Updating our members

Last week, we held the latest All Member workshop, with a focus on our Covid Innovation Fund. The full presentation is now available online.

We’ve received close to 30 project ideas so far, including building an early intervention approach for supporting vulnerable residents, developing an interactive map of boroughs’ resources and services that links to different departments and wider public services, and analysing requests for paper forms for the 2021 Digital Census to gauge levels of likely digital exclusion. The full list of current ideas can be found here.

Due to popular demand, we added one more drop-in session for borough officers to explore and discuss their potential project ideas with Genta and Jay. We saw a huge interest in supporting boroughs around the issue of digital inclusion, so much of the session will focus on that. The deadline for the submission of the form is midnight on Monday 1 February.

Innovation on Digital Inclusion

In light of boroughs’ wish to support digitally excluded residents, LOTI is working with the Greater London Authority (GLA) to work up details of what projects could form part of the London Recovery Board’s ‘Digital Access for All’ mission.

Funding for this mission is still to be confirmed, but we hope to have it in place from May 2021. Our thinking continues to evolve as we consult boroughs and other partners, and our current intention is to see how we could support activity in the following three areas:

1. Understanding needs: How can we identify the people and places that are digitally excluded and understand what they need?
2. Innovating in supply: How can we maximise the provision of devices, data, skills training, funding and other sources of digital inclusion support?
3. Connecting people with the help they need: How can we most effectively connect those in need with the devices, data, skills, funding and other sources of support they require?

This supplementary funding would be great news for London boroughs who wish to make a real difference in the lives of Londoners, but who need more resources to do so.

What’s the latest on LOTI’s Assistive Technology project?

In case you missed it, last week we published a report we’ve been working on with Anneliese Levy, a Health Researcher at Thoughtful Content. This report summarises what is currently known about the impact and evidence on the effectiveness of different Assistive Technologies.

On Friday we also hosted our regular show & tell featuring Colin Eckworth (Technology Enabled Care & Assistive Technology Consultant for the Royal Borough of Greenwich), who shared details about the Assistive Technology pilot currently underway in Greenwich. He shed light on the desired outcome of the project as well as the process for recruiting participants and the progress and feedback to date. The full recording of the session is now available online.

This Week

This week, the LOTI Central Team will be:

1. Holding an additional drop-in session for boroughs interested in applying for the LOTI Covid Innovation Fund. If you’d like to speak about a project idea with someone in the LOTI Central Team, please contact Genta Hajri or Jay Saggar.
2. Holding a data collaboration workshop for Data Scientists in London boroughs, in collaboration with the Office of National Statistics (ONS). You can find out more about the workshop, or register to attend here.
3. Sharing the latest on LOTI’s Innovation in Housing Procurement at this Friday’s show & tell. You can register to attend here.

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