Where we’re at with designing an Office of Technology and Innovation for London
Understanding how digital London’s public services are
FutureGov, along with Arup and Stance, have been asked by the GLA and partners to scope out a London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI). Over the last four weeks, we’ve been looking at best practice from around the world to find out what makes a great smart city and how this can be applied to London. We’ve also been developing a Digital Maturity Assessment that will help us understand how London boroughs are harnessing digital in their day-to-day work and what could help them go further.
To design brilliant digital services for citizens, London will require visionary leadership, an inventive culture and new ways of working — all supported by the best in digital technology. It is crucial that we design a LOTI with a thorough understanding of London’s digital readiness and ambition for the future, building on current great practice, replicating cutting edge examples and supporting invention where needed.
Discovery: finding out what London needs from a LOTI
We’re deep in discovery right now, which means we’re speaking to lots of digital leaders and similar offices from around the world. As well as benchmarking London against the global stage we’re also designing a model to assess the digital maturity of London boroughs. This will help us understand the needs of London based on where they are in relation to digital right now.
We understand that surveys alone will not give us the detailed picture we need for this. We are therefore using a combination of surveys, to get a broad view of the standing of digital services across London, and workshops and interviews, which will provide the colour and depth crucial to understanding what LOTI will need to do for London.
Surveys
It is important for us to get a broad overview of the digital maturity of different departments. For this reason, we decided to target our surveys at different sections of council, splitting them into an “organisational view”; “service view” and “systems view”. The surveys will help answer key questions on plans for service transformation, technology and digital capability development throughout the organisation. We really want to get a view of the biggest corporate challenges as well as things like technology adoption, governance and (digital) organisational culture.
The surveys are not going to be comprehensive, but they are intended to give a useful initial understanding of where best practice digital services in London are, where they might be able to be replicated and what features of these practices other councils can learn from. We also hope that they will identify what the common challenges for digitisation are, as these might be an opportunity for collaboration that LOTI can facilitate going forward.
Workshops
It is also important that our research dives deep into council practice and understands the nuance of digital experience across London. To understand this, we will host workshops across London and interviews with key individuals. We’re hoping to facilitate open feedback, and unveil the reasons why councils consistently identify the same pain points, struggle with the implementation of certain tools and ultimately, arrive at frustrating roadblocks in their journeys towards digital transformation.
We will use the results of our surveys to help conduct the workshops. They will help shape our discussion and test the early hypotheses of LOTI. The workshops are intended to help councils see the potential for LOTI, but don’t worry, each borough will only see their own data and then data at a London level. This isn’t a league table — promise!
Over the next couple of months we’ll be busy engaging with London Councils, the GovTech sector, private organisations and politicians to wrap up our research for LOTI before heading into operating model design.
Get involved
If you’re a digital leader in the boroughs, even just a leader with an interest in digital, we need your input. The scoping exercise is broad and we value any insight you’d care to share. Your concerns, experiences and ideas will collectively shape LOTI’s approach and impact. Everything is up for discussion.
Whether you’re redefining the ‘finding a place to live service’ in east London, redesigning social care technology in west London, or experimenting with autonomous vehicles in south London, please get involved.
Email our Managing Director Dom (dom@wearefuturegov.com) or LOTI Project Director Zoe (zoedehaes@wearefuturegov.com) for more information.
