Weeknote 1 of 2021
Supporting boroughs’ Covid-19 responses
We kicked off the year with work on data sharing with colleagues in Camden, Brent, Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster. You may remember that last year, in response to boroughs’ emergency responses to the pandemic, we developed a project to enable better sharing of data about children who live in one borough but receive free school meals in a second borough. Sharing this data is a vital part of ensuring that support reaches some of the most vulnerable young people in the capital. You can find out more about the project here.
We’ve been working with the Information Governance Group for London (IGfL) to amend and endorse the Information Sharing Agreement (otherwise referred to as an ISA) we originally drafted to enable boroughs to share this data securely via the London Datastore. Using the London Datastore is one of six measures designed by LOTI, the GLA and boroughs that have been formally endorsed by the London Recovery Board to ensure that data can be shared quickly but also legally, ethically and securely in London.
If you work in London local government, this deck outlines the Statement of Intent and the exact things you need to do. The steps are also summarised in the five-minute video below.
What’s new with Thirty3?
We spent last week catching up with our borough leads to on-board them unto Thirty3. If you’re a new reader, Thirty3 is a platform that we developed with Nitrous to improve London boroughs’ procurement by publicly sharing their latest tenders and all the technologies they use to power public services and back-office functions. You can find out more information about the project, here. In our meeting with boroughs, we asked for data on what technology systems they currently use, together with the corresponding contract details. This will help us to keep the data on the platform as up to date and informative as possible.
We also met with Nitrous, our platform developers, to discuss a potential new ‘Pre-Procurement’ feature. This would allow boroughs to come together around shared procurement challenges, map user needs, establish shared buying criteria and engage the market. This is very exciting and we’ll be closely involved in a new round of user testing that will start in the coming weeks. If you’d like to take part or learn more about this feature, please contact Jay.Saggar@loti.london.
Innovation in Housing Procurement
Following the conclusion of our three workshops last year to explore how we might support London boroughs to collaborate on innovating in housing systems procurement, we’ll be supporting Hounslow and Kingston as they embark on the process of procuring/renewing their Housing services system. To catch up on the thinking behind this piece of work, please read Genta’s blog here. To find out more about the outcomes of workshops 1, 2 and 3, be sure to click through to the summaries hyperlinked.
In the coming weeks, we’ll also be thinking through how we might engage with boroughs more proactively on upcoming tender opportunities. As always, we’ll share more details in the next few weeks.
This Week
This week, the LOTI Central Team will be:
- Supporting the London Council of Chief Digital and Information Officers to host an exploratory session on further enhancing boroughs’ cyber security measures.
- Holding drop-in sessions for boroughs interested in applying for the LOTI Covid Innovation Fund. If you’d like to speak about a project idea with someone in the LOTI Central Team, please register to attend here.
- Holding the latest LOTI show & tell on the LOTI Covid Innovation Fund. We welcome any and everyone interested – if you’d like to attend, please register here.
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Eddie Copeland