LG/WWW

Wouldn't it be great if all of government used open source technology ? Imagine a catalogue of open source code, and organisations having the time and resource to use it. Unfortunately, in the lower tiers of government that don't have large development and support teams, and which need to move quickly, it's not economically viable to do so. This is especially true where there are mature products and services that are easily consumable and available through markets like  the G-Cloud . Something arguably even more important than open source is open standards. Whether you're using a standard for APIs like Open311 , or writing code in open languages like JavaScript or open run-time environments like Node.js  it means you can share integrations and developments. This week at my place we announced a Digital Collaboration Agreement  with another council, and what's really going to help with this is the fact we're using common platform elements with open APIs, and

Remember the Local Digital Alliance? Formed in 2013 it was heralded as a collation of the willing and included the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), the Local Government Association, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, and the Society of Council IT managers. Lots of organisations with multi-million pound budgets that were supposed to be leading on digital in local government, plus a few others. What about the Local Digital Coalition ? Born from the ashes of the DCLG's Local Digital Programme in 2016, it included the Local Government Association, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, and the Society of Council IT managers. Lots of organisations with multi-million pound budgets that were supposed to be leading on digital in local government, and a few others. And what did these groups of sector leaders with big budgets deliver? The Alliance (to my knowledge) produced nothing and the Coalition produced an Action Plan  and that's