Identifying opportunities for Camden Council and their local Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) to collaborate on data to support the Camden Food Mission
By: Local Digital Collaboration Unit
Tags: Local Digital, Digital Government, C19 Challenge, Local Government, Data Sharing

Identifying opportunities for Camden Council and their local Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) to collaborate on data to support the Camden Food Mission Local Digital Collaboration Unit Follow Sep 13 · 6 min read

In this guest blog post, the team from the Data Sharing with the VCS #LocalDigitalC19Challenge funded project shares an update on their progress.

In July 2020 we were awarded funding as part of the Local Digital C-19 Challenge to develop a Community Insight Project User Guide — setting out at a high-level approach for engaging with the VCS around a data project. As part of a second award from the fund in February, Camden is now expanding on this work on data sharing with the VCS. Specifically we’re exploring closer data sharing with the VCS around the Camden Food Mission — that by 2030 everyone in Camden eats well every day with nutritious, affordable, sustainable food.

In this follow-on stage we’re looking to implement many of the principles embedded in the Community Insight Project User Guide by focusing on developing a specific data product.

What we’ve achieved so far

So far we’ve spent the time setting up the project and building the team. In the User Guide this is the setup phase (see page 5).

Most importantly we’ve been spending time exploring the delivery ecosystem for the Food Mission and understanding what data products and services already exist. We’ve adapted techniques from systems thinking, in particular ecosystem mapping, and combined them with a detailed listing of the hypothesised user needs of key actors in the system. These techniques have helped us begin to identify opportunities for the development of specific data products.

At points this early work has felt a bit unfocussed but, having gone through the initial pain of trying to map a complicated system, we are finding it a useful tool. The map also helps us to communicate with others in the Council about our interests, and enables others to contribute their understanding of relationships and data products.

This ecosystem map has also been accompanied by an ever-expanding list of users. This includes a brief pen portrait of who they are and their key user needs in relation to the Food Mission, which we’re hoping might also be useful to other teams.

A map showing the delivery ecosystem for the Camden Food Mission.

Looking to the next phase of collaboration

A key question for us has been whether this next phase of collaboration with the VCS should build on work related to the delivery of emergency food support through food banks in the borough, or whether it should examine how data could further more preventative aspects of the Food Mission.

There has been a lot of collaboration already between the Community Response Team in Camden, the team developing Time to Spare, and managers of food banks around the borough in developing the functionality of Time to Spare itself, some of which includes collecting data which is shared with Camden.

Initial design principles

We have also agreed some initial design principles for the work

Delivering to Business Needs — any further testing of the Community Insights Project needs to help deliver prioritised work

— any further testing of the Community Insights Project needs to help deliver prioritised work Sustainable — any products / services which are developed have to be sustainable after funding finishes

— any products / services which are developed have to be sustainable after funding finishes Agile Approach — work in an agile way, e.g. meet weekly to review update progress (Scrum meeting) and using asynchronous communication (Teams, Slack) and project management (e.g. Trello).

— work in an agile way, e.g. meet weekly to review update progress (Scrum meeting) and using asynchronous communication (Teams, Slack) and project management (e.g. Trello). Using Best Practice — build on the methodology developed in the initial Community Insights User Guide, incorporates approaches from the GDS Service Manual, as well as ‘design thinking’ techniques.

— build on the methodology developed in the initial Community Insights User Guide, incorporates approaches from the GDS Service Manual, as well as ‘design thinking’ techniques. Capacity Building — activity needs to build the capacity of the internal Camden team to deliver to the VCS and not create reliance on outside funding / services

— activity needs to build the capacity of the internal Camden team to deliver to the VCS and not create reliance on outside funding / services Consider the system as a whole — we are interested in how the whole system operates not just the council services

— we are interested in how the whole system operates not just the council services User Centred — all products and services are designed to deliver to user needs and will be built through user research and testing as core parts of the process

The Camden Insights web page.

Building the right team

Another key part of this stage is making sure that we have the right people in the team. The core team consists of the team of Data Engineers, who are already providing data products to the Council as well as the range of open data products — including Camden Insights — which are already used by the VCS community.

We’ve recruited a Delivery / Product Lead, Jessica Nichols, and we’re working closely with Time to Spare, who are already developing products and services for many of the organisations in the Camden food system.

The team also includes key members of the Community Response team in the Community Services directorate. They have been able to inform our thinking on the basis of their collaborative relationships with the VCS and detailed understanding of what is and isn’t working at the moment.

We’re also working with Ed Parkes from Emerging Field who is fulfilling the role of Facilitator as set out in the User Guide. Ed is helping to shape the project, connecting us to innovative practice as well as a similar project being undertaken by Central Bedfordshire Council.

One of the growing pains of the team building process has been finding a ‘stack’ of collaboration tools that all members of the team have access to and are comfortable with. We’ve settled on using Slack for team communication, Google Docs for documentation, Trello for task management and Miro for our more creative thinking.

Looking at the wider system

An important next step is for us to understand the capacity for work on data in the rest of the ecosystem. We want to make sure that whatever is produced by this work takes into account the capabilities of the users in the system as a whole.

Having spent time setting up our internal team and processes, we’re now at the stage of starting to engage with VCS colleagues about some initial ideas for work that we’ve identified through our mapping.

We’re aware that through the previous development to the user guide there was a lot of engagement with FutureGov, and so we’re keen to engage VCS partners with some more developed starting points. This is also important given the additional pressure that many of the VCS are still having to contend with due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

We’ve recently started to build a list of propositions for products which are based on the user needs we’re beginning to identify. Before getting too wedded to any of these ideas, we’re looking to engage with key members of the VCS to get their thoughts and ideas and find out what they really want from a data collaboration.

Some of the ideas we’re looking at include:

The VCS sharing data back to Camden about their activities

Camden sharing specific information about those at risk of food insecurity

Trying to develop a data product that predicts food insecurity

A tool that helps all of those involved in the Food mission across Camden understand the impact of the work they’re undertaking

We’re developing these into more detailed propositions and working out how best to test them with key members of the VCS.

Follow the project

Throughout the project we intend to do open ‘Show and Tell’ meetings about our work and encourage those who are interested in our work to get involved.

If you’re interested in this work and would like to keep in touch with its development, please do get in touch with Jessica Nichols at Jessica.Nichols@Camden.gov.uk or Ed Parkes at ed@emeringfield.co.uk.