LOTI Service Demand Canvas
What is it?
LOTI’s Service Demand Canvas helps teams break down the different types of demand that arises when it comes to their services, in order to put in place more effective measures to respond to each specific type.
Why was it created?
If the main problem facing most councils could be distilled into one statement, it might be: “We have more demand than we can meet with our current service model and budget”. The magnitude of that statement is leaving many directors of services feeling completely overwhelmed. The problem simply feels too huge to know where to start.
LOTI’s Service Demand Canvas aims to make it more manageable by breaking down the demand that typically lands at the doors of local authorities into nine different types: Real, Symptomatic, Optional, Misdirected, Informational, Failure, Validation, Artificial and Hidden. Each type of demand can be considered as a discrete (albeit interconnected) problem that can be tackled one at a time in a more manageable way.
The Canvas lists: the type of the demand; the user need it represents; and what fundamental question each poses for public sector organisations, phrased as “How Might We…” (HMW) questions.
Who should use it?
The LOTI Service Demand Canvas is ideal for use by council Service teams, Transformation teams and Digital teams.
View the Canvas© London Office of Technology and Innovation, 2025. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
