What we’ve been doing

Welcoming Richmond and Wandsworth

Last week we welcomed our newest LOTI members, Richmond and Wandsworth. We are looking forward to working closely with Mike Gravatt (Assistant Director of Resources) and the rest of his amazing team there.

Promoting social tariffs

As part of our programme of work to support digital inclusion, we co-hosted a workshop with Ofcom to understand the obstacles practitioners face when it comes to promoting social tariffs.

Borough, VCS, and healthcare colleagues working in digital inclusion, communications, and frontline services shared their challenges in this area and proposed ideas for potential interventions. To find out what was covered, please see this summary of the discussions and the slides from the session. We will now work with Ofcom to plan practical solutions to raise the awareness and uptake of social tariffs.

Sharing our initial findings and analysis on data ethics

Last week, Jay Saggar and Sam Nutt presented initial findings and analysis from our Data Ethics discovery to the Local Government Association’s (LGA) Advanced & Predictive Analytics Network in Local Government. We reflected on the case studies that we have collected and were delighted to share our draft framework for the variety of approaches that local authorities can do to embed an ethical approach to data in their organisations. Thank you to the LGA for hosting us and for such a fruitful discussion, and we look forward to testing out our new framework with organisations in the near future.

Hosting a Show and Tell with Greater Manchester Combined Authority

Last week Greater Manchester Combined Authority shared their Early Years Integrated Solution (EYIS). The aim of this solution is to transform their current paper-based processes and bridge public sector organisations and local authority boundaries to improve the sharing of data and delivery of early years services across Greater Manchester. For more information visit the Greater Manchester Combined Authority website.

Discussing ‘Git scraping’ and Data Management Frameworks

Last week we hosted our Data Science network meet-up to discuss ‘Git scraping’, a new technique of building the history of data that changes over time on the internet. Our colleagues from Lewisham demonstrated how this approach can be used with real-time examples like their COVID-19 dashboard and repository that collects the history on daily reports from London Air.

Last week we also hosted our Data Leaders network meet-up to discuss opportunities to collaborate on a data project across London and Barnet’s Data Management Framework. Some possible topics for a collaborative data project being considered include electric vehicle charging, information governance, homelessness support, VCS data sharing, etc. As many boroughs are conducting data maturity assessments at the moment, the sharing of Barnet’s Data Management Framework proved a very useful and timely resource, thanks to Yogita Popat (Head of Organisational Insight and Intelligence, Barnet Council).

If you work in a London Local Authority are interested in joining our Data Science or Data Leaders network, please get in touch with Polly (polly.kwok@loti.london).

Coming up

Among other things, this week we’ll be:

1. Meeting with our Digital Inclusion Taskforce as part of the Digital Inclusion Innovation Programme.
2. Meeting with London boroughs to discuss device loan schemes.
3. Meeting with London boroughs to discuss social care technologies.

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