Below is the latest news from the LOTI community, based on the activities we worked on during the week commencing 4 April.

Meeting our LOTI members

On Wednesday, the main representatives from each LOTI borough convened for our latest monthly catch-up. We were pleased to welcome Richard Warren and Clive Cooke  from Merton, the latest borough to join the LOTI community. During the session, boroughs exchanged ideas on the key service and data challenges they are working to resolve in relation to the homes for Ukrainian refugees initiatives; we shared the latest on the recruitment support that is now available to our members, and we outlined exciting developments in our work on digital inclusion and cyber security – more details on which will be available soon.

Supporting the women in the LOTI community

On Monday, 88 women from across London local government graduated from UPFRONT, a confidence course for women. Over the last 6 weeks, they have been learning how to feel more confident at work and at home through a mix of online training, live sessions and the support of smaller buddy groups. They were able to celebrate their success at a graduation party, where glitter and dancing was encouraged! The participants will now become founding members of the LOTI Women’s Network; a community supporting women working in digital, data, technology and innovation in the LOTI London boroughs.

For more information about joining the LOTI Women’s Network, get in touch with polly.kwok@loti.london.

Understanding Digital exclusion amongst older people – Developing a Story Map

As part of the our our work on Mapping Digital Exclusion, LOTI have been creating a new resource to help make it easy for digital inclusion teams and VCS and health partners to access interpret data on digital exclusion.

The Older People digital exclusion story map will provide step by step guidance and analysis to support practitioners identify areas where digital exclusion is likely to exist and provide and indication of specific types of needs that might exist in those areas.

We have included new data sets to enhance the analysis including ONS ‘Hard to Count’ Census Data, Data on use uptake of digital services by GP surgery and location of libraries and community centres.

Last week representatives from Croydon, Barnet, RBKC and Southwark came together to provide final feedback on the maps. Following the final tweaks and changes the Map will be published later this week on the LOTI Resources page.

Coming up this week

This week, the team will be:

1. Launching the latest innovation in social care procurement reports, visit the project page for more information.
2. Planning and promoting upcoming LOTI events, for all the details visit our events page.
3. Running workshops with the London Environment Directors’ Group in advance of a major design sprint we’re holding in May to bring digital and data innovation to support London’s net-zero targets.

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