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Pipeline: The First Fifty

Back in 2013 I wrote about about kick starting collaboration and in the spirit of LocalGov Digital's ethos of "Think. Do. Share" we've been thinking, then doing something about it.

A couple of weeks ago LocalGovDigital Makers launched Pipeline, to help enable collaboration between council digital teams. At present it's very much an alpha, a platform to investigate the functionality needed to allow councils to work together more closely together and a pilot to test out Makers Project Teams.

We publicised the launch with a few tweets, an article on the LocalGov Digital website and Digital  by Default News ran a piece on it you could say it was fairly low key.

As I write this, we've had people from 50 different councils sign up.

I'm under no illusion. This isn't 50 councils all ready to dive head-first into the sharing and collaboration of their digital work, I'm sure some will have joined through personal interest or curiosity.

I don't want to downplay the initial enthusiasm though. In my mind, "good" looked like people from 20 to 25 councils signing up, the usual suspects plus a few more. So far we've got 80 people across 50 councils and more private companies (who are also very welcome to join) and there's interest from the wider public sector too.

What's most heartening is that the interest isn't down to a full on, well planned media campaign. It's also not down to a great product. Pipeline is good, but it's far from finished. If neither of these are the main attraction, it's more than likely down to a genuine interest in collaboration.

Pipeline is progressing and the next release contains the first functional elements to help join up councils. The real test will be to keep those who've signed up engaged it its development, to get them adding projects.

So here's to the first fifty. The councils with at least one person forward thinking enough to be curious about collaboration:

The First Fifty

Aberdeenshire Council
Adur District Council
Barnsley Borough Council
Birmingham City Council
Bristol City Council
Calderdale Council
Cornwall Council
Devon County Council
East Sussex County Council
Eden District Council
Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council
Guildford Borough Council
Halton Borough Council
Hampshire County Council
Herefordshire Council
Hertfordshire County Council
Hinckley & Bosworth District Council
Huntingdonshire District Council
Kent County Council
Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council
Leicestershire County Council
Liverpool City Council
London Borough of Barnet
London Borough of Camden
London Borough of Hillingdon
London Borough of Lewisham
London Borough of Redbridge
London Borough of Southwark
London Borough of Wandsworth
Monmouthshire Council
Nottinghamshire County Council
North Lincolnshire Council
North Yorkshire County Council
Northamptonshire County Council
Northumberland County Council
Norwich City Council
Plymouth City Council
Reading Borough Council
Reigate and Banstead Borough Council
Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council
Shropshire Council
South Gloucestershire District Council
St Helens Borough Council
Suffolk County Council
Surrey County Council
Surrey Heath Borough Council
Torbay Council
West Berkshire Council
Worthing District Council
And the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities

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