Below is the latest news from the LOTI community, based on the activities we worked on during the week commencing 23 May.

Sharing recommendations for local government data ethics capabilities

LOTI has released a set of recommended actions for Boroughs seeking to build their Data Ethics capabilities. The recommendations are pitched the organisational level and will be particularly helpful for those currently trying to embed ethics as part of data strategies and culture.

As a starting point we suggest boroughs implementing one different recommendations from each section in our ‘Capability Model’: principles, resident engagement, governance & processes, and skills & culture that best relate to their current data projects. If you are interested in discussing these recommendations, please email Jay Saggar (jay.saggar@loti.london) and Sam Nutt (sam.nutt@loti.london).

Read the Recommendations for Local Government Data Ethics Capabilities (Google Slides).

Delivering: London Climate Goals Design Sprint

One of LOTI’s core missions is to ensure that digital and data innovation are a core part of discussions on all London’s major policy challenges.

On 16 and 23 May 2022, LOTI and the London Environment Directors’ Network (LEDNet) – the group of borough environment leads – hosted a design sprint focused on London’s Climate goals. The event was a chance to bring environment colleagues together with the professionals with expertise in digital, data, smart cities and behavioural insights.

The sprint focused developing solutions in four priority areas:

• retrofitting buildings to improve energy efficiency;
• switching more of London to renewable energy;
• reducing petrol and diesel journeys to tackle transport emissions;
• and helping London live within the resource limits of our finite world.

Using LOTI’s outcomes-based methodology, the sprint started with all attendees learning about the desired outcomes in each area, identifying the key challenges, and then exploring how data, digital and smart city approaches might provide solutions. As part of our commitment to user centred design, we shared our initial solution sketches developed on day 1 with Londoners via the Greater London Authority’s (GLA) Talk London platform. Their feedback and insights informed further design work on day 2.

After two days of intensive idea development we ended up with 11 solution ideas which are now being considered for delivery by LOTI, LEDNet, the GLA and other stakeholders at the event.

You can view all the solutions developed on the day plus other key insights in the Climate Goals – Solution Deck (Google Slides). A more detailed blog discussing the methodology will be available soon.

Coming up this week

This week, the team will be:

1. Planning and promoting upcoming LOTI events, for all the details visit our events page.
2. Meeting with speakers at our upcoming Digital Inclusion Conference.
3. Developing and refining the LOTI year 4 strategy.

For all the latest news from LOTI, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.