Sprint Notes #73
18 September to 2 October
Welcome to Sprint Notes #73! In this issue, you can read about the next phase of work to improve the Local Digital Declaration and our initial findings from the Local Digital programme evaluation. You’ll also find all the latest updates from our funded projects.
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News from Local Digital
We’re kicking off the next phase of work to improve the Local Digital Declaration
Earlier this year we conducted a discovery project to understand the impact of the Declaration across the sector, listen to a range of perspectives and gather recommendations on how to best use it going forward.
July marked the fifth anniversary of the launch of the Declaration, so it felt like a suitable point at which to pause, reflect, and consider what’s next. You can read more about how we carried out the project and what we learned in this blog post.
We’re now moving into the next phase of this work, which will see us action some of the recommendations from the discovery report with delivery partners, TPXImpact.
The goal is to make impactful changes to the Declaration as a service and as a piece of content, to make it easier to understand and put into action, as well as improving the process of becoming a signatory.
Once again, we’ll be engaging with the sector to gather feedback, so stay tuned to our channels for more information. We’ll also share updates on our progress and what we’ve learnt on our channels as we go along.
Local Digital evaluation study: A snapshot of our initial findings
In March 2023, we commissioned an independent evaluation of the Local Digital programme to understand the impact and value-for-money of the support we offer to local government.
To measure impact, the team is collecting information from a range of different councils using a variety of methods. In our latest blog post, we share some of the interesting findings from our evaluation so far.
You can also hear more at a webinar on Wednesday 18 October, 11am to 12pm. The webinar will be hosted by our evaluation partner, PUBLIC, and will include a discussion of the main digital priorities and challenges faced by councils, as well as benchmarking on topics like cloud adoption, legacy spend, and service area transformation.
Find out what’s next for Future Councils
Over the last few months, we have been working closely with our 8 pilot councils to explore the root causes behind what’s blocking them from becoming modern and resilient.
If you work for a council, you can still register to join our final in-person Roundtable event to hear about what we’ve been working on and potential upcoming funding opportunities! It’s taking place on Tuesday 17 October, 9:30am to 4pm, at Exeter Guildhall. Register for our Exeter Roundtable event.
If you’re part of the wider sector, or haven’t been able to attend one of the Roundtables, we’re still keen to hear your feedback on the problem statements we’ve identified through the pilot. Use one of the forms below to share your feedback by Tuesday 17 October:
Meet the Team: Theo French, Economist
Get to know Theo French, our Local Digital Economist, in our recent Meet the Local Digital Team blog post.
Theo tells us about his role evaluating the impact of the Local Digital programme while helping to raise the profile of digital economists in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC)! You can also read his advice for anyone interested in a career in economics in government, and why he believes economics is for everyone. Read Theo’s blog post.
News from our Round 6 funded projects
Delivering an infrastructure mapping platform (Kent County Council)
The expanded project team has been reviewing their objectives, deliverables and collaboration methods. They are in the process of restructuring their online collaborative space to create a clearer file structure, a group email address, and regular team brainstorming meetings.
They successfully presented their progress to the Leader and other members of Kent County Council, and received positive feedback. They have also started discussions with external groups with similar data needs, and are aiming to streamline data sourcing processes by understanding what other groups require.
The team have added a live feed into their social care clients database and updated various nationally sourced datasets, including Historic England, CQC data, and the Department for Education. Meetings are scheduled to plan their approach to the next round of engagement with the districts.
With the addition of new team members and changes in district leadership, there is a need to revisit the project’s fundamentals and plan for the future. In their upcoming brainstorming session, they will prioritise core data for phase 1 and work on translating the details in the project plan to a timeline.
Exploring barriers to online engagement with council services (South Ribble Borough Council)
The project team has successfully completed the procurement exercise to select a user researcher for their project. In accordance with internal procedure at the lead authority, a report has been submitted to the appropriate director for approval of the procurement.
They are optimistic about receiving approval for procurement this week. Once it’s signed off, they can proceed to award the supplier and start the project, which is expected to commence within 2–3 weeks.
Improving Local Authority Building Control Services (London Borough of Lambeth)
The Lambeth project team held their third workshop this sprint, bringing together all three partner teams at Lambeth’s offices. They were delighted to have Tom from Local Digital present to show his support. During the workshop, they discussed potential survey questions, one for users and another for Local Authority Building Control services across the UK.
They’ll be analysing the most popular and metrically valuable questions for these surveys and then sending them out. The goal is to use Local Digital’s network to reach Building Control officers nationwide and gather insights from other local authorities.
Additionally, the team introduced their User Researcher, Aspasia of Marvell Consulting, to the wider team. Aspasia led a stakeholder engagement session to identify potential participants for user research sessions. They brainstormed the types of questions to ask during these sessions and reviewed the two Trello boards currently in use.
In the next sprint, the team is preparing for user research sessions and observations. They’ll focus on their Delivery Trello board, work with their User Researcher to define the scope of works statement, plan for the upcoming workshop on the 13 October, and aim to finalise the survey.
Improving the automation of the starters, movers and leavers process (Southampton City Council)
The project team has made good progress so far in Sprint 0. They’ve found this initial sprint to be a useful introduction to what is a new way of working for most of the team, allowing them to put Agile theories into practice.
As part of their preparations for the sprint, they have successfully populated and are now managing the backlog in Azure DevOps.
Looking ahead to the next two weeks, they will wrap up Sprint 0 and conduct their first sprint demo and retrospective. Sprint 1 will begin on 18 October, and they are currently in the planning phase and determining which user stories to include.
Rapid identification of vulnerable households in an emergency (Westmorland & Furness Council)
The project team held their second in-person workshop on 25 September, with 30 participants from a range of organisations and backgrounds.
The group agreed the principles of the hub and spoke model of VIPER, along with data sharing agreements. They also further refined user stories and explored options for a prototype, which includes developing wireframes and discussing access models for users.
The group agreed to split into two key workstreams. One will focus on the development of a new VIPER prototype, combining wireframes and functional code. The other workstream will concentrate on further refining the cases where VIPER will be used in both emergency response and emergency planning. They will address outstanding questions regarding which users will have access under specific circumstances and at what level of detail.
Additionally, the team will be holding a session between Data Protection Officers (DPOs) from partner councils to agree the legal basis and model for data sharing with VIPER.
Exploring Automated Health and Social Care Assessments (Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames)
The project team recently delivered their concluding Show and Tell. They would like to thank everyone for the valuable feedback they received throughout the process.
Lastly, they would like to send a big shout-out to the discovery project team for their dedication and hard work in developing the discovery to where it is today.
Continuous funding model (CFM) projects
Children’s Placement Portal (Birmingham City Council)
The Birmingham project team have achieved several milestones this sprint. They’ve begun the development of the Create Referral feature, ensuring all necessary information is available and the product backlog is prioritised. They also successfully obtained sign-off for the View Referral designs.
While there were some challenges in commencing initial user designs and tech design for Manage Referral due to changing business process requirements, they are actively working on it and any remaining tasks will continue in the next sprint.
In preparation for the next sprint, the team is focusing on multiple key objectives including:
- enabling users to enter details for a new referral, including specifying the child’s support needs
- finalising and documenting individual referral detail designs
- making design decisions for Listings/Provider inbox based on testing and analysis with providers
The team is dedicated to addressing any challenges that arise and ensuring the project progresses smoothly, with a clear plan moving forward.
Low Code Digital Waste Service (Dorset Council)
The project team has made good progress this sprint with nearly a full team. Their primary focus was to complete outstanding non-quote journey work and complete the Business Account and Bartec connector task. They’ve finalised the quote-based journey requirements, with refreshed designs completed, and user stories written. They’ve also developed a Proof of Concept for key aspects of the quote journey and initial stories have been refined and estimated by the team.
Excitingly, the Sandbox environment for customers is nearly ready to roll out, allowing hands-on testing. Documentation for project features is underway and will be hosted on the Sandbox site once complete.
In the next two weeks, they’ll complete the remaining Bartec connector methods and begin work on GOV.UK Pay integration with Commerce.
This sprint will include technical investigations for complex elements, refinement of the user story backlog, and estimation of development efforts. They remain focused on addressing QA (Quality Assurance) feedback and will also work on scoping and planning for Sprint 9, which is scheduled for 18 to 31 October.
Family Context (Stockport Council)
To make things easier for users to access, the Stockport project team have separated the content in their toolkit into categories on their website.
Take a look to learn more about the Family Context tool and how to use it.
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