Thank you!

As we approach the end of another very busy but productive year, this will be our final weeknote of 2021. Before we get into the detail of our latest activities, may we take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to all our members, partners and other supporters who’ve contributed so much time and energy to our community. Together we’ve been able to cover an incredible array of challenges, support each other, build new things and ultimately better serve Londoners.

It’s an absolute privilege working with you all, and we wish you a very restful and enjoyable winter break!

What we’ve been up to

Data Practitioners meeting

In our last Data Practitioners session of the year, Andrew Parsons, IoT Programme Manager at Kingston and Sutton took us through the South London Partnership’s (SLP) new air quality and traffic dashboard. The dashboard brings together air quality data from Breathe London sensors and traffic data from Vivacity traffic and pedestrian counting sensors that have been deployed near primary schools. They’re looking to understand the interaction between different modes of transport, activities related to the time of day including school runs, and air quality. The dashboard allows SLP boroughs to test traffic limiting interventions like school streets with before-and-after comparisons of air quality data plus an understanding of the impact on traffic. View the presentation below and the slides here.

Environment Goals Design Sprint

LOTI is working with LEDNet, the group of London borough Environment Directors, to create a two-day design sprint to bring together diverse expertise from digital and data colleagues in the public sector as well as leading experts from industry and academia with the policy leads and owners of London’s climate outcomes. The aim is to use our methods with this audience to explore how digital, data and smart city approaches can support the delivery of the capital’s net-zero goals. Our draft deck sets out the approach in more detail.

Our hope is that this way of working will help generate fresh perspectives on climate challenges and specific project ideas that can be taken forward by boroughs in areas including:

• Reducing consumption emissions
• Retrofitting London’s domestic and non-domestic buildings
• Increasing low carbon transport
• Securing renewable power for London

Learning more about LocalGov Drupal

We were delighted to record a video with Melanie Read (Waltham Forest) and Will Callaghan (Cumbria) to talk about their two councils’ experiences of engaging with the LocalGov Drupal project: the publishing platform created by councils, for councils. It’s a phenomenal example of local government collaboration, resulting in the creation of a product that genuinely saves organisations time and money. We strongly recommend all LOTI boroughs take a good look!

Completing our discovery into digital exclusion in temporary accommodation

We held the final show and tell of our eight-week discovery with FutureGov into how digital exclusion affects people living in London’s temporary accommodation hostels. In this video, we share the recommendations that have come out of that project. See our project page for more information.

Demoing the Springboard learning platform

Recognising the importance of spreading digital skills with residents, LOTI held a demo of Springboard on 15 December. Designed by Infosys and launched in partnership with Brent Council, Springboard is a new online training platform with over 220 courses to boost residents’ digital skills. Springboard offers “guided training in technology and curated content to address reskilling of unemployed in tech, non tech and support roles. It is a cloud-first and mobile-first solution that is designed to be accessible anytime, anywhere and on any device”. LOTI will be exploring the potential to scale this amazing work pioneered in Brent across other boroughs.

See you next year!

(PS: for all the details on what we’ll be working to complete in the New Year, see this blog.)