Sprint Notes #16
By: Local Digital Collaboration Unit
Tags: Sprint Notes, Local Government, Local Digital, Government, Digital Government

Covering 28 October — 10 November 2020

Welcome back to our team sprint notes!

Join us for the C-19 Challenge Showcase Series

We’ve been busy preparing for a series of virtual showcase events to celebrate the work of our C-19 Challenge funded projects, which kicks off on the 19 November. Each showcase will focus on a different theme and feature presentations from our project teams, plus the chance to ask questions.

Showcase #1: ‘Guidance on new ways of working during the crisis: remote work and digital inclusion’

Thursday 19 November, 2:00pm-3:00pm

Featuring guest speakers from the Future Work Design and Digital Inclusion Toolkit projects. We’ll also have short presentations from the Community Engagement Playbook and Digital Planning Engagement Playbook projects.

Showcase #2: ‘Improving data sharing and insights for COVID-19 response’

Thursday 3 December, 10:30am-12pm.

Featuring guest speakers from the ‘Developing a crisis response model for neighbourhood teams’, ‘Data Exchange with Voluntary and Community Services organisations’ and ‘Modelling demand for post COVID-19 surge in children’s services’ projects. We’ll also have short presentations from the ‘Data and standards for a scalable approach to vulnerability (SAVVI)’ and ‘Risk Index: Measuring the impact of Covid and social vulnerability’ projects.

Showcase #3: ‘Tools to help residents make informed decisions about visiting popular locations’

Thursday 10 December, 11:00am-12pm.

Featuring guest speakers from the How Busy is Toon and Beach Check App projects.

Find out more and register for the C-19 Showcase Series

A tweet from the Local Digital Collaboration Unit

Training

We’re nearly ready to launch a new pilot training programme of online-based learning for local government. We’ll be sharing more on this soon!

Cyber

Cyber support for councils

The newly formed Cyber team has begun reviewing the results of the mitigating malware and ransomware survey from earlier this year, and planning how best to support councils to reduce their cyber risk.

Councils will be offered an initial briefing, followed by a workshop, during which the team will be looking to understand the context of each council and the best way of providing hands-on support. We are testing this engagement with selected alpha and beta test councils initially in order to shape and refine the process for the benefit of other councils.

The team is also on the lookout for common issues across councils, as there is potential funding available for requests where a robust cost-benefit business case might be made. If you would like to get in touch about this, please email cybersupport@localdigital.gov.uk.

Cyber Health framework

The submissions period has closed for tenders on the digital marketplace and the selection process is now underway.

Funded projects

Housing repairs

The project produced their final outputs and the report is now available on the project website and on the Local Digital website.

A preview of the Housing Repairs report

Digital planning projects

The Reducing Invalid Planning Applications (RIPA) and Back Office Planning System (BOPS) projects are progressing at speed. The projects held their final user story mapping session (part 3) to agree the user needs they’re going to meet with their Lawful Development Certificate MVP. This was shared during RIPA’s show and tell on 6 November.

The RIPA show and tell

Local Gov Drupal

The LocalGov Drupal project has launched a website — localgovdrupal.org — which is the first step towards a full blown ‘shop window’ for the shared codebase. The first iteration of the site contains documentation adapted from the information in the project’s Github repository, meaning that any council can begin working with the codebase and can join the group of councils who continue to develop it further.

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