Coalition of the willing

If I had a penny for every time I heard the phrase "coalition of the willing" today I'd have about seven pence.

Seriously though, I attended three really good discussions in London today broadly around councils sharing knowledge, innovation and work on digital, where the phase came up a few times, which got me thinking.

There are already coalitions of the willing in LocalGov Digital, the LGA, iStandUK, SOLACE, techUK's Local Public Services Committee, the Public Service Transformation Academy, the iNetwork, and more. In fact there's a coalition of coalitions of the willing in the Local Digital Coalition. Yes, I agree a coalition of the willing is a good thing but perhaps we shouldn't create more disparate groups with the intention of enabling joined up working across local government.

The other thing that sprang to mind is, for every coalition of the willing working together there's a disunion of the unable and unwilling. For every small group of councils working together there's a larger group who aren't.

So the question I took away from today is, how do we make our coalitions of the willing more inclusive so a greater number of elected members, officers, and their councils are able and willing to think, do and share?

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