2024 has been another incredibly busy and productive year for the LOTI community. Here are a few highlights:

It’s been a year of events

One of the key things that makes a community thrive is having the chance to get together to share problems, questions and ideas. This year, weI have hosted over 100 online and in-person events. Those have ranged from meetings of our 10 communities of practice that bring together peers to discuss specialist areas like data strategy, technical architecture and generative AI (genAI), to large conferences like our annual digital inclusion event, held in June, which brought together colleagues from across the public, third and private sectors.

It’s been a year of research, guides and resources

We have continued to develop our library of toolkits, guides and templates. We publish these openly for the benefit of the whole local government sector. We’ve equally been pleased to hear from city governments from Australia to the USA who have used them, too. 

Major additions this year have included LOTI’s analytical capability framework, our in-depth guidance on data protection for damp and mould IoT sensors, research on future use cases for genAI in housing services and adult social care, a report looking into innovative practices for resident engagement and our library of smart city use cases.

It’s been a year of bold experiments

The Sandbox: In areas like Adult Social Care, boroughs urgently need to find innovative new ways of meeting needs. Yet the pressures on services make it extremely hard to do so. That’s why we developed the Sandbox Method, whereby new service models and technologies can be tested and evaluated without risk on realistic mock-ups of key public services. We launched this process in October at which we brought together community groups, public, third and private sector organisations to witness performances of two representative stories of Londoners navigating the care system. We asked participants to identify the problems and then help us design solutions to address them. If you’re interested and want to get involved, join us at our upcoming sandbox events. 

Internet of Things (IoT): 2024 saw the launch of London local government’s largest IoT pilot. 20 boroughs are working together via LOTI to explore how IoT sensors can detect temperature and humidity levels in social housing. The aim is to help predict and prevent damp and mould conditions. LOTI is working to ensure the pilot is well evaluated and provides lessons so we can learn how new sources of data can help tackle some of London’s major challenges.

Rough sleeping data: This year also saw ambitious use of data to tackle homelessness. Working in collaboration with London Councils, the Greater London Authority (GLA), borough housing directors, Bloomberg Associates and Faculty, we developed a pan-London tool that brings together data on rough sleeping from 45 organisations, including every London borough, to provide insights into rough sleeping journeys and how people interact with different parts of the system. The year has ended by looking at how we can use this data to design better, more preventative interventions.

It’s been a year of recognition

In November, we were delighted when Get Online London (GOL) won the Governance and Economy Project Award at the World Smart City Awards, competing against 429 entries from 64 countries worldwide. GOL, the digital inclusion service run by LOTI and Good Things Foundation with funding from the Mayor of London, provides support to digitally excluded Londoners via 1003 hubs, and has distributed more than 5,400 devices and 75,000 data packages to date. It was previously co-winner (alongside Get Online Greater Manchester) of the 2023 Connected Britain Awards in the Community Improvement prize category.

2025 and beyond

These are just a small handful of the incredible initiatives my team and the wider LOTI community have worked on over the past 12 months. 

While the nature of LOTI’s work continuously evolves, our driving question remains the same: “What can we do better together?” As we look ahead to 2025, I think that focus is more relevant and important than ever.

London local government faces extraordinarily challenging times, with spiralling demand for key services and a financial shortfall running into the hundreds of millions. In the short term, councils have little choice but to make some incredibly hard decisions about cutting back and transforming as quickly as they can. However, in parallel, they also need to work on developing financially sustainable services so they can still serve their communities 20+ years from now. 

I believe two things can help achieve that: working together and developing new solutions. In other words: collaborative innovation. 

That is what the LOTI community has stood for 5 and half years. Our model of collaborative public sector innovation is among the most advanced and mature in the country. Other regions and even central government are now asking how a LOTI-type model could work in other parts of the country. I firmly believe in this model, and look forward to sharing what we’ve learned with those interested in expanding it further.

In the meantime, for every one of our members who has been part of our work in 2024, thank you. For all our supporters and contractors, from private individuals to public, third and private sector organisations, thank you. 

And to my remarkable team – Anna, Anjali, Edi, Esther, Genta, Jay, Polly, Sam and Victoria – my sincerest thanks for your tireless efforts to make good things happen.