclusion within our communities
42:01
drawing initially on the combined experiences and learnings of leeds and croydon councils this toolkit's a
42:07
shared resource for any council or organization where you can learn from others as well as contributing your own experiences
42:14
of presenting digital inclusion projects so digitalinclusionkit.org is a collaborative comprehensive online
42:20
resource for any organizations developing or delivering digital inclusion programs
42:27
it's for anyone who wants to increase digital inclusion in their area so local councils their sector organizations
42:32
the private sector health and care and any other organizations that we haven't thought of yet
42:39
current content online includes information on planning projects finding funding delivering digital
42:45
inclusion and helping to evaluate so here's some examples of content that's up on the site already
42:52
so here you might be needing to secure funding for projects or evaluate existing work that's going
42:57
on you might need help in offering socially distanced face-to-face
43:03
uh digital inclusion training or you might be struggling with where to
43:08
start setting up a digital inclusion project from the beginning so we have a page here on identifying users for digital support
43:15
and this is just a selection of the content that's currently online most of which was produced between the
43:21
current project partners so leeds croydon and tech resort
43:27
every page on the toolkit has a space for discussion questions and clarification so this is meant to be a collaborative
43:33
resource and it's meant to be a live project with people continually discussing and contributing
43:39
um we really want this to be the start of a conversation and a continually evolving resource to
43:45
make sure that it stays relevant to the communities uh the platform itself which we developed during phase one uh is
43:51
wordpress based and it's designed to be reused easy to install and hopefully will be useful to any other
43:58
organizations looking to produce similar content
44:03
so as i mentioned this is phase two of development and for it we've defined a set of objectives that we'd like to
44:09
achieve so first of all user research for the website design and development is key to
44:15
this phase we've begun this by developing some user profiles and beginning to set out
44:22
some surveys and focus groups that we'd like to run we want to ensure that diverse needs are accounted
44:28
for both in terms of the content that's on the site in terms of working with diverse communities but also
44:34
the accessibility we'd like to increase the number of organizations using the toolkit and also increase the number of
44:40
active contributors so again this is really key to the success of the project um that people
44:46
are not only using this as a resource to gather information but also contributing their experiences and
44:51
learnings to help it grow so as mentioned for this phase we're prioritizing user research
44:57
to direct the site development we're going to be reviewing how existing users navigate the site
45:03
we'll be showing site developments and new functionality to representative sample users feedback and prioritizing developments
45:09
that deliver the most useful information most effectively
45:15
so what's next for the project we're currently in the process of updating the site to improve browsability adding new
45:21
functions such as comment alerts and email subscriptions um and we really need help to continue
45:26
to research what works and what doesn't uh we're continually testing design formats and developing new functionality
45:32
and if this is something you'd like to be involved in do feel free to get in touch
45:38
so this isn't just about building a resource it's about building a community our vision for digital inclusion kit is
45:44
to develop an active and engaged community around the resource we encourage contributions from other councils and
45:49
organizations with digital inclusion experience to share uh so we many we know there's many
45:54
different groups out there currently tackling digital inclusion at all different levels across the country this is a resource both for you
46:00
to use and for you to add to current toolkit contents based on our
46:06
experiences so we know there are definitely still gaps in the content that's on there some gaps we know about for example none
46:12
of our current partners have much experience working with rural communities but there's also going to be gaps that we're not aware of
46:20
you can check out here we have a contributor guide on the website which gives guidelines on the sort of
46:25
content that we'd like to add and you can also contact us on our contact form at digital inclusion
46:32
kit to share your feedback your ideas for the toolkit and you can also sign up for updates
46:39
so thank you very much for listening so as i mentioned you can get in touch at digital inclusion kit.org contact or
46:45
we're also on twitter at digital inclusion kit
46:52
thank you sarah um amazing so we've managed to rattle through some
46:58
really really interesting um and like impactful projects
47:03
in the last like 50 minutes well done for everyone's keeping to time that was excellent work all of you
47:09
and eckley would you mind sharing the slides again from the i think it's from slidell 82
47:18
thank you lovely um so before we go and because there's time a little bit more of me um plugging
47:25
local digital uh if that's okay with you so um next slide please
47:31
so just to let you know that if you're working in local government we recently um launched uh online training offering
47:38
for council staff using futurelearn futurelearn as a platform has
47:44
loads and loads of different courses on there some of them are really really good for digital skills and capability building
47:50
we've created a library with some of those best some of the best courses on there um and you and your staff and your
47:57
colleagues people you work with can go on there and basically apply to do one of those courses and we'll pay for it for free
48:04
um just to clarify you can take the courses for free but they won't give you a certificate we'll pay for your
48:09
certificate so that you can go back to your organizations and tell them what good work you've done um and if you want to uh to apply for
48:16
some training you can go to this link local digital.gov uk forward slash training library
48:22
um which hopefully someone will plonk in the chat for me um and that will uh tell you all about it
48:28
uh we've recently also launched a kind of choose your own course so if there's something else that you want to do that we haven't included
48:34
in our library tell us about it we'd like to know what what it is you need and want to do
48:40
um next slide please so you can also follow all of our projects including the ones that you've heard
48:45
from today again on our website all of our projects we publish all of their outcomes and
48:51
outputs in the open so if there's something that you've heard today and you think i'd really like to read more on the user research
48:57
for that or i'd really like to know more about the platforms for that and how it works you can go to
49:03
localdigital.gov at uk funded projects uh search by projects
49:09
see what's on there and have a look at all of the brilliant work that they've done and given given back to the community
49:16
for reuse which is excellent and next slide please finally if you are interested in the
49:24
work of the local digital collaboration unit mhclg we publish um sprint notes on
49:29
medium every couple of weeks we send out newsletters every couple of weeks where we talk about our projects a bit more and tell you
49:36
what's going on and also uh tell you things that we might be launching and things that are coming up
49:41
so it's a good thing to do to sign up to that if you're interested in potentially applying to the fund or you've got any
49:47
questions about anything else we do oh well good luck um
49:54
and you can follow us on localdigital.gov to uk newsletter or you can find us on medium
49:59
say medium.com ldcu and next slide yeah that's
50:05
it that's all the messages so thank you so much for taking the time on a friday afternoon to
50:10
listen to us have a really good rest of your afternoon it's not quite 10 o'clock yet
50:16
but it nearly is so enjoy