Local digital government needs overhaul, says Future Governance Forum report
Future Governance Forum calls for a new blueprint to modernise and digitise local government
The Future Governance Forum has called for a new blueprint to modernise and digitise local government, including a sector-wide workforce plan, de-risking innovation, targeted funding and creating a better marketplace
A report by the Future Governance Forum (FGF) calls for a joined-up plan to deliver local digital government, bringing the sector together through a collaborative approach.
The report, which comes after an eight-month engagement period with local government leaders, and produced in collaboration between the forum and Public Digital, looks at challenges and opportunities in the local digital government sector. It highlights the need for a “blueprint for a modernised local government”, which should be developed collaboratively by the sector itself.
“It is a call to bring together the whole sector and set a new North Star, and strengthen the story for digital in local government that focuses on delivering modern, 21st century and world-leading public services,” it said.
The report highlights the “missing middle” – in other words, a gap in local government innovation, data and technology across the system. The gap, the report said, is “is leading to huge amounts of fragmentation, duplication of efforts and confusion about ‘who should be doing what’”. But, above all, there is “a gap that is preventing the sector from effectively learning from one another and addressing common and shared problems at the pace we need”, it added.
To fix this, the report sets out 60 recommendations, including developing a sector-wide workforce plan, to address digital skills and diversity issues, creating structured pathways for digital staff to progress into leadership roles not usually held by those in digital roles, such as chief executives, and improve infrastructure and incentives.
The aim is to de-risk innovation and shape the marketplace via collective buying, sandboxing and shared procurement frameworks. It added that the current software market is “broken”, where crucial systems are often dominated by a small number of large suppliers, locking councils into contracts with systems that can’t integrate with others, and excluding a more diverse range of suppliers.
Who is responsible?
The report said that it currently isn’t clear who should be doing what, and there is no incentive to collaborate with others around common challenges.
“On the one hand, we heard about a high level of duplication across a local government sector that is fragmented by nature, often leading to 320 councils repeating the same process, procurement or design sapping their vital resources,” the report said.
It added that local government would have more power collectively to influence central government and to share and connect data.
“Equally, we also heard that it was harder to harness the power of the sector collectively either in how digital can help resolve universal challenges or leverage its collective power with the private sector. As a result, despite the ever-growing importance of technology in all our lives, the use of digital remains underutilised or really understood.”
Funding in local government is also an issue, with councils more cash-strapped than ever before. According to the report, in 2023, eight councils were given permission to increase council tax “above the legal maximum and 30 secured ‘exceptional financial assistance’ to balance their budgets for 2025-26”.
“While government’s early steps to commit to multi-year settlements and abandon competitive funding streams are hugely welcome, an ongoing and sustained financial crisis in local government is a significant barrier to advancing longer term thinking and greater innovation in service design within the sector,” the report said.
Digital skills and access to them is also an issue. There are challenges around the lack of representation across all levels of digital roles, limited routes of entry into the sector, and a lack of equity in the geographic distribution of talent across local government.
The report recommended that data is collected on the diversity of staff in digital roles to build up a complete picture of the diversity of the digital workforce, as well as monitor progress, and that a new apprenticeship programme is created to support those who want to develop skills to transition into digital roles.
It also wants to tackle the lack of standards in local government, leading to a varied and fragmented service experience for councils, recommending the potential to mandate digital service standards for all councils and their services.
Its vision for 2030 is a set of “established and trusted service standards and patterns that are being used and adopted by 70% of councils, with rewards and incentives offered to those who are actively adhering to them, and with a suitable audit regime in place to assess levels of compliance”. Standards would be co-designed by representatives from different parts of local government.
The FGF sees as successful approach as the infrastructure for local digital government being developed and owned by local government and brought together by a “light touch” institute, acting as a co-ordinating body on behalf of local government.
This will include a number of regional “centres for service innovation”, which would be focused on regionally specific solutions, as well as working as a sandbox in the development of evidence-based solutions for shared local government challenges.
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