Workshops

A range of interactive workshops will provide delegates with the opportunity to explore some of the key themes in using technology to deliver effective, efficient, and personalised local public services.

 

Please click on a workshop title, or scroll down, for more details:

Data transparency, openness and accountability

 

Places: area based insight and service delivery

 

People: Customer Insight and Profiling

 

Digital Skills - Beyond the Basics

 

Developing the business case for digital inclusion

 

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: how to avoid pitfalls and make progress when delivering technology enabled front line services

 

Encouraging communities in your area to help themselves using digital media

 

Mainstreaming digital inclusion and technology enabled services: Lessons learned from the Digital Challenge and beyond

 

Back Office Efficiency – Removing the Burden of Staff Management Systems

Workshops include:

Data transparency, openness and accountability
facilitated by the Department for Communities and Local Government
speaker: Hulya Mustafa, Deputy Director, Digital Delivery and Transparency, CLG

 

Councils are being encouraged to throw open their files and publish, alongside spending data, information on salaries, job titles, allowances and expenses, minutes of meetings and more.

The drivers for this activity include increasing local accountability and value for money. 

This workshop will look at the practical and cultural challenges of providing data in a format that makes it easy to be republished, re-used or mashed up by outside groups and share lessons learned from some of the good practice already underway in local authorities.

Places: area based insight and service delivery
facilitated by esd toolkit and the City of London DIT
speakers: Ian Everall, Digital Inclusion Advisor and Alison Murdoch, Mendip District Council & esd-toolkit

 

Placing data on a map in a clear visual format simplifies decision making about a local place. It can:

• improve the delivery of evidence-based policy

• help local service providers tackling digital and social exclusion identify where services are needed most and where they will deliver the most social and economic value

• support placed based budgeting

• and facilitate stronger and more effective collaboration and partnership working on policies and programmes at community, local, regional and national levels

This workshop will look at how area based insight can help local authorities and their partners improve services in the context of the new coalition government’s policy drivers of localism, Big Society and productivity and demonstrate the tools and resources available through esd-toolkit. Attendees will benefit from:

• an overview of the community maps site, a web based interactive tool places digital (e.g. internet take-up), social (e.g. household income) and resource (e.g. UK Online Centres) data on a map at a community level.
• an introduction to the datasets and definitions
  an insight into analysis – how to use the maps for a particular area
• lessons learned and conclusions on the value of mapping tools available on esd-toolkit and why they are worth exploring further
• a chance to ask any questions about using data and mapping to gain area based insight and support service delivery
• how to follow up on the esd-toolkit site
  

People: Customer Insight and Profiling
facilitated by esd toolkit and the City of London DIT

Public service delivery organisations are being challenged to improve services with reduced resources; making the ability to target services and develop efficient tailored and local plans to improve delivery a greater imperative than ever.

Customer insight and profiling is an essential tool to assist local authorities and their partners deliver the right services to the right people at the right time and at the right cost. Used effectively, it allows you to recognise which channels customers prefer and the most suitable way of delivering services and communicating – allowing you to design services around the needs of your customers.

At a relatively low cost, your organisation can become more proactive and take a strategic approach to the effective use of resources. This in turn can improve customer satisfaction, empower staff and develop greater public confidence in how services are delivered across the public sector.

This workshop will explore how you can use customer insight and profiling tools and resources available through esd-toolkit to help you:

• identify customer needs and expectations, not only of your products and services, but also of the level of service you provide
• understand what are local authorities’ statutory duties? What must be done for whom?
• identify circumstances and need within the local area - who needs services, who are the vulnerable groups
• see how much individuals and groups cost to serve, what is the value for money in delivering specific services and what is the social and economic cost of not doing anything
• understand how different groups of people, e.g. NEETs, adults with mental health problems, can benefit from different communications channels and how types of ICT can be used to help tackle specific issues
• use customer insight and profiling to support effective working with partners
• measure internal performance, customer behavior and customer perception to determine what further action is required

Digital Skills - Beyond the Basics
facilitated by NIACE (The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education).
speaker: Mary Moss, Programme Director, Digital Learning team, NIACE

As citizens are seeking to develop the digital skills that enable them to become digitally ‘capable’, there is now a range of formal and informal learning routes they can take.

‘IT literacy’ is a pre-requisite for employment with 92% jobs requiring IT skills. Of the ten million adults in the UK who are not internet users, 39% are over 65, 38% are unemployed and 19% are families with children. Only 27% of people report learning about technology through formal training.

But, acquiring the digital skills needed for employment and everyday access to online services, must go alongside developing the ability to understand and evaluate what’s on offer. How do we ensure citizens, consumers and employees, especially those in vulnerable groups, are adequately digitally skilled? What does national and European experience demonstrate are effective approaches to overcoming digital exclusion? 

NIACE presents the outcomes of some innovative projects and invites your contribution to the debate.

Developing the business case for digital inclusion
facilitated by Digital Unite
speaker: Peter Deadman, Programme Manager, Digital Unite

Get Digital is a Communities and Local Government and Department for Work and Pensions project, delivered by Digital Unite and NIACE. It provides digital inclusion to 195 Residential Housing Schemes across England through training and support in order to promote well being and social capital for residents; ensuring they can benefit from access to the digital world.

Get Digital has encountered many differing organisations through this programme - each with a unique reason for requesting grant award, and each with differing benefit challenges.

This interactive workshop, led by Programme Manager Peter Deadman, will explore the business case for delivering projects such as these into this sector and discuss the wide range of benefit realisation techniques potentially available.

We will ask if it is possible to realise a social or economic return on investment for this type of project, if these projects a worthy use of capital and, most importantly, how do communities value such digital inclusion initiatives?

The workshop will challenge participants to examine their ideas of business benefit realisation, tackle the complexities of creating benefit plans and ultimately look to establish the requirements for creating a successful business case.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: how to avoid pitfalls and make progress when delivering technology enabled front line services
facilitated by the DC10plus Network
speaker: Stephen Dodson, Director, DC10 plus and Peter Goodwin, Goodwin Associates

A warts-and-all interactive workshop covering many of the pitfalls on using technology to support service delivery and how to avoid them.

With examples from Local Authority led projects across the country, Stephen Dodson, Director of the DC10plus network will introduce a frank and candid debate on why innovative uses of ICT allow for greater learning and importance and how the barriers to implementating innovativbe products and services can be surmounted - even in these pressured times. The importance of communication; internal and external is highlighted by DC10plus members and examples are given of replicable and proven projects.

Peter Goodwin will be sharing lessons learned from his experience of Nottingham’s Homeshoring project, which set out to create flexible employment opportunities by enabling people from deprived communities to be trained to work as call centre agents from their own homes or local community centres.

Encouraging communities in your area to help themselves using digital media
facilitated by the Media Trust
speakers: Gavin Sheppard, Director of Marketing and Communications Services, Media Trust, & Jessica Medling, Head of Charity and Community Projects, Media Trust

The Big Society means communities are strong, seen and heard, and actively engaged. Media Trust will coordinate an interactive workshop to help audiences understand how to engage their local communities to help address their own identified issues of isolation or disadvantage.

Our practical session will include case studies from our digital media project, Community Voices. We will demonstrate real life examples of how understanding the communities' needs, giving them focus and support, and working in partnership with them have produced measurable and positive results.

Case studies will be framed by use of digital media but the principles of our work are directly transferrable to creating the Big Society, locally.

Mainstreaming digital inclusion and technology enabled services: Lessons learned from the Digital Challenge and beyond
facilitated by Sunderland City Council
speaker: Diane Downey, Assistant Head of ICT, Sunderland and Debby Ross, Community IT programme manager, Sunderland

Sunderland’s Community IT team has been mainstreamed for over five years and has delivered successful programmes such as e-Neighbourhoods and Digital Challenge.

The workshop will explore the business case for a digital inclusion programme focusing on the benefits and outcomes that can be achieved.

It will demonstrate the contribution that a Digital Inclusion Strategy can make to the overall aims of a Local Authority. In addition to the educational, economic and health benefits, direct benefits also include:

Council Benefits

• Open and accountable processes
• Services that better to meet communities needs and aspirations
• Prioritisation of services and better use of resources
• Rich grass roots information for decision making
• Co-creation of Services
• Support for channel shift to on-line service delivery

Citizen Benefits

• E-enabled people particularly from excluded groups.
• Raised aspirations, skills and knowledge.
  social inclusion, increased feeling of well-being.
• Motivation and capacity to participate in the democratic process and to influence outcomes
• Increased employability
• Personal development associated with socialisation.
• Intergenerational benefits
• Growth of interest communities
• Awareness of, and participation

In the current economic climate the move of service delivery to more economic access channels will increase the need for everyone to have access to ICT skills and technology.  Digital inclusion and technology enabled services is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity. 

• Back Office Efficiency – Removing the Burden of Staff Management Systems
  facilitated by Stratford-on-Avon District Council
  speaker: Balvinder Heran, Head of Change & Performance, Stratford-on-Avon
  

  
  Back office efficiency can increase organisational productivity and improve the effectiveness of internal service delivery. Stratford on Avon District Council has, over the last few years refined how they deal with staff management.
  
  Hear how their transformation program has been used to target development to alleviate the necessary overheads associated with employment. Time recording, leave and sickness have all been incorporated into a single system freeing up hours of time for every member of staff. 
  
  By expanding the system to include expenses and procurement card reconciliation greater accountability with less administration has been achieved.