Below is the latest news from the LOTI community, based on the activities we worked on during the week commencing 27 June.

Meeting with our Data Science Network 

This month the LOTI Data Science Network was joined by Mike Brondbjerg from the GLA who shared the City Intelligence Unit’s approach to Data Visualisation. Mike explained how data visualisation is ‘the art of tidying up’. That is presenting complex data points in simple and understandable forms to meet the users need.

Mike shared a number of examples of the types of data visualisations produced at the GLA and discussed the tools approaches used to create them. He also explained the benefits of embedding the GLA Data Design Guidelines in their toolset to make producing beautiful visualisations quick and easy.

You can watch the recording, view the slides and catch up on the Q&A over in the Data Science Network basecamp space.

Meeting our Data Leaders Network

Theo Blackwell joined the LOTI Data Leaders to share details on the new Data Strategy for London. The Strategy will ensure that data is shared legally, ethically and securely and will promote common approaches that reduce friction in data sharing across the public sector and with partners. The strategy includes the creation of the Data for London Board that will oversee the development of the new London DataStore.

The network also heard from LOTI’s Sam Nutt who took the group through LOTI’s new Data Ethics Capabilities Recommendations, including a preview of our latest plans for supporting boroughs to implement the recommendations over the coming year.

Visiting Apple’s flagship store with our members

On Wednesday, Genta and Eddie from the LOTI team, and Tariq Khan (CDIO, Camden) and Steve O’Connor (CDIO, Kingston and Sutton) joined a tour of Apple’s flagship Regent Street store to learn more about the company’s approach to customer service. We were there by kind invitation of Ian Wright, CEO of the Disruptive Innovators Network, a membership organisation for social housing providers.

The LOTI group took away several key messages from the tour:

• The need to invest time and effort into hiring staff who share the organisation’s values, rather than finding the people with the most impressive sales CV.
• Incentivising staff to understand and focus on resolving customers’ real needs, not on selling a specific product or service. (Apple store staff do not work on commission, but are rather judged by detailed analysis of customer satisfaction scores.)
• Creating physical and virtual spaces that reflect the organisation’s values (in Apple’s case, extreme attention to detail) and feel like warm and welcoming places for customers to visit.
• Finally, it was noticeable how even the most junior members of staff had a detailed understanding of the corporate values, principles and culture.

LOTI will be reflecting on these lessons and seeing how they might help inform boroughs’ approaches to serving their residents.

Coming up this week

This week, the team will be:

1. Hosting the final show and tell for Supporting Dementia Care pilot with Helix centre, for all the details visit our events page.
2. Planning upcoming events and refining our Year 4 strategy.

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