In this blog, Sarbjit Bakhshi, Digital Best Practice Manager at LOTI, interviewed  Jenna Scott-Brining about her transformation of Digital Services at the London Borough of Haringey, creating a future-proof estate based on interoperable foundations, a skilled internal team, and a framework-first procurement approach.

When Jenna first started, the council was operating a fragmented, legacy technology estate, characterised by fragmentation and inefficiency. Haringey had a really large digital team which, instead of being structured by capability, were working in isolation. For instance one team was looking at Robotic Process Automation, one team was looking at SharePoint. Communication was poor, little was grouped up, and it was hard to identify how the IT delivered to the bigger picture. There was also an underlying belief that purchasing new IT would solve all problems without addressing underlying people, process, and governance issues. 

Although Jenna’s goal was service modernisation to a modern, robust, and cost-efficient platform, prioritising longevity and strategic alignment over quick fixes, she knew that she had to stop inefficient expenditure and start eliminating projects and platforms that lacked strategic value and were high cost. The council had a habit of buying third-party bolt-on tools that were not natively interoperable, resulting in a fragmented digital estate. 

Jenna reoriented governance to make sure that technology deployments were strategically aligned and technically sound, by recruiting a new credible and capable internal technical team, which replaced Haringey’s dependency on agency staff and having them develop a suite of non-functional requirements and architectural principles that moved beyond mere tick-box security exercises. Creating a new governance strategy focused on creating a unified, scalable approach in all technology deployed.

Replacing technologies creates new challenges and Jenna was weary about building the legacy technologies of tomorrow and pushing the same problems further down the line. So instead of direct integrations between these new apps, Jenna’s team started using tools like Logic Apps to build middleware, which enabled a plug-and-play adoption model that would allow them to easily replace software they bought today. To keep data flowing freely in Haringey’s new organisation they started using Fabric for ingestion, with all entity diagrams built to ensure data accessibility and portability out of the new platform.

Jenna’s team prioritised moving away from expensive, legacy, and non-scalable tools and consolidating around platforms with a proven history and relationship with local government. She also applied principles of proportionality in terms of new technology – taking a different approach to buying technology on the basis of whether it was a short-term or long-term choice. While most applications, for instance in housing and parking, should be refreshed every three to five years to test the market, core systems like the Customer Relationship Management  platform were chosen on the basis that they would have a 10-year lifespan.

This doesn’t mean that Haringey has locked themselves into 10-year contracts. Haringey stays within the max contract lengths allowed in the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) frameworks they use (3 years with two +1 year extensions to the contract) and then recontracts if they are content with the performance of the software and the supplier in delivering proposed updates and extra functionality. The emphasis on data extraction capabilities and building a decoupled architecture ensures that if the supplier fails to meet its commitment or investment stagnates, the council retains the resilience and freedom to move.

Haringey exclusively uses CCS Frameworks (like G-Cloud or DOS 2) for procurement to avoid competitive exercises due to past issues with poorly written contracts and weak legal/procurement functions that can come from doing procurement in-house.

What can we learn from Haringey?

The digital transformation at Haringey illustrates that long-lasting digital modernisation is an exercise in strategic governance and architectural discipline, not just acquiring the latest software. By prioritising robust, interoperable foundations, building a skilled internal team, and common-sense procurement, Haringey is building a resilient and future-proof digital estate.