Smart People, Smart Places: Realising Digital Local Government

Digital technology provides local authorities with huge opportunities to transform the services that they provide and the way they interact with communities. In a time when councils have to do much more with fewer resources, digital can provide a way to improve outcomes whilst delivering efficiencies.

This report makes the case for digital local government and explores progress in the sector to date. It finds that while good practice is emerging, councils are facing barriers which mean that they are still not realising the full benefits of digital technology for their places.

The challenge for councils is for them to ensure, individually and collectively, that they have the skills, leadership and organisational cultures to bring about this change. The intention of this report is to inspire councils to rise to this challenge, to lay out steps for them to take and to open up the debate about the sector wide collaboration needed to drive this important agenda forward.

This report highlights great practice already happening around the country using dialogue sessions and interview data. We also identify what the key challenges facing those trying to move towards their council’s digital future are and identify the solutions that will bring forward digital local government.

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