Digital Southwark - Southwark Council 2022 by NODE

DIGITAL SOUTHWARK

Contents

The Vision - Dionne Lowndes

Technology’s vital role in creating a better borough for everyone

Digital Inclusion - Shade Nathaniel-Ayodele

Introducing the council’s programme to tackle digital poverty

Comuzi

Working as Southwark’s strategic design partner

Digital Citizen - Jyde Omotajo Digitalising the resident experience

32 38 P3OD

Why digital is about much more than just technology

The power of collaboration How partnerships are helping Southwark achieve its goals

Smart Council - Natalie Preston Moving forward with new systems and skills

Smart Borough - Davina Fell Southwark’s connected, AI-driven future

DIGITAL SOUTHWARK

The Vision Dionne Lowndes, Chief Digital & Technology Officer for Southwark Council, outlines the plans to build a connected and collaborative borough for all

he Borough of Southwark is the part of inner London connected by the Tower, London and Millennium Bridges across the River Thames, with buildings such as The Shard, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and bustling attractions like Borough Market and Tate Modern. There’s also a flourishing business centre which is delivering economic growth and building innovation in the region. But like many areas of the city, Southwark is a borough of contrasts. Our population of more than 300,000 is young, diverse and has significant differences in wealth. We serve many people, families and groups from disadvantaged backgrounds who rely

on our support every day, and we take this responsibility incredibly seriously. Our communities are our greatest assets. The people of Southwark make this a vibrant borough, and as Southwark Council, looking after our residents - and doing everything we can to improve their lives - is our number one priority. We also have the opportunity to work with the Southwark Chambers of Commerce members, including creative businesses and with global entities such as Vodafone, whose headquarters is located in the borough. Digital Southwark We believe that technology has a critical role to play in supporting our 5

Digital Citizenship, Smart Council and Smart Borough. Data will be a key enabler of these pillars that we believe will deliver transformation in the borough and empower more of our residents through digital.

residents and meeting our biggest challenges head on, many of which have been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a borough, there has been a greater focus on digital over the last decade in line with a national mandate to digitise services for residents. This year, however, we at Southwark Council are reviewing and renewing our efforts with a new-look Technology and Digital Strategy. We want to build a borough where our residents can learn digital skills and access excellent, digitally-enabled services, supported by staff who benefit from cutting-edge workplace technology. The goal is a connected and collaborative Southwark for all. To achieve this, we are focussing on these key areas: Digital Inclusion, 6

COVID-19, collaboration and data The last two years has been an extraordinary time that none of us could have predicted. COVID-19 has impacted all of us. As a council, our priorities have been to keep our residents safe and to support them. The crisis has taught us many things and has directly informed the Technology and Digital Strategy. Smarter use of data has helped us navigate our way through the difficulties of the pandemic. The way we brought data together from partner organisations and from different services in the council to meet the needs of our residents has given us a real appetite to take that further into the future. As part of our renewed approach to technology, we are creating systems that will have interoperability, so we can connect and exchange data across the council. We will need to make decisions about what data we will hold and what data our residents are comfortable with us having to give them the reassurances that we’re not going to use their data in any ways they haven’t consented to. This is key to our strategy on data. In doing all of that, there’s a real opportunity to harness data

and get a view of the future and a single view of our residents’ requirements. Collaboration also has and will continue to be essential. We have really strong partnerships with technology partners around connectivity and 5G adoption in the borough, and the opportunity to develop new technologies. Partners like Microsoft and Hitachi have helped us to co-design our new technology roadmap as we’ve created a modern IT stack and changed our operating model. Strategically, we’ve also got some key partnerships with the other London boroughs through the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) formed in a spirit of openness. We believe it’s really important as a local authority that we work with other early adopters of technology, and deliver seamless technology that has already been experimented with. PostCOVID-19 and going into recovery, there’s real excitement around how we can do more of that together and make a change to the services that we deliver and the outcomes for our residents.

A clear focus This plan is ambitious, demanding and hugely exciting. We have a clear focus around enabling our citizens to get online and building a smarter borough and a smarter council. And we genuinely believe that through our Technology and Digital Strategy whether it’s with the help of one of our new community of Digital Champions, taking advantage of the free broadband installed at over 60 of our vital community hubs, or any other of our outstanding initiatives - residents and our own employees will realise the game-changing benefits of digital transformation. All in all, our aspiration is to have a vibrant, safe borough where our residents have the opportunity to work and live healthily and happily. Southwark might be an iconic London borough steeped in history, but this is all about the future: a future where, with digital tools at their fingertips and a greatly simplified relationship with their council, the people of Southwark can thrive.

CLOSING THE

DIGITAL EXCLUSION GAP Shade Nathaniel-Ayodele, Technology Project Manager at Southwark Council, discusses the council’s initiatives to tackle digital poverty

t the moment, 2.4 million people across the UK are digitally excluded because they lack either access to the internet, digital skills, or the motivation to go online. The COVID-19 pandemic has only highlighted the problem of digital exclusion and widened the digital skills gap. At Southwark Council, we have seen people hovering outside libraries to use their Wi-Fi, or even passing laptops from balcony to balcony because the usual places where they access the internet libraries, tenant resident associations and schools - were closed. You had people that couldn’t pay their bills or school children that couldn’t go to class. This problem was never going to go away on its own; so we developed a strategy to solve it.

The digital cost Digital exclusion is a complex issue, and any efforts to tackle it have to face one first problem: where to start? The areas most affected by digital exclusion are known as broadband not-spots. These are places that have very poor connectivity (below 10 megabits per second), such as Rotherhithe or South Bermondsey. This situation occurs when broadband providers find it too deploy their fibre there, either because the broadband exchange that they use is damaged or because it just takes too long for them to get access to it.

However, there is also a cost associated with digital exclusion. Think about the time that you can save by contacting your bank branch from home rather than having to go in person and wait to be attended to, as well as the economic benefits that come along with that. It is much harder for people that don’t have access to a computer to change their gas provider or compare service prices to save money. These are things we typically don’t think about but that are impacting the most vulnerable people in our society. A six-step strategy Southwark Council has developed a digital inclusion strategy to make sure that Southwark is a connected borough and that residents can access the services that they need, when they need them. One focus of this initiative is providing residents with digital lessons. Research has proven that residents prefer to 9

receive training from people they know and trust. That is why the council is recruiting “digital champions”, local volunteers that provide digital lessons to their fellow residents. They receive digital and printed guides, as well as lessons via video. Through the Digital Champions Programme, volunteers will support their neighbours while also becoming advocates for change, being able to give feedback about how to improve the applications and better address the issues that affect their community. We want to look at digital inclusion from a holistic perspective. In order to adequately address the many elements that can lead to digital exclusion, Southwark Council has divided its strategy into six pillars: 10

• Affordable broadband • Devices • Digital education • Digital resilience for businesses • Digital skills for residents • Training programmes When you bring together these six elements; that’s when you reach digital inclusion. A collaborative effort Our residents are at the forefront of everything we do, but we can’t do things alone. The idea behind cross-sector collaboration is that other organisations - private corporations, research institutions and charities - have valuable expertise and knowledge. Having all of these partners on board helps us solve

these problems holistically. Digital exclusion problems aren’t isolated; they don’t disappear once you change boroughs. That is why Southwark Council has partnered with the London Office for Technology and Innovation’s COVID-19 fund and with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Together, we will develop a digital exclusion map that will allow us to identify how many people are digitally excluded and create a baseline against which to measure the impact of our initiatives. Southwark Council is also part of the Pan-London Digital Inclusion Working Group, which aims to share knowledge and best practices around digital inclusion between boroughs, to address the problem of digital exclusion across the whole city. Private organisations have also been key partners in this journey. Southwark Council is collaborating with broadband providers to roll out fibre across the entirety of the council. Community Fibre and Hyperoptic have now provided fibre connections to 37,000 properties, and have agreed to a wayleave agreement by which they will provide free lifelong broadband to assets of social value such as libraries, shelters and town halls.

Digital exclusion needs to be tackled by everyone. All of these stakeholders are coming together every month to figure out what the issues are and embark on this action plan together. The future Our vision is to ensure that every resident in our council is digitally upskilled. This means that they have access to a fast and stable internet connection, a device and the necessary skills to take advantage of it. Upskilling is a life-long journey, especially when it comes to digital. We can’t fix all the problems; some need to be addressed at a government level. But we want to work towards a digital utopia where all residents can access the things they need when they need them. Ideally, we want to get to a stage where the council never gets any complaints, just compliments.

This plan is ambitious, demanding and hugely exciting. We have a clear focus around enabling our citizens to get online and building a smarter borough and a smarter council. And we genuinely believe that through our Technology and Digital Strategy, residents and our own employees will realise the game-changing benefits of digital transformation” Dionne Lowndes

Working with Southwark Council as a Strategic Design Partner C

omuzi is one of Southwark Council’s Strategic Design Partners, initially collaborating on a discovery/alpha project at the beginning of 2020 exploring the hypothesis that digital technology could improve health and wellbeing outcomes in the borough by empowering residents to make healthier lifestyle changes. We identified evidence from Public Health England showing the success of digital public health tools, such 14

as Couch to 5k, and wanted to test if similar tools and services could meet the needs of Southwark’s most deprived communities, who experience health inequalities and naturally worse health outcomes than their more affluent counterparts in the borough. Kicking off a month before lockdown at Tooley Street, Comuzi worked with the project team to establish ways of working, address and mitigate risks, and laser focus on what the council wanted to achieve with this project, a process

we call framing. Our challenge question, set at the end of the day, was: ‘How might we use research-driven insights to inform how we could use digital to deliver impactful health and wellbeing improvements for residents?’ Our next step was recruiting and engaging with residents, all of whom had multiple unhealthy lifestyle behaviours (drinking, smoking, inactive or struggling with wellbeing) and/or long-term health conditions. Ensuring there were balanced splits in terms of gender, ethnicity and areas within Southwark, we led focus group sessions and interviews with the following discussion points:

• What a healthy lifestyle is (mental,

physical and sexual health) • Motivation to make healthy lifestyle changes •R esidents relationships with location/physical spaces such as the pharmacy or gym and how that may inspire better behaviour • Mobile phone usage, usefulness and the feelings associated with phone applications i.e. texts and social media, to explore the feasibility of a digital platform to improve health and wellbeing Post-research, we spent some time analysing our findings, categorising them into themes. Some key insights were:

A key insight was that residents’ mental health and wellbeing was the biggest driver of people’s unhealthy choices and the main motivator for change. They wanted to be happier and make positive lifestyle behaviour changes but it wasn’t necessarily what your doctor would advise first — smokers for example, were more inspired to start eating more fruit and veg or exercise to improve their wellbeing. This is vital, as it underpinned the need to design services meeting people where they are, not where we might want them to be. Working with the council and local residents, we carried out our first online co-design sessions due to lockdown. After two great activity based co-design

sessions, we progressed with two ideas to prototype in low fidelity: 1. An online community platform enabling residents to build healthy habits in 30 days. 2. A mini site offering information on health services, recipes & support groups, signposting them to the right content. For our low fidelity prototypes, we focused on service advertisements, aiming to test the core value proposition with residents. Here’s some notes that inspired us from This Is Service Design Doing and some prototypes we designed.

We tested them with five residents, using WhatsApp and Google Meet to improve ease of communication and accessibility for those who may have been less digitally literate. Residents saw an important role for the concepts and wanted a digital — predominantly mobile — first approach to support. Their feedback from the residents encouraged us to take the community platform to the next stage and we provided recommendations to improve the council’s current public health offering and signposting so residents have easier access to current health services. For high fidelity prototyping, we took inspiration from various 30-day chal-

lenges such as the New York Times 30-day well challenge & Good Housekeeping’s 30-day Mental Health Challenge to prototype a 30-day programme for Southwark residents to improve their health and wellbeing through small daily steps such as making a salad, going on a walk and meditating. 17

Front screen of the prototype Link to prototype video

Similar to our previous prototyping stage, we tested the Take Care Programme with five residents and here’s what we learnt:

Southwark Council is now working to progress this work from a discovery and alpha project to a live beta service. Other challenges and projects in our portfolio with Southwark Council include: 1. A n urban research project across seven Southwark Council estates to understand the lived experience of residents and how it could be improved via co-design with the Great Estates Team, part of Housing and Modernisation. 2. An exploratory research project identifying how we might create a community driven vision for Southwark’s digital future by supporting residents with digital connectivity, digital inclusion and the Internet of Things. 3. The development of a strategic plan and recommendations to create accessible digital tools and services for Southwark Council to foster engagement within their communities.

4. Assessing the feasibility and acceptability of remote biometric testing with Southwark residents, particularly the BAME community. Southwark Council is a big organisation, and one of the lessons we’ve learnt as a small business is to engage senior stakeholders as early as possible to avoid scope creep, miscommunication and to encourage buy-in. Not doing this before can lead to project delays and having to secure buy-in during the project can be a painstaking process! We’ve learnt to co-design with various council departments, residents and Tenants & Residents Associations from all areas, even during the pandemic. Comuzi has deep local roots within Southwark. Most of us grew up and went to school in the borough, so working to co-design new services for our community has been a great and insightful experience. 19

BRINGING CITIZENS INTO THE DIGITAL AGE Jyde Omotajo, Head of Digital Delivery at Southwark Council, on using new technologies to bridge the communication gap between residents and public agencies

ith over 39,000 council homes and 16,700 leasehold properties, Southwark Council is the largest social landlord in London and the fourth biggest in the UK. Because of that, a huge number of residents contact us daily regarding a range of issues, from repairs to their property to council tax questions. In order to meet their needs, Southwark Council has launched a new initiative that will implement innovative digital processes and place citizens at the centre of our digital future. The Digital Citizen programme aims to digitalise the residents’ experience of their borough. But it involves more than just technology. We want to bring

residents along in the journey and allow them to become an active part of the digital transformation project. At Southwark Council, we want to engage citizens in the decision-making process so that they have a say and an understanding regarding the changes that will take place in their area of residence. But we also want to design services that are simple. Everybody talks about how wonderful the Amazon experience is: you search for something, you pay, you get confirmation and you receive it the next day. That is what we’re aspiring to with our Digital Citizen programme. We want to allow people to engage with us at any time of the day, on any device, to access the services they need.

Towards the digital future The vision for the Digital Citizen programme goes far beyond providing a line of communication between the council and its residents. In the future, we are looking at leveraging new technologies to make the data that we gather freely available for the benefit of citizens and decision-makers. From IoT traffic management systems to health tracking devices, the implementation of this digital transformation will allow us to harness data digitally and improve the services that we provide as a council. Technology will never replace human interaction completely, but by implementing these new digital processes, we will be able to continue to support our more vulnerable residents whilst others who are able to self-serve are able to do so in the simplest way. 23

The power of collaboration How Southwark Council has embraced partnerships to achieve its digital goals AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer

o realise its vision of empowering residents and staff with cutting-edge digital services and tools, Southwark Council has fully embraced a spirit of collaboration. This means collaboration between its own teams and people, but also collaboration on a broader level. Southwark Council has explored beyond its own parameters to learn from and partner with other local authorities in London, as well as transformation specialists such as Microsoft and Hitachi Solutions. “It’s really important to get that outside expertise to look at the way we operate and the way that we work,” says Dionne Lowndes, Chief Digital and Technology Officer for Southwark Council. In 2017, Southwark Council joined Brent and Lewisham Councils’ shared IT service, which represented a break from the previous model of outsourcing IT to

the private sector. The idea was inaugurated in 2016 to offer councils a stable, resilient but high-quality IT service, with Southwark seeing the attraction of sharing resources and developing cost-effective technology to become “digital-first” and transform ways of working for its people. The scheme has proven successful and today offers all three councils a stable base from which to deliver an increasing number of digital services to residents. Fabio Negro, who is Managing Director for the shared service, sees it as an “enabler” for the three boroughs, their populations and their businesses. “Ultimately, it’s about driving value,” he says. “We’re all doing the same thing, we’re striving to have the same outcomes. We all have very similar applications; we all have council taxes, social services etc., and we have a lot

IN ACTION Southwark Council and Microsoft Microsoft has worked closely with Southwark Council to accelerate its digital transformation. •S outhwark’s staff use Office365 and Microsoft Teams to collaborate and communicate, infrastructure that has been critical during the COVID-19 pandemic as remote working became necessary. These tools will be central to Southwark adopting a hybrid working model moving forward. •M icrosoft’s influence goes beyond collaborative software, however - Southwark is also implementing Dynamics 365, which is Microsoft’s suite of applications for enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management. This is enabling Southwark to easily connect different systems and be more efficient. Staff can also build and share low-code apps with Microsoft Power Apps.

•M icrosoft has supported Southwark with its cloud migration programme, both by modernising its existing data centre and migrating services into Azure. This has strengthened the reliability of the digital services Southwark is now able to deliver for its residents. • Microsoft has rolled out digital skills programmes both for Southwark employees and for residents, with the aim of tackling the digital inclusion challenge. During the pandemic, it also created a digital community hub to support individuals who were isolating. •T o help Southwark futureproof itself, Microsoft has made extra investments to reduce the carbon footprint of the borough and its partners. It is also driving economic recovery initiatives to give small businesses in the area a foot up after the pandemic.

Fabio Negro

of commonality. So it’s about removing duplication, making sure that we’re efficient and ploughing our resources into things of value.” Negro believes the trend of local authorities joining forces has accelerated in recent years, and will continue to do so in the short-term as they adjust to the realities of a post-pandemic world. But it’s not just the councils themselves that are uniting. Microsoft and Hitachi Solutions have played key roles in moving things forward for Southwark and across the shared service. In the private sector, enterprise partnerships are becoming deeper and more collaborative - and Lowndes believes this is also reflected in today’s public sector. Southwark’s digital and technology function has worked hand-in-hand with Microsoft and Hitachi Solutions to deliver against its objectives.

“ What’s been really valuable with Hitachi and working with the Microsoft stack is the interoperability and opportunities to envisage Southwark as a whole council and all of the different services we deliver. So we’re looking at Internet of Things platforms, working with departments around how we do early detection of mould, around traffic congestion, right over to how teams work virtually on their 365 platforms.” Dionne Lowndes

“Traditionally a lot of technology partnerships are seen as buying a static platform where if you want to change anything, it costs a lot of money,” says Lowndes. “There’s not a lot of agility, and people often regret that relationship and feel that perhaps they needed a different system. For us, the modern technology partnership is about having a responsive partner that isn’t trying to sell one system that fits all, but something

Tim Kidd

that is individual to your technology landscape and will evolve with changing requirements.” This is why Southwark’s collaboration with Microsoft and Hitachi Solutions has proven a valuable partnership. Southwark is working across the Microsoft technology stack, moving to the cloud with Dynamic 365 CRM, Power Platforms and collaborative software. Hitachi Solutions’ role is more on the strategic consultancy side - as an established Microsoft partner, it has helped Lowndes and the team at Southwark to pull everything together. “One of the key reasons that our relationship with Southwark works so well is the fact that we have a very open dialogue and a huge amount of trust in one another,” says Tim Kidd, Head of UK Public Sector, Hitachi Solutions Europe. “They understand what we’re able to do and where our skill sets lie, and at the same time, we understand some of their challenges in great detail. They allow

IN ACTION Southwark Council and Hitachi Solutions Hitachi Solutions, a Microsoft partner, specialises in data, case management, application development and finance systems centred around the Microsoft technology stack. •O n the consultancy side, Hitachi Solutions supported Southwark in understanding their different strategies, from the council’s business plan, its political manifesto, customer exit strategy, digital strategy, corporate technology strategy, and how that fitted with the services it wanted to deliver

underpinned by technology. • Hitachi Solutions provided a technology investment roadmap for Southwark, based on an analysis of the problems the council was encountering and the legacy applications in place. • At the beginning of the pandemic, Hitachi Solutions played an important role in Southwark’s response, advising on how the council delivered shielding and track-and-trace services and leading on the creation of the “vulnerability hub”, which gave Southwark a clear view of the residents most in need.

“I think what makes working with Hitachi Solutions as a company different is its strong values. And that’s really echoed by the teams; they genuinely want to support the council in having better outcomes for residents. So it feels less like a traditional vendorsupplier relationship. They’ve become very involved in trying to solve those challenges, because it makes a difference to residents.

us to get involved in ongoing conversations across the business to create a connected council and work towards a single view of residents.” Michael Quigley, Account Director Public Sector for Microsoft adds: “I think it’s been a really fantastic couple years working with Southwark, ensuring that all of its employees working from home or in the office have the right tools and have a seamless experience, and also ensuring that the residents’ services that Southwark is providing are continuously reviewed and continuously improved.” Lowndes views such collaborations as important when it comes to continued innovation. She says many of the tools Southwark has and will roll out are quick and straightforward to deploy - such as Microsoft Power Apps. The platform enables her teams to work in an agile way, with faster builds and less investment than traditional legacy approaches.

“It’s that understanding of how we operate and giving us an opportunity to have that trust and reassurance within that relationship.” Dionne Lowndes Michael Quigley

Looking forward, all parties are excited by the potential to grow digital presence across the shared service. For Southwark, it is this sense of collaboration is empowering its staff for the years ahead. “With the partners’ advice and expertise, and the fact that they’ve done it before with other councils, we’re starting from a point of being a fast follower, rather than reinventing the wheel,” says Lowndes. “Then our partners are empowering our staff to do the problem solving and to have the skills going into the future.” Quigley is full of anticipation around how Microsoft will continue to support Southwark in the future, and how the relationship will strengthen.

“It is really exciting,” he says. “I think when you look at the targets and the ambitions of Southwark, and how technology and digital skills are going to play a really key role, it opens up a fantastic opportunity for further leveraging data, looking at the Internet of Things, looking at intelligent automation… I’m really excited to see where this partnership can take us.” Kidd adds: “For us as Hitachi Solutions and working in the public sector, it’s about actually how do we make sure that we contribute positively to society? That’s one of Hitachi Solutions’ big values. And then making sure that we’re seen as an equitable partner, as we are in this engagement with Southwark.” 31

Southwark Council

A smart approach Natalie Preston, Programme Lead - Data & Platforms for Southwark Council, explains how the organisation is getting smarter and the ways it will benefit its staff, residents and businesses

ecoming a Smart Council is much more than a snappy slogan for us, it is about reimagining what is possible by equipping our staff with the technology they need to make their jobs easier to carry out and, ultimately, improve the quality of life for our residents. We recognised that the first step in becoming smarter was to ensure that our people had both the tech and the skills they need to do their very best. Our teams have been equipped with laptops running Windows 10 and we’re benefiting from the consistency of working across the Microsoft estate. Part of being a Smart Council is giving our staff the tools to work in a more efficient way and the consistency of this approach is key. The decision to migrate

a whole host of our business applications from hosted servers to Microsoft Azure is a really important part of that because of the reliability it offers us. We’ve also rolled out Microsoft Teams, which has been integral to keeping our staff connected over the last two years. To build on this, more recently Teams Telephony has also been made available to our staff, to replace traditional deskphones. When you take all of that into account, it’s driving really solid performance-related improvements and we’re going to build on that in 2022 by implementing SharePoint and OneDrive. At Southwark Council, we have more than 4,000 people and by introducing consistency with the technology we’re using it’s a lot easier for them to work in

a collaborative way and make changes in real-time. Those are tangible differences that are only going to benefit the organisation as a whole. All of these actions have been made to help our staff work more effectively and give them access to more information, allowing them to make decisions that are better informed. We believe that by making these huge strides, the quality of services we offer to our residents and businesses is only going to improve - that is the end goal for all of this investment and progress. Upskilling the workforce We know that technology is only as good as the people using it, so there’s been a massive drive at Southwark Council over the last two years to make sure our staff have the right tech skills and are confident with the systems and platforms they are using. 34

There’s always going to be a disparity in skills with a team the size of ours, so at the beginning of the pandemic we worked with all of our people to make sure they were comfortable with setting up equipment at home, because that overnight change to homeworking could easily have been a culture shock. We’ve put on more than 300 live, virtual training sessions to get staff comfortable with platforms like Microsoft Teams and we have a digital skills portal with tips and guides starting with something as simple as setting up a monitor through to more advanced modules for those who want to learn more. Those skills are really critical to the further development we want to achieve. We are producing a lot more data across our platforms and also bringing information together from other councils. Having the right skills and confidence to

understand the information you’re looking at means you can make better decisions and really improve that level of service you’re offering. It’s an example of technology really enabling us to work smarter. Data Enabled COVID-19 has accelerated the need to use the data the council, and our partners, collect in a more meaningful, integrated manner. The digital Community Hub is one example of how we rapidly used our data in a collaborative manner during COVID-19 to deliver services to our vulnerable residents. In recognition of this, ‘Data Enabled’ is a key aspect of the new TDS Strategy, enabling us to: • Use operational data to enable early intervention and predict future council services, by allowing better visibility of needs and demand; • Work with partners to connect and share our data; • Deliver on existing and future legislative responsibilities the council holds; • Use data to understand how our residents live and work in the Borough.

We have held workshops with key council services to understand their data aspirations, current skills, and key business applications. An exciting programme of work has now launched, managed by Technology Transformation, to deliver the technology required to make better and more integrated use of our data, and with our services to enable this. Proof of concepts have begun with Childrens and Housing to show the art of the possible in relation to data, which is the start of the council’s data-enabled journey. Getting smarter We’re looking at how we can leverage technologies like robotic process automation and artificial intelligence to take some of that pressure off our back-office functions and make them more efficient. We recognise there are tasks that are ripe for automation and the data work we are carrying out will be invaluable to that because it will help us make informed decisions, whereas in the past a lot of our information was quite siloed. We’ve made great progress and we’re already working a lot smarter, but we have ambitions to build upon our achievements. When I think about the future, I see a completely joined-up technology offering that we give to our staff to work as efficiently and effectively as possible, and our data and analytics will mean our services are far less siloed, meaning better decisions will be made. 35

Technology will never replace human interaction completely. But by implementing these new digital processes, Southwark’s residents will be able to interact with us 24/7, 365 days a year. The process becomes fast, painless and accessible, placing citizens’ needs at the forefront of the council’s concerns” Jyde Omotajo

Digital Together A mindset for digital

hile the Southwark Council Technology and Digital strategy was in the early stages of development, the team at p3od was appointed to help the Chief Digital & Technology Officer to understand the maturity of existing skills, knowledge and behaviours against the ambitions within the strategy. In the absence of a national framework for digital competencies in the UK, the team set out to develop a bespoke framework for Southwark based on the concept of digital as a strategic mindset. This design

work produced the DiTo Framework. “DiTo” translates as Digital Together, in recognition of a shared goal and ambition for digital which is far more than simply technology and about using new skills to develop a collaborative mindset. The DiTo framework outlines the skills, knowledge and behaviours required in areas such as technology, innovation, change management, collaboration, working with complexity and ambiguity and building relationships and partners across the digital agenda. Digital and technology team members were invited

to complete their own assessment of current skills and confidence against the framework (using a digital platform of course!). The data was analysed to deliver the following:

• Managers received a DiTo strengths

• Participants received a personal DiTo

Data-led development The DiTo approach has enabled Southwark to establish qualitative and quantitative benchmarks to monitor

report and were invited to a virtual 1:1 discussion about their learning priorities, plan and needs.

and development report. • The Digital and ICT service received a DiTo development plan and associated benchmarks.

progress and measure the impact of learning on delivering its strategic ambition. Each member of the team has a clear role to play in delivering the Technology and Digital strategy and there is increased collaboration and innovation across the entire service. For instance, DiTo has enabled a more immediate peer mentoring approach where skills needs are matched with skills strengths across teams, access to professional coaching and targeted training. The Dig-

ital and ICTechnology service are helping to educate and influence the rest of the council to develop digital as a strategic mindset, giving them much greater influence with senior leaders. Future DiTo The Digital and ICTechnology service are now helping to educate and influence the rest of the council to develop digital as a strategic mindset, giving them much greater influence with senior leaders.

rban living is changing. From the high street to residential areas, how people go about their day-to-day lives is evolving, and that evolution is being led by advances in technology. As a local authority, we at Southwark Council know the importance of technology in transforming the lives of our residents. From the high street to residential estates, our digital infrastructure programme has a wide-ranging remit to ensure we are best-placed to explore any technology that will improve the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people we serve in this great borough. The programme’s core aim is improving connectivity across Southwark. We started down this road by attracting investment from telcos to install fibre broadband and mobile aerials, with the key objectives of giving the people, businesses and tourists of Southwark better broadband speeds and mobile coverage.

Getting connected We often get asked what the technology of the future can do for the borough, and how automation, Internet of Things, and digital twins will alter the smart city landscape. The reality, however, is that this change is happening right now. As a council, we see ourselves as enablers of these technologies. We ensure we are working with the right technology companies in the private sector and supporting them to implement new tech, while our role is 43

making sure we have the infrastructure to support and enable that change. It will encourage new businesses into the area, and entice even more tourists to beautiful areas in Southwark, such as the South Bank. And with new business comes economic growth and improved services for all residents; and that, as a council, should always be our objective. One of the foundations of a maturing digital infrastructure is connectivity: a modern, inclusive borough can only be as good as its connectivity. This is where we fundamentally see ourselves as enablers for the telecoms companies to widen their reach across Southwark. 44

There are several obstacles that telcos often find in urban areas, and it’s no different in Southwark: we have conservation areas, we have listed properties, we have housing that isn’t easily accessible for installation. We call these notspots, and with over 52,000 properties in our borough, it’s a challenge. But we’ve met it head on, and we have planning teams and property teams that come together to work with the telcos to overcome these obstacles, because we see connectivity as a priority for all residents. Not only does it improve quality of life, but it also allows access to better services, and helps bring communities together.

We’re proud that, to date, 41,000 council homes across the borough now have access to gigabit-fast broadband thanks to the delivery of the fibre roll-out by Hyperoptic and Community Fibre. The addition of 70 4G and 5G aerials on council rooftops in Southwark will generate £15 million to the budget over the next decade. Only five years ago, Southwark was rated as the fourth-worst borough for connectivity across the whole of the UK. In 2021, Southwark was rated in the top 10 fibre-connected boroughs. It’s significant, important progress, but the work to improve connectivity never stops.

really closely with residents so that they are part of that journey. We will also invite them to try some of the technology for themselves to truly understand what the benefits

Overcoming issues When going through a digital transformation of this scale, you need to be realistic. A borough of our size means that covering all of it is currently difficult, so while we progress through the borough we found a solution: we’ve set up our own LoRaWAN network – a low-power network that can cover wide areas – and have started trialling IoT. Another issue we take seriously is concerns from residents about implementing new technologies. So we want to do a lot of work with them around the understanding of certain terms and improving perceptions. We’re looking at developing forums on our estates so that we can engage 45

are. For example, fly-tipping is a major issue on some of the estates, so we want to talk them through exactly what CCTV cameras will be capturing and how it’s being used to assure them that it’s not just Big Brother watching them. It’s the council using technology to improve services and the way in which we operate.

What’s next Working in smart cities is a really exciting area to be in at a local authority at the moment. From traffic flow data to air-quality monitoring, from improving lighting on estates to better communication with residents, the possibilities to enrich the lives of our citizens are endless. It is also imperative. Data collection, high-speed connectivity and embracing emerging technologies are all vital to ensuring no resident is disadvantaged. They are also vital to maintaining Southwark’s economic competitiveness in central London, allowing us to make better, smarter decisions and make significant savings. It’s fair to say that local authorities don’t get the opportunity to innovate very often, but here at Southwark Council we have embraced that. Technology is allowing us to develop new ways to make Southwark an even better place to live.