Croydon joins forces with Adur & Worthing on low code
By: Paul Brewer
Tags: Local Digital, Local Government, Low Code Development

Exciting news: Croydon Council have signed up to use the Create low code platform as part of their ambitious plans for digital. Create is the new name for MatsSoft, the platform Adur & Worthing have been using for several years.

Low code platforms allow online services and whole software systems to be built rapidly by in-house teams using component “building blocks” through a visual builder interface, on a platform built on open standards. Developers also have the ability to step in and write code where needed.

As Ben Cheetham from MHCLG wrote just this week, de-coupling a councils’ platform tech choices from the vital, shared work to design good digital service patterns, data architectures and standards in local government seems to me like a breakthrough moment, and I’m delighted that our platform community is growing. Cumbria are also going great guns, and interest is rapidly growing elsewhere.

For a large council like Croydon to make this strategic choice, and with Greater Manchester Combined Authority also using a low code platform approach, I think it’s an important time to celebrate increased empowerment for councils, while reinforcing the need for open sharing and collaboration, using the principles enshrined in the Local Digital Declaration.

Both Croydon and Adur & Worthing Councils already have experience in leading important collaborative partnerships driving digital transformation forward in local government. Supported by the MHCLG Local Digital Fund, Croydon are currently leading a code sharing project to help councils easily and cost effectively build their websites, and Adur & Worthing are leading on OpenCommunity, establishing a new national data standard for service directories, improving integration between the NHS, local authorities and community-based organisations.

Starting as a partnership between the two Councils, we’re aiming to grow a low code platform community that designs, builds and freely shares digital applications, aligned to the GDS Service Standard.

In-house digital teams

There’s no doubt that councils, like all other organisations, need control of digital transformation, and it’s widely accepted that local authorities should now be building in-house digital teams to support innovation and moving away from lumbering and costly third party systems built pre-internet.

Digital teams need to be able to help deliver efficiencies and improve customer experience, but they also need to establish true innovation capability to support continual transformation. But how can this be achieved in the local government context? This was Neil William’s challenge when he started the role in Croydon.

Neil, who was Head of GOV.UK at the Government Digital Service, and is now Chief Digital Officer at Croydon Council, knows a thing or two about what can be achieved by an in-house digital team with the right skills and technologies!

Published last year, Croydon’s Digital Strategy outlines the council’s aims to design and build great digital services for residents and Neil has now established the Croydon Digital Service (CDS), bringing his wealth of experience and learning from GDS to local government.

During 2019, Neil’s team undertook a strategic assessment of the digital platforms they would need to make a real impact and deliver on their strategy. They found that Adur & Worthing’s low code approach provided a compelling model for building digital services quickly and flexibly, particularly in the local government context where budget and scale are so different compared to central government departments and the NHS.

Back in 2015, I launched our Councils’ digital strategy, with internet-era platforms taking centre stage. Alongside switching the Councils to Google for email and documents, we created a future technology map that drove the procurement of the low code platform. The platform would give us the technical building blocks to create digital services around ten times faster than existing coding methods, built on open standards to enable easy inter-operability with other systems. Developers are still able to jump in and write code where it’s needed.

Rapid progress

Our chosen platform, Liberty Create (formerly MATSsoft), quickly enabled our small but amazing in-house team of developers to build impressively sophisticated digital services. We’ve been building GOV.UK style customer facing services for some time now, and can also build entire end-to-end systems, allowing us to switch off legacy software.

Adur & Worthing’s waste & recycling service has been running on the platform for several years. Customer-reported graffiti and fly tipping incidents get sent to field operatives instantly, with no office admin in-between, and other waste and recycling services operate in a similar way. For those that choose it, we now run a fully automated clinical waste collection service, with an Alexa style phone ordering system instantly tasking operatives out in the field, keeping customers up-to-date with email and text notifications.

One of the key features I’ve highlighted before of the approach is the low cost of development. The team’s most impressive success so far must be the end-to-end digital housing repairs service, handling tenant reporting, operative scheduling, mobile fieldwork and even contractor invoicing. With design and build of the whole application costing £80k (for external service design and UX support), and with no ongoing app licence fee, the low code approach really has been a game changer for us.

Another key selling point is the skills profile needed for developers. As Adur & Worthing have found, councils already have a lot of the talent they need on the payroll. It’s a case of finding technically-minded staff, bringing them together in the digital team and providing training. During this year we will exploring the creation of a satellite team elsewhere in the organisation, to test empowering services further and accelerate innovation.

Neil and Paul and the teams are excited about the collaboration and sharing opportunities ahead, with a growing developer community and “app share” platform available to users from across sectors including business, health, local and central government. The ethos of platform users is to freely share what they have built, from new technical components and widgets, to fully built applications.

Croydon have committed to an initial one year trial of the platform.

Local Digital Declaration

The practicalities of collaboration are always a challenge, but we are confident we can make it happen. We plan to coordinate our work programmes as much as possible to maximise gains, and will be developing approaches aligned to the GDS Service Manual, the Service Standard, and the Local Digital Declaration of which we are founding signatories.