Week 3: From plans to action
3 projects. 2 lead boroughs. 1 week.
That’s the sum of the third week for the LOTI central team.
Our main priority this week was to start work on our three summer projects and put in place our project management processes.
We met with the boroughs who have volunteered to lead each project to discuss and plan out how we will implement our outcomes-based methodology over the next 10 weeks.
Here’s the latest on each of those projects:
Information Governance
At the moment, it’s difficult for London boroughs to share data with each other and other public service providers. There are many reasons for this, including the fact they use different IT systems, record data in different ways, and sometimes have contracts that require an additional fee to access and share data. (We may return to tackling some of these in a future project.)
Yet perhaps the most important single barrier is that there are also different approaches to information governance.
When boroughs need to share data, they rely on Information Sharing Agreements (ISAs) to do so. ISAs sets out the terms by which data will be shared and used across organisational boundaries, and for what purposes. At the moment, they have no standardised way to create these ISAs, making the process bespoke, costly and time-consuming. (It took around six months to put together and get all participating boroughs to sign the ISA for the pilot of the London Office of Data Analytics in 2017.)
To address this, we’ll be working with LOTI member boroughs to explore ways in which we can develop a common approach to creating and using ISAs across boroughs.
LOTI met with Camden (the lead borough on this project) to kick off plans for a discovery workshop in September. In the weeks prior to the workshop, LOTI will work with Camden to source and review existing data-sharing approaches (including examples from both London and other cities) for inspiration. We value the input of experts in this field and will be engaging with those responsible for information governance in each borough, as well as in other public sector organisations, over the coming weeks.
Here’s our Information Governance project overview.
Seamless Wifi
When a public servant or elected member visits or needs to work in another borough, they often have to go through a different wifi login process each time because not all boroughs offer the same guest wifi networks. This can cause real difficulties, such as in cases of emergency response, where public sector staff need to urgently access their systems on another site.
LOTI wants to make it quicker and easier for public servants and elected members to get online wherever they may be in London’s public sector estate. To that end, LOTI member boroughs have all agreed to enable GovRoam and GovWifi. Working with Camden, the LOTI central team will draft guidance for boroughs on how to do this.
We’ll also be creating a communications plan to raise awareness of this service among public servants and elected members.
Here’s our Seamless Wifi project overview.
Digital Apprenticeships
Nearly all public sector organisations now recognise the importance of making effective use of digital technologies in their organisations. Yet finding staff with digital skills can be challenging. LOTI’s Digital Apprenticeships Scheme aims to build London’s digital talent pool by offering at least 100 digital apprenticeships in LOTI member boroughs by September 2020.
We met with Hackney (the lead borough on this project) to catch-up on the progress they have made on the project to date. With their support, LOTI member boroughs have already pledged to create 63 new digital apprenticeship places — wow!
Now it’s time to work out how best to reach our target of 100 and ensure that each and every one of the digital apprentices receives the highest standard of training and support.
Over the summer we’ll be working with Hackney to draft a Digital Apprenticeships Playbook. To ensure the contents are relevant and actionable, LOTI will run a discovery phase. This will include surveying our members to find out about their experiences of offering digital apprenticeships, including some of the barriers to doing so.
Here’s our Digital Apprenticeships project overview.
What’s next?
Next week we have three priorities:
- Start visiting our member boroughs to discuss their aspirations for LOTI, and understand their local priorities and challenges.
- Kick off actions to deliver our three projects and five other initiatives, including creating guidance on the responsible use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for London’s public sector organisations.
- Take part in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG) workshop on local authority collaboration.
Thanks for reading!
