Digital strategy 2022 to 2025

The vision

Using Digital to deliver the services our customers want whilst driving out cost

To support this vision there are:

• 5 digital streams to provide a framework to deliver the strategy, The digital streams reflect that this is a whole-council drive to improve service outcomes, modernise and streamline those resources and processes that lead up to those outcomes and allow the council to meet its financial challenges
• Guiding principles that will be used in developing our digital solutions. These will ensure that there is a consistent quality and focus on the solutions that we provide for our customers and internal business processes

Digital strategy streams summary

Stream 1: Digital services – Provide digital services for residents and visitors that they will use by default but recognise that others may need additional support.

Stream 2: Digital people – Give our people the tools to do the job and develop digitally for the future.

Stream 3: Smart data – Capturing, using and sharing data to provide better outcomes.

Stream 4: Secure and modern systems to use – Systems and an ICT infrastructure that allows end-to-end digital service delivery in a secure environment.

Stream 5: Digital place – Working with partners to make our district the digital place to be.

Guiding principles

• A digital mindset is prevalent within the council – digital first.
• Digital solutions are easy to use and wrapped around the customer:
  • Customers can view and update their data where appropriate
  • Solutions that are intuitive and know the customer
• Solutions and processes that are digital end-to-end with no manual intervention and remove the need for paper.
• Ensure the systems we use can maximise digital potential:
  • New systems must embrace and enhance digital
  • Legacy systems need to be reviewed to assess their digital potential
• Focus on the volumes – not everything will make sense or represent value to digitalise.
• Explore solutions that will develop our customer’s ability to interact with the council 24:7 such as AI and chatbots.
• Better use of data to develop services and work smarter with our partners.
• Use digital opportunities to create a leaner organisation with a reduced cost of service:
  • Redeployment
  • Multi-skilling
• Recognise that digital has its limitations in certain situations and there is still a need for more traditional areas of operation and intervention:
  • Vulnerable customers
  • Those with complex needs
  • Assist those who are digitally excluded into being able to use digital services
  • Staff and team engagement