LOTI Covid Innovation Fund Projects

Last week we held a knowledge sharing show & tell for our digital inclusion Data project group to hear more about a different approach taken in Redbridge. The team heard from Redbridge’s Calum Burch (Business Intelligence Analyst, GIS), Mandi Vanderpuye (Programme Manager for the Digital and Customer Experience Communities Directorate) and Alex Murphy (Digital and Customer Experience Lead) about how they interrogated data they already hold on residents. They cross-referenced these with publicly available datasets and worked with their GIS team to create data maps. These maps help to plot different personas which they are now in the process of further exploring to design and develop targeted digital inclusion projects that meet the needs of their local residents.

This approach is very similar to that of Westminster, which this LOTI project group hopes to further develop in other areas and scale. By creating this forum for the open sharing of work to date, approaches and next steps, all boroughs present were better able to explore their similarities and differences and point out potential opportunities to collaborate in future. We’re planning to create a replicable template based on the Westminster approach, validated with our borough partners. The learning and input from Redbridge will further improve that shared resource. We’d like to thank colleagues from Redbridge for being so willing to take part in our experiment, and as this project develops, we hope to share back the progress we’ve made with them and see how best we can continue to support different approaches across London.

For the Digital project, Hackney held their latest show and tell and the team got together to share the findings of their discovery phase. In the next weeknote, we’ll share the public show and tell of this project to develop a preventative approach for supporting vulnerable residents. As a reminder, the aim of the project is to design and put in place more preventative measures to help ensure residents whose vulnerabilities have been exacerbated by the pandemic avoid reaching crisis point. The thinking up until this point is that there are lessons that will support some of the new ways of working for boroughs.  The show and tell will be an opportunity for the project team to play back those assumptions, the findings from the discovery and next steps. To find out more about this project, please visit the project page here.

Tackling dehydration with Assistive Technology

You may remember from an earlier weeknote that we’ve been supporting Waltham Forest in developing a project looking at the effectiveness of Assistive Technologies (AT). The pilot will be testing the effectiveness of smart water bottles and wearables in preventing dehydration, which can cause hospitalisation and severe health problems, especially in the elderly.

Research we undertook in this area concluded that despite a number of studies conducted in this area, there’s little evidence about the efficacy of ATs. Now, we’re working with health experts to design and evaluate this pilot so that it provides the necessary standards of evidence, furthering boroughs’ knowledge and experience about what approaches are more effective.

Learning from others

We concluded our pilot series of LOTI Show and Tells with a conversation with Martyn Wallace, Chief Digital Officer for the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government. Martyn shared details about their efforts to improve digital skills in the sector, as well as the progress they’ve made on their Digital Telecare project. You can watch the full recording here.

Our Show and Tells have part of our commitment to working in the open and sharing what we’re learning on each project along the way. We’d like to thank all the project contributors from boroughs, as well as our external speakers who’ve ranged from commissioned researchers to Digital leads in other regions.

It’s set to be a busy Spring for the LOTI team, so we’re keen to continue working in the open to test our thinking, and give us the opportunity to conduct live user testing on our programmes and projects. We’ll be reviewing how we ensure these show and tells deliver the outcomes they were designed for, and will be relaunching them after Easter. If you attended any of the sessions and have feedback for the team, please do share that with Onyeka Onyekwelu (Strategic Engagement Manager, LOTI).

Coming up next week

This week, we’ll be:

1. Hosting the first public show and tell for the LOTI Covid Innovation Fund Digital Project team. Progress on the project can be found here.
2. Hosting the first Heads of Data and BI network meeting led by Barnet and Camden.
3. Holding the latest LOTI Data Science network meet-up to share the forward plan for our training programme offer in collaboration with the Office of National Statistics (ONS) Data Science Campus. You can register to attend here.

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