Welcome to LOTI
Hi! We’re LOTI, the London Office of Technology and Innovation.
Welcome to our first weeknote.
Every Friday, we’ll be updating you on what’s new with LOTI and its member boroughs, sharing what we’re working on, what we’ve learned and what’s coming up next.
What’s LOTI?
LOTI was established to help its member boroughs to collaborate on projects that bring the best of technology, data and innovation to improve public services and outcomes for Londoners.
We’re funded by our core membership of 15 London boroughs (see map below), the GLA and London Councils. You can find us at London Councils’ offices at 59½ Southwark Street.
Although LOTI was formally launched on 10 June at London Tech Week, we officially started in post this week (15 July).
We’ve created a brief overview of our mission, members and activities, which you can read here.
Who are we?
This is us!
Please meet (from left to right):
Genta Hajri (Programme Manager) — I moved to LOTI from Waltham Forest Council where I delivered projects and programmes ranging from: developing a blueprint for Economic Growth, to co-designing a strategy for employment and skills provision, to digitally enabling delivery in Planning services. I’m really looking forward to working with member boroughs and using technology to deliver positive outcomes for Londoners.
Eddie Copeland (Director) — I was formerly Director of Government Innovation at Nesta, the innovation foundation. For the past seven years, I’ve been researching and running pilots to help public sector organisations innovate, often using technology and data. I’ve been writing about the benefits of collaboration for some time and was involved in the pilot for a London Office of Data Analytics. I feel I’ve spent enough of my career telling others what I think they should do. I’ve joined LOTI because I want to be able to help London’s boroughs in a much more hands-on way. I’m incredibly excited to be leading this new venture!
Onyeka Onyekwelu (Lead Engagement Officer) — In my previous life, I trained as a barrister and then specialised in public policy advocacy, leading on justice related campaigns focusing on access to justice, digitisation, rule of law, and equality and diversity nationally and internationally. I joined LOTI in an effort to shape and influence the way in which technology speaks to the delivery of public services in London, and a key part of my role here is to develop LOTI’s public engagement strategy — in short, telling the world what LOTI is doing, and why.
What we’ve been working on
It’s been a busy first week for the LOTI Central Team.
As well as getting inducted at London Councils (our new home), we’ve been thinking about how we’ll work together, including drafting our own team charter and our weekly working rhythms. We’ve focused on designing out all the things that can be frustrating about work, and making time for our most important activities.
Next week, we have our first workshop with our member boroughs to explore the projects we’d like to work on next. We’ve planned the agenda and thought through the tools, processes and collaboration techniques we’d like to trial in our early weeks.
We’ve also been thinking about what LOTI’s key principles might be. One of those is to practice radical transparency. We’ll publicly release every significant document we work on that does not contain sensitive information. We’re doing that because we believe it’s the right thing to do, and also because we hope by sharing what we’re working on, we can invite helpful feedback from you.
What we’ve learned
This week we’ve also been doing a lot of thinking about what it will take for LOTI to succeed. Clearly, expectations are high.
To frame our thinking, we conducted a “pre-mortem” of LOTI (imagining how it might fail) and thought about specific actions we can take to head off those risks.
We’ve realised that LOTI will face a number of challenges, but perhaps the greatest of all is collaboration.
Significantly, we are not merely aiming to collaborate. We are aiming to successfully and systematically collaborate over the long term.
The ultimate aim of LOTI is to make collaboration on digital, data and innovation projects so frictionless that working together becomes the default option for our members in any area where it makes sense to do so.
Yet we know collaboration is hard. Really hard.
By understanding the reasons for this and being open to thinking, testing and learning as we go, we hope LOTI can set an example for how this can be done.
In the meantime, we would welcome readers’ suggestions on tools, frameworks and case studies we might learn from.
What’s next?
Next week we have three priorities:
- To run a great workshop with LOTI member boroughs, agree our ways of working and select our first set of projects.
- Design ways in which we can constructively engage with and make use of the dozens of kind offers of help we have received from organisations and individuals.
- Get all our tools and systems up and running across our member boroughs.
Thanks for reading!
