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The Local Digital Declaration

Local e-government and digital isn't a new concept. In 2000, Implementing Electronic Government (IEG) aimed for all public services in England to be delivered electronically by 31 December 2005.

Local authorities reported 97% e-enablement at the start of 2006, but in reality what was created were websites crammed full of PDFs, and the legacy of this ethos still lives on with some councils. Mind you, an online form isn't always the best medium either, and recently we removed 60 online forms from our website.

Fast forward to 2013 and the Local Digital Alliance was formed which promised much but delivered nothing, and in 2016 the Local Digital Coalition saw many of the same organisations come together, to talk about, but not deliver a joined up approach to local government digital.

July 4th 2018 saw a Local Digital Declaration co-published by the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government and many of the organisations in the Coalition. As you may have picked up from the tone of this article, I can be cynical about this sort of thing, however I think the Declaration has the best chance of enabling a real change in local public service delivery in 20 years. But why?



It's got government backing.

One of the reasons the Alliance and Coalition failed is they were talking shops, waiting for the government to do something. We often hear the phrase "sector led", and as the current chair of LocalGov Digital, a grass roots association making changes bottom up we've achieved some great things, but real change only really happens with support from the top down.

There may be government money.

Even the organisations with million pound budgets failed to put in a single penny to the Alliance and Coalition which is one of the reasons why they failed. Yes, IEG had government money too, its aims were often unachievable and funding was given to councils individually.  From what I understand co-signatory councils may be able to join in funded projects with partner councils.

It's got a great team behind it.

I know about the hard work that's gone in to making this to happen. The right people are behind it, and supporting them are people in the co-publishing organisations that have worked hard to make this happen. I've even seen Labour councillors working to promote a Conservative government's initiative. That tells me the Declaration has support across the board.

Councils will be co-signatories, not digital teams.

Continuing the "top down" theme it is leaders that will sign up their whole council to the Declaration. When many people in government say digital, they really mean service redesign and wholesale change across an organisation isn't possible without leadership buy in.



If you are elected to, or work for a council I urge you to support the Local Digital Declaration. In my view it's the best chance in two decades for creating proper change in local public service delivery.



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