Sprint notes #3
By: James Reidy
Tags: Local Government, Sprint Notes, Public Sector, Civil Service, Digital Government

Sprint notes #3

Round 4 of the Local Digital Fund has closed

This round of the Local Digital Fund was open to current project teams (a decision you can read about in our recent blog post). We received a total of 7 applications in round 4 from our existing funded projects.

Applicants were invited to attend interviews between 24–25 February at our London office. We hope to announce the funding decisions in early March.

Working with our funded projects

The Early Help project team at their workshop

Hannah and Jo attended a workshop at Wandsworth Council to hear about how the discovery in to Early Help is progressing. It was good to meet the project team at Wandsworth and Social Finance.

Hannah has also continued conversations with the Family Context team around access to data sources and attended a kick off with a new supplier.

Communications workshop

Productive discussion at Maddie’s workshop

Maddie ran a content and communications workshop with some of the team. The purpose was to explore how we can better share our work and answer audience needs. We discussed how storytelling is essential to communicating and looked at the essential elements that make a good story:

Characters — the connection between you, the storyteller and the audience

Conflict — the lesson in how the character transforms through challenge

Resolution — wrap up the story and clearly calls the audience to action

Our next steps include:

Sharing our work more openly across our channels

Increasing the amount of content we produce, and looking at trying some new things such as podcasts and webinars

Having a more planned approach to content by using a shared editorial calendar

Cyber

LDCU’s cyber team continues to deliver its Pathfinder training programme to local authorities and Local Resilience Forums across England.

February saw the start of ‘Pathfinder 6: Business Continuity and Recovery from Cyber Incidents training’, the final training modules in this 15 month programme. Events in London and Manchester saw over 150 delegates in attendance and feedback has been really positive.

Call for user research participants from round 3

We want to understand how we can support partner councils to collaborate more effectively on our funded projects, so Laura has started research into partner council engagement. She has so far spoken to 4 councils about their experiences, but would like to speak to more to get a clearer picture.

If you were a council or supplier involved in a round 3 funded project and are available to discuss your experience of collaborative working, please contact laura@localdigital.gov.uk.

On the road

Council 4.0

Mark C and Ben attended a meet-up for local gov digital innovators and disruptors. It was a packed event - Mark Thompson spoke about how tech has dramatically changed the world we live in and the capabilities with which we are able to respond to problems. There were some incredibly interesting case studies, notably a council who was using AI to actively recognise and report potholes which MHCLG is looking to engage with and help tell their story.

LGA Cyber Event

Ben, Helen and Mark B attended an LGA event about the cyber tools the sector has access to and what’s missing. Helen and Mark both had speaking slots to share their knowledge and details of the Pathfinder training.

The event is running again on 5 March in Leeds. Councils can book a place here on the LGA website.

We’ll be back in 2 weeks time with our next edition of LDCU sprint notes.

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