Introduction

The Digital Strategy builds on the progress achieved in the last five years and considers the availability of modern technology that has been developed in this time, and new developments anticipated in the short term. 

The changing landscape we have lived through in the pandemic has seen a rapid shift to digital solutions, with many customers keen to have 24/7 access to services, and that they are as simple and easy to use as possible.

We must adapt our services to fit this requirement, but not exclude those customers unable to access digital services.

We will optimise our ICT resources, with a future proofed workforce, to help make the Council a modernised, financially sustainable organisation.

Objectives

This is one of the four pillars under Evolve 2026, closely aligned to our Customer Engagement, Service Transformation and People strategies. The strategy aims to deliver the following objectives:

• Provide the Council with clear procurement governance of new systems. Avoiding duplication, complication, double handling, and spend whilst giving overarching assurance from a Strategic Design Authority (senior decision-making forum) that solutions will fit in with existing ones.
• Reduce the use, cost and support complexity of systems and applications by combining them, cloud hosting them or retiring them.
• Expand the use of our customer portal – Self Accounts – to provide access to Council services in one location, available 24/7, which enables a more streamlined self-service experience with opt in marketing opportunities.
• Continue to protect the Council against ongoing threats to data security. Continuing with security awareness, testing, and training for all staff and members.
• Using the latest technologies to enhance the Council’s ability to serve the public in an efficient and cost-effective way – such as 24/7 artificial intelligent agents on our website or within our contact centre where appropriate.
• Provide managers with clear insight into their departments using new reporting tools and enhance productivity using automation and integration.
• Seek to remove the unstructured data and provide clear and quality methods of contact into the Council.

Reduce the carbon footprint within the Council by taking advantage of cloud hosting’s scale and efficiencies.

Design Principles

The strategy will work to a set of four design principles to underpin the above objectives.

Digital by choice

The simplest, quickest, and cheapest method of contact for most of the requests we receive should be digital by choice and available 24/7.

This shift in workflow for simple interactions (from people to online) will free up time for staff to carry out complex, high value work and to be able to help those that need it most.

We recognise that not everyone is able to access our services digitally and may not have the necessary skills, so we will ensure we continue to offer phone and face-to-face services. Our customer service team will also be able to support customers by guiding them through our website on the phone or in our Pippbrook office reception.

Services will be continuously reviewed from a customer perspective to ensure true digital transformation, putting customers at the centre, and ensuring their needs are being met.

We will have clear and agreed procedures to procuring, implementing, and commissioning innovative solutions, technologies, and tools. Ensuring they fit into the existing solutions and have been through the Strategic Design Authority process for correct governance.

We will take full advantage of modern technology to continue to reduce the carbon footprint of the Council – both directly and in-directly.

By enabling remote working and channel shift, we will take full advantage of technology to ensure that Members and staff can work from anywhere and at any time.

By modernising our ICT systems and retiring legacy applications and inefficient servers, we can take advantage of the emissions savings associated with the economies of scale of using large, centralised cloud servers, rather than maintaining many local servers.

We will improve our digital skills across the Council, putting in place the right tools and training for staff and Councillors – making everyone tech savvy.

Automation

Taking the simple, transactional work away from staff, freeing up their time to focus on quality work.

Speeding up processes, reducing failure rates, unnecessary duplication, and errors. Not double handling by enabling end-to-end processes within a whole system perspective.

Using intelligent automation to run scheduled tasks with error handling and notifications.

Leveraging the development in AI (Artificial Intelligence) to provide 24/7 support to our residents and businesses.

Integration

Plotting out our services – integrating or merging into fewer core systems – standardising and simplifying the systems we support, reducing complexity and costs.

Ensure innovative solutions integrate into our existing systems, using APIs or similar, passing data and allowing us to provide a single portal for our customers and secure environment for staff.

Retire the use of unstructured, generic email addresses in favour of structured online forms, enabling the correct data is taken at point of contact, not chased down afterwards. Reducing the potential for human error and failure demand.

Data – better use of data

Build appropriate reports for systems and suppliers, utilising Microsoft Power Bi, to share these with Business Managers who will be accountable for monitoring and enabling continuous improvement in their service area.

Enabling residents and businesses to self-serve using the Council portal will ensure that their data is valid, and up to date. They will be able to update their personal data 24/7. This opportunity also enables the various business teams in the Council to offer opt in marketing information – potentially increasing income by upselling services.

Making better use of data we hold, will inform us on our evolution journey to provide a better experience for the public and our staff. We will use this data to gain insight into behaviours, failure demand and emerging trends so that we continuously improve the way we work.

Radar view

This should provide a thematic view of the areas of change that will be delivered under the strategy to give the reader a sense of the likely projects and timeline.