LOTI Year 5 in Review
At our Local Government Networking Event in July, we reflected on year 5 of LOTI. It was a chance to look back and celebrate our community’s achievements. Here’s what I said, edited for blog format.
Next week (19 July 2025) will be the LOTI community’s fifth birthday.
Being five may not sound that old, but in government terms it’s absolutely ages. Since LOTI started we’ve had five prime ministers!
Some of you will remember that this time last year, at our event at Bloomberg London, I announced our intention to boost the “I” – the innovation part – of LOTI’s name.
That didn’t mean letting up on our work on tech and data. They remain hugely important. In almost any service area, we have to deal with legacy tech and data. Tech and data will nearly always be present in new solutions we design. But we all know they’re not enough alone. To bring about real change, we have to match the level of innovation we’ve seen in technology in recent years with equal innovation and creativity in our service models, ways of working and culture. In short, we have to use the full toolkit.
We therefore said our mission would be to ensure that London’s local authorities have access to a truly 21st Century toolkit to tackle their biggest challenges together.
And we said we’d not only build London’s innovation foundations – looking at People, Tech, Data and Methods – but also act as an innovation partner to the teams leading the charge on some of London’s biggest issues, from climate change to social care reform, digital exclusion to homelessness.
So let me share a few highlights of what the LOTI community has achieved this year.
Building London’s Innovation Foundations
People
Let’s start with our work on people. Edi Whitehead, LOTI’s Skills and Talent Manager, set up our first ever pan-London apprenticeship schemes to bring in new talent and upskill existing staff. We now have cohorts focused on data with Multiverse, and software development with Founders and Coders. We’re watching with interest how Redbridge gets on with pioneering a new AI apprenticeship with Multiverse.
On innovation culture, we’ve run leadership sessions with the senior officers of several boroughs. You might have seen my recent LinkedIn post where I mentioned we’ve stopped calling those sessions ‘digital’. Result: leaders are listening. These conversations are a vital part of helping council execs understand their role in creating the conditions for innovation to thrive.
Talking of leadership, LOTI is now incredibly fortunate to have innovation ambassadors in the form of Tony Clements (CEO at Ealing) and Alex Dewsnap (Managing Director at Harrow) within CELC (Chief Executive London Committee), the group of London borough CEOs. Following the UK general election, and the consequent reshuffle of portfolios holders within London Councils, we’ll shortly also have elected member leads for innovation for the first time.
That sort of senior backing for the work of the LOTI community will be a huge asset as we seek to show the relevance of innovation in delivering London’s goals.
Technology
Sam Nutt, LOTI’s Data Ethicist, has been busy connecting the many boroughs exploring the potential of one of the latest additions to our 21st Century toolkit: genAI (generative artificial intelligence). Councils have been doing exactly the right thing: running small experiments to see what works, from using AI to categorise resident-submitted images of graffiti to helping caseworkers respond to housing complaints faster and more effectively. Talking of AI, check out LOTI’s latest reports, authored by Faculty, on the ‘AI art of the possible’ in the fields of Adult Social Care and Housing Services.
Responding to the ever rising cyber threat to London boroughs, Jay Saggar, LOTI’s Programme Manager: Data, Smart Cities & Cyber Security, has pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of arranging a genuinely pan-London procurement of a new cyber security service, which will be available to any London borough that wants it.
And on smart cities, we’ve gone from seeing individual acts of borough brilliance to genuinely collaborative projects. 18 boroughs have now committed to piloting the use of Internet of Things sensors, using data and ethical standards, to monitor for damp and mould conditions in social housing, a vital step to ensure the UK never again sees a case like that of two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who tragically died back in 2022.
Data
Last week (1-7 July) we had London Data Week: 34 events across the city dedicated to the principle that Londoners need to be involved in how data shapes their lives. London’s biggest conversation about data was the brainchild of LOTI’s Sam Nutt and the Alan Turing Institute’s Jennifer Ding and has been brought into being thanks to their tireless efforts, support from London’s Chief Digital Officer, Theo Blackwell, and colleagues at the GLA (Greater London Authority), an amazing advisory panel, and dozens of organisations who hosted their own events as part of the week.
Meanwhile, LOTI’s Pan-London Information Governance Lead, Victoria Blyth, worked with the LGA to develop and negotiate a national Data Sharing Agreement for councils and telecommunications providers to protect vulnerable telecare users during the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) switchoff. The Data Sharing Agreement she wrote with Camden’s IG Lead, Sarah Laws, is now being adopted not just across London but nationally, saving hundreds of hours of council time, as well as better protecting residents’ data.
Finally on data, Jay Saggar has been leading user engagement sessions with borough officers on London’s Electric Vehicle Charging Dashboard, which has led to the development of important new functionality as London seeks to ensure the charging infrastructure is in place to enable the transition to electric vehicles.
Innovation Methods
In September 2023, we hired our first Service Designer. Anjali Moorthy has brought deep expertise in user research and service design to bear on a whole range of LOTI projects.
LOTI’s Genta Hajri launched a series of monthly innovation Lunch & Learn sessions to expose our members to a wider innovation toolkit. We’ve covered topics such as open innovation (with Rikesh Shah, Head of Innovation Procurement Empowerment Centre), service design (with Henrietta Curzon, Head of Service Design & Insight at Newham Council), behavioural science (with The Behaviouralist and Social Change), and the art of navigating uncertainty (with Nesta).
And we’re moving ahead with piloting a local authority sandbox. This will be a physical space where new service models and technologies can be tested and evaluated on realistic mock-ups of key local government service areas without risk. The concept combines service design, technology, open innovation and even theatre to rapidly find answers to key challenge areas facing local government. Led by Genta Hajri, and with user research and service design expertise provided by Anjali Moorthy, we’re piloting this approach with a service challenge in Adult Social Care. The aim is to provide a means to test much bolder innovations than are normally possible in a real local authority setting.
LOTI as an innovation partner
What of our work to help as an innovation partner on some of London’s biggest issues?
On climate change, LOTI’s Jay Saggar, Anna Humpleby and Anjali Moorthy have been working with the GLA and borough environment teams to help them plan a data ecosystem that will support the energy aspects of net zero, as well as thinking through the service design of London’s public-facing energy advice service.
On adult social care, Genta Hajri has overseen the delivery of two pilots looking at new service models in Adult Social Care. One, involving Southwark and Hackney, explored the benefits of taking a cooperative approach to delivering care (provided by Equal Care Co-op). The other, conducted with Hounslow, Brent and Social Finance, tested how social workers’ interactions with individuals could be supported with better multi-agency data.
On Digital Inclusion, our pan-London service Get Online London (delivered in collaboration with the Good Things Foundation and funded by the Mayor of London) has distributed 54,000 sim cards and reached around 30,000 Londoners! LOTI has also created an active digital inclusion community that meets regularly and has developed London’s first digital inclusion strategy framework for local government.
And on Housing, LOTI’s Anna Humpleby led work to develop London’s first ever rough sleeping data platform. This project, delivered with the GLA, London Councils, Bloomberg Philanthropies and Faculty, created a Strategic Insights Tool for Rough Sleeping (SITRS) that gives decision-makers a clearer view of rough sleeping in their local area and how it fits in with the overall London picture. The new tool integrates and matches data from 47 organisations to show the aggregated journeys of rough sleepers over time, unlocking new insights as they show up through touch points in multiple systems.
LOTI in numbers
Let me share three more numbers that I think speak to the impact of the LOTI community this year:
£1.4million – the amount of money that the work of Victoria Blyth, LOTI’s Pan-London Information Governance Lead, has saved London’s public sector in a single year according to an evaluation by the GLA Economics Team.
28 – the number of boroughs now part of LOTI. We started with just 15, and reached 28 this year with the arrival of Croydon.
90 – the number of events (not including London Data Week) that LOTI has held in the last year! This would be an incredible number for an events management company, let alone for a team of just 10 people where events are a small part of what we do. Those events involve many different members of the team. The reason they’re so well delivered is thanks to the amazing work of my colleagues Polly Kwok, LOTI’s Communications and Engagement Manager, and Esther Longe, our Team Administrator.
Final thoughts
Of course, LOTI isn’t just a team; it’s the community. If LOTI is worth anything at all, it’s because of what all our members – and the many partner organisations that support us – contribute to it.
For any other part of the UK, or indeed national government, thinking about how to support public sector reform, I hope the incredible breadth and impact of the work I’ve just outlined (and which is just the selected highlights) shows the potential of the LOTI regional collaboration model.
It’s not for me to comment on what the result of the national election means for local government. All I know is that the challenges facing local authorities have rarely been greater and that the work of our members has rarely been harder. Yet that also means it’s never been more important.
On which note, I saw Dom Campbell sharing a quote on LinkedIn from Dr Mark Spencer, who says: “A leader is someone who is fed-up with the status quo and has the energy to do something about it”.
I think that perfectly describes everyone who’s part of the LOTI community: you are the ones fighting for a better way.
On behalf of the LOTI team, I want to say it’s an utter privilege to help you in any way we can.
Our collective task is to help build that energy and spread it to as many people as we can.
If you’re up for that, get involved, and let’s see what we can achieve together in the year ahead!
Eddie Copeland
