The UK needs to build stronger state capacity so that it can turn political aims into public progress. For the government’s devolution ambitions to succeed, that includes building local government organisations fit for the intelligence era.
Some of that capability building will be in technology and IT. In this post, we set out three ways that local government organisations can take steps in that direction.
Effective councils are more than just service providers. They are conveners, brokers, and collaborators across a geographic area; they think in terms of place.
Becoming genuinely place-based has profound implications for - and is also heavily constrained by - how local government leaders think about technology. If the goal is to enable an ecosystem of local service delivery across a range of partners, technology teams cannot focus only on internal efficiency within their own walls. They need to conduct an orchestra of partners, providing guardrails to make the contributors more than the sum of their parts.
That requires a radical rethinking of how technology teams work within local authorities, where acute regulatory and financial pressures have often forced leaders to stick to the safety of "business-as-usual" over experimentation.
While other sectors have created the space to elevate technology and new ways of working to respond to their customer’s needs, many councils remain trapped in 1990s "backroom" IT mode.
When we speak to digital, data and technology leaders across the sector, we often hear of the same barrier to delivering change: those trying to introduce modern approaches in local councils spend most of their time having to build their case for change, rather than actually delivering it.
As well as frustrating digital leaders and their teams, this leaves councils poorly equipped to adapt to the rapidly changing political, economic and social landscape of local government.
The world is changing faster than the institutions can. But that does not have to be the case.
Here are three approaches councils can take to radically redesign their approach to their digital, data and technology services.
1. Turn your traditional IT department into a modern digital strategic partner
In his 2017 book A Seat at the Table, Mark Schwartz challenges the traditional view of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and IT department as service providers who receive "requirements" from the business and deliver "solutions."
This “order taker” mentality remains the norm in local government. The result is a dynamic where IT struggles to develop influence with the organisation, and where the knowledge and skills of digital, data and technology colleagues are sidelined. IT is treated as a problem, but isn’t invited into the room and empowered to be part of the solution. We see this show up in the role of the "IT Business Partner", which is framed as a subservient IT support service for dealing complaints and demands.
Modern digital, data and technology teams, by contrast, play a strategic role that shapes service design and delivery. They define themselves by outcomes owned by the whole organisation, and bring knowledge and user-centred perspectives into collaborative multidisciplinary teams.
The first step to building effective digital and technology teams comes from senior leaders in other service areas shifting their mindset away from being “order givers” towards technology.
Technology doesn’t support the business, it is the business - along with the many other disciplines that contribute to delivering outcomes to meet the raised expectations of residents. This means bringing technology into the early problem definition and design of service transformation.
Leading councils signal this shift by creating leadership roles like Dorset Council’s Executive Director of Modernisation and Customer Delivery, which puts technology leadership at the top table.
2. Rebalance time and money from "Run" to "Transform"
Modern digital teams balance their time and resources across three strands of activity:
A traditional IT service operates almost exclusively in the "run" phase - keeping the lights on, patching servers, and ensuring compliance. While it’s understandable that sustained cuts to local government budgets have driven some councils to fall back on the core of traditional IT service operations, this approach fails to enable the design and creation of new services and new ways of working.
There are key strategic choices that enable effective IT services to shift their weight towards “improve” and “transform”: investing in multi-disciplinary teams not projects, ensuring that digital and technology expertise is involved in the earliest stages of thinking about new policies and services, and being willing to actively shape the direction of technology investment so that it supports organisational strategy - not the other way around.
Several councils have succeeded in creating these joined up services in the past. Bristol, Hackney, and Birmingham all expanded their traditional IT departments to become modern digital, data and technology services that worked collaboratively with their colleagues to transform residents and service users' experience, meeting user needs and reducing administrative costs.
A combination of changes to the local political context, short-term thinking in reaction to financial pressures, and loss of leaders who had created the conditions for success has seen many of these pioneers stepping back to less ambitious ground over the past 5 years. But councils now have a new opportunity.
Local government reorganisation and the acceleration of a real shift in power from Whitehall to regional and local government as part of the Burnham government’s commitment to public service reform creates a new political moment for renewed ambition, supported by greater local control over the resources needed to sustain progress.
3. Build new capabilities
Councils cannot build strong digital, data and technology teams by simply hiring more of the same roles into a traditional IT service model. As an executive leader in the council, ask your IT leader how they are planning to build out a new set of capabilities and mindsets, including:
You will still need your digital, data and technology service to focus on security. But you need modern approaches to cybersecurity that assume you will be hacked, and move away from relying on the security of your perimeter towards zero-trust approaches that minimise risk when your network is compromised.
Investing in these roles and skills is part of creating the conditions for successful implementation of new technologies built on generative AI: ensuring councils can focus on using tools to solve real problems and meet people’s needs, establish essential data foundations, and support the kind of test and learn approach that is vital for de-risking AI tools in high-stakes services such as social care.
Many councils are building these capabilities into their digital, data and technology services, ranging from Birmingham City Council’s Foundry that brings together delivery, product and user-centred design skills to support rapid iterative service transformation, to the St Helens data team building a platform for near real-time intelligence, and the team in West Berkshire who have been building custom tools using generative AI.
Your digital leader will need your support - as the CEO, Exec Director of Resources, CFO or HR Director - to change the conditions for success.
As councils reorganise into new, larger unitaries, the opportunity is there to tackle these barriers, and adopt the good practices of councils that have successfully invested in their capabilities. Dismantling the distinction between "IT" and "the business", focusing on deep structural change, and introducing new capabilities, will enable councils to build the responsive, ecosystem-enabling digital, data and technology service that they need.
If you are a senior leader wanting to reshape your technology service in local government, talk to us about how you can redesign your IT at workwithus@public.digital
Join the conversation on LinkedIn or contact gavin.beckett@public.digital.
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