At Play In The Garden of Eden

If, as Joe believes, human beings are machines, why are we bothering to build artificial intelligence. If we succeed all we will have done is create new humans. And there is a well know, tried and tested way of making new humans which is more fun and much cheaper. Meanwhile it seems that the best definition of artificial intelligence that we have is anything that computers can't do right now. Whereas the definition of human stupidity is everything that humans can do right now. If this sounds harsh this is the week when Embassy staff of many nations are being withdrawn from Ukraine

.… the machines are coming. I have seen the future and it does not look anything like the past or the present. We are as children now, innocents at play in the garden of Eden. Aurelia Pinchbeck - The Character of Thimbles - 2021 A podcast conversation about atrificial intelligence, documentaries, human stupidity, chess and the future of the human race. Joe Tibbetts is an Englishman, a documentary film-maker. He lives on the White Cliffs of Dover with a fine view of the past across the English Channel. For more than a decade he has played a daily game of chess against TChess Pro one of the most highly rated and popular chess engines in the world.  Tom Kerrigan is an American, a computer programmer, app and game designer. He lives in Seattle with a fine view of the future across Union Bay. In April 2011 he launched Stobor, a chess engine. Stobor is his name for TChess Pro, his creation.

Madeleine Starr, Director of Business and Innovation at Carers UK explains how digital can help the UK's 8.8 million unpaid carers - including the 5 million who juggle care with work It is not even about developing anything new, she says: ‘what I really want to see in the 2020s is the technologies that we already have out there that work so well embedded in frontline practice.' She means technologies like activity monitoring that provide a 24/7 service that, combined with care visits, can be targeted, because the carer can use a dashboard to understand what a person's experience has been overnight - eg if they have been up several times and lost sleep - so that they can tailor their next visit. Starr goes on to describe how Carers UK supports individual carers but also local authorities, who have duties to support carers under the Care Act, but who have in fact been carring out declining numbers of carer assessments since. Carers UK have developed a standalone platform for local authorities and employer subscribers that packages a range of information products with its own-developed app ‘Jointly' that helps families manage and share caring responsibilities.

A wide range of professionals from the world of planning and development convened at December's MapLondon event to explore how cities might be made better through more data sharing and wider use of digital maps. The podcast, captured against the background hubbub of the event, features contributions from a range of speakers at the event in this order: 00:12 Sowyma Parthasarathy, Director, Arup 00:33 Theo Blackwell, Chief Digital Officer for London 00:54 Lisa Taylor, Director, Coherent Cities 01:15 Rebecca Lee, Senior Architect, Pollard Thomas Edwards 03:04 Euan Mills, Head of Digital Planning, Connected Places Catapult 04:02 Miranda Sharp, Innovation Director, Ordnance Survey 05:09 Sowyma Parthasarathy, Director, Arup 06:52 Theo Blackwell, Chief Digital Officer for London 07:43 Euan Mills, Head of Digital Planning, Connected Places Catapult 08:24 Lucy Webb, Head of Regeneration, Croydon Council 09:10 Sowyma Parthasarathy, Director, Arup 09:48 Alicia Francis, Director, Newman Francis 11:10 Lucy Webb, Head of Regeneration, Croydon Council 12:21 Alicia Francis, Director, Newman Francis 12:41 Euan Mills, Head of Digital Planning, Connected Places Catapult 13:06 Lisa Taylor, Director, Coherent Cities 13:52 Rebecca Lee, Senior Architect, Pollard Thomas Edwards

Asmat Hussain, Corporate Director of Governance tells Rachael Tiffen of CIFAS what happened next after the High Court's overturn of its 2014 mayoral election The former mayor was found guilty of corrupt and illegal practices, including vote-rigging, by an election court in 2015, so the council needed to rebuild trust with the authorities, staff and local residents. Asmat became Tower Hamlets' statutory monitoring officer after the fraud had happened, along with a whole new leadership team including chief executive William Buckley and a new financial director. With commissioners in charge following a PriceWaterhouseCoopers investigation, the council developed a delivery plan, putting in place measures to ensure members' decisions were made within the rules; greater transparency and openness around mayoral decisions; relaunch of whilstleblowing procedures; staff training and a website where members of the public can report concerns about fraud. Tower Hamlets underwent a Peer Review conducted by the LGA in June 2019, which concluded among more detailed findings that they were now ‘a normal council'. At the time of this interview, in November 2019, the council was just starting preparations for the December 2019 general election.

Damian Nolan (Halton BC) and Jane Hancer (CC2i) explain the problems of administering meds and describe a new collaboration by councils to find a digital solution. Complicated relationships exist between patients, GPs, pharmacists, hospitals, carers and family members in terms of medicine management, and getting the right meds to the right people at the right time carries high risks and costs across the health and care system Five councils and their care partners have come together in a project brought together by CC2i, supported by LGA and match funded by NHS Digital to explore issues and difficulties as well as identifying what ‘good might look like'. The conversation covers why the project is being undertaken, the process and timetable being followed by the five participating councils, and the benefits of the collaborative approach.

Jane Hancer (CC2i) and Damian Nolan (Halton BC) describe how a five-council collaboration supported by the LGA and match-funded NHS Digital will deliver via the Social Care Innovation Accelerator In this discussion recorded in July, Jane Hancer describes the process of collaboration via CC2i that is being supported by other key players in the field of social care innovation. The project is being undertaken in response to new legislation around the safeguarding of children and adults - Liberty Protection Safeguards – that councils will have to start implementing from October 2020 as a replacement to the current Deprivation of Liberty arrangements. The conversation covers why the project is being undertaken, the process and timetable being followed by the five participating councils, and the benefits of a collaborative approach. Other councils will be able to share in the project findings from early 2020.

The Bridge - Shropshire Council's immersive approach to presenting local data - is set to transform council and NHS commissioning The Bridge (as in ‘the view from') is an approach to the presentation of data developed in house at Shropshire Council that enables managers to make better use of information they have access to but may fail to take into account in decision-making. As Andy Begley, Director of Adults and Housing at the Council explains in this programme, The Bridge provides an immersive experience that engages elected members, service managers, council partners and commercial suppliers, enabling them to see ‘the obvious' in a way that spreadsheets don't. The Bridge is supporting close collaboration with the local NHS, according to Julie Davies, Director of Performance and Delivery at Shropshire CCG, who describes the project as ‘hugely exciting'. The in-house developed project requires people to step inside a space and see a 360° display that may include data layered onto maps, images and walkthroughs of buildings, graphs and charts. A key factor driving engagement is that people leave their laptops outside, says Emma Murdock, whose team manages the data and presentations that drive the project.

Kate Hurr, Digital Manager at Cumbria County Council, describes colleagues' enthusiasm for creating digital services in-house. The discussion makes it clear that the Council's ‘low-code' approach to building new digital services is not about replacing the large council systems that sit at the core of highways, planning or social care management. Rather its about redesigning the ‘bits around the edge' (technical term), in order to create new or better online services for customers or staff, without having to procure these from the same source. Or to replace online systems – say Blue Badge applications – that might have previously been bought in from another third party IT supplier. Availability of a low-code platform means that Kate's digital services team can work closely with service managers to co-design services and then build them in-house without the need for developers. Very short feedback loops speed up the development process – something that might have taken four months in the past can now be done in four weeks – and fine tuning once launched can be done really quickly because everything is done in-house. Although the council is committed to keeping other channels open, given Cumbria's rural ‘not-spots' and its ageing population, shift to online from recent projects on skips and scaffolding licensing and complaints have been impressive. -o0o- Netcall takes the pain out of big change projects, working with 1 in 4 councils to deliver better services for their citizens and within the NHS to help Trusts reduce DNAS by up to 40%, reduce postage costs for reminders by 50% and give patients choice over communication with their hospital. We help 600 UK organisations across all sectors to radically improve customer experience through collaborative CX. As a leading provider of low-code, contact centre and omnichannel messaging solutions, we enable customer-facing and IT talent to collaborate.  As described in the interview with Kate, our low-code allows you to make big changes fast – without creating work for IT, blowing the budget or replacing core systems. Prebuild applications are free to download bringing around 80% of standard process functionality. So, you don't start from scratch. And, when you're ready you'll update and share unlimited services with other councils. Now it's your turn. Talk to us about your business case today 0330 363 0300 www.netcall.com

London Borough of Havering's Chief Operating Officer Jane West and transformation lead Susie Faulkner describe a process designed to bring staff and residents along with change. Havering embarked on its transformation journey soon after Jane West arrived in post in early 2018, at a time when the borough - already under pressure from a rising population as people continue to move from inner London - was facing up to a front-loaded £37bn deficit. Thinking by the senior leadership and elected members about change was done around four themes: communities, places, opportunities and connections. To encourage fresh approaches, officers took leadership of themes not associated with their ‘day job', the head of social care, for example, taking on the ‘places' theme. When service reviews were conducted, they were done so with service directors out of the room to encourage staff to put forward their own ideas about delivery. When it comes to residents, Havering has drawn on Wigan Council's ‘deal' with its citizens to create the ‘Havering Together' concept and the slogan ‘cleaner, safer, prouder, together'. Part of this is making clear what the council is doing and how it is looking to its communities to share some of the challenges of the stepping back of state provision. Meanwhile residents will see changes in how they access services (including more digital access) and significant regeneration activity, with £3bn of spending being rolled out across 12 estates. 

Clair Green, Director of Assurance at London Borough of Barnet tells Rachael Tiffen, Director Local Government at CIFAS, about an unprecedented fraud In December 2017, the council became aware of what turned out to be an unprecedented internal financial fraud, committed by a former member of staff then working as part of an outsourced contract. The individual responsible was prosecuted and pleaded guilty to two separate charges of ‘Fraud by Abuse of Position' and received a custodial prison sentence. Capita, the holder of the outsourced contract, underwrote the loss from the fraud to the council and money was also recovered from gambling establishments where the proceeds of the crime were largely spent. The council subsequently commissioned Grant Thornton to carry out an independent review of financial controls. This enabled the council to understand and document the circumstances under which the fraud was allowed to happen, and to identify lessons learned. The report found that there were insufficient financial controls in place in the outsourced finance and regeneration services and that the council did not have sufficient oversight. The council is now implementing a plan to increase financial controls through revised procedures and processes including increased controls of payments and revised schemes of delegation. Clair explains that Barnet Council are keen to be as open and transparent as they can be about the incident, to learn for themselves and to share that learning with others.

The proportion of over 65s and 85s in Shropshire is growing faster than in most parts of the UK and that concentrates the mind, says Andy Begley in this discussion recorded at the recent Tech 7 event in Shrewsbury. Provision for older people cannot be sorted by the social care department working alone, and in any case, says Mark Barrow, whose remit covers local economic development, decisions about roads, housing and other infrastructure have significant impacts on the quality and sustainability of life for over 65s. This will in turn impact their future demand on local health and care services. This thinking is driving work by the council – including ‘The Bridge' an immersive and interactive data visualisation initiative - to make better use of their vast access to data about the location and condition of people and assets, for prediction and planning purposes. When data is layered together to present rich information, colleagues really engage, says Andy Begley, and ‘can start to see solutions'. The realtionship with providers also changes when data is visualised and shared: the council stops simply acting as a commissioner and can start having conversations with the market about how problems can be solved together.

Director of Policy Catherine Miller describes how the thinktank is working with regulators across all sectors on measures to counter harmful effects on society of recent and rapid digital change. The conversation draws on Doteveryone's 2018 report on regulating technology, as well as its research findings on the tech-related anxieties experienced by the public, including a feeling that no-one ‘has their back', and uncertainty about where redress for any harms might be sought. There is no dedicated tech regulator or ombudsman, and Doteveryone's report concluded that this was not the answer. Individual regulatory bodies need to carry on regulating specialist patches like markets, or elections, or shipping, or the media, but need support to help them adapt to cover the impact of tech on the fields in which they operate. Regulators, many of which are small organisations, can struggle to access the expertise and capacity they need to know when and how to intervene in situations where, for example, the internet or social media are central. Doteveryone has recommended establishment of an ‘Office for Responsible Technology' to provide this additional resource. This wide-ranging conversation touches on the ability of individual nations to regulate global tech giants, the significant impact of GDPR, whether AI can learn to self-regulate, and what might be expected in forthcoming legislation.

This conversation reveals how Durham County Council has developed its comprehensive counter fraud strategy from pretty much a standing start to a significant activity that to date has identified or intercepted £4.5m worth of fraudulent activity. The team has worked on 2001 cases covering the old favourites - blue badge, business rates, council tax discounts, tenancy frauds, procurement – and some newer ones associated with things like right-to-buy and direct payments for social care. In one case mentioned, a £100,000 fraud was identified from direct payments arranged for a disabled person who was some time later spotted partying on social media. The hard work of building internal support and external networks (police, social landlords, other councils) is well described, including engagement with national initiatives like ‘Fighting Fraud and Corruptions Locally' managed by Cifas. Cifas is now beginning work on a new version of the strategy for publication in 2020, and seeking volunteers to help. Contact Rachael at Cifas to find out more.

After a decade of austerity, people working in social care have got used to hard decisions and making do. But the message emerging from the meeting of the West Midlands Workforce Alliance in early July was one of energy and optimism. There is a growing recognition of the contribution that social care makes to the local economy of the West Midlands and a greater appreciation of a whole range of careers and professions, not just those traditionally represented in the media in a downbeat and unflattering way. Other reasons to be cheerful include wider adoption of digital tools - after a slow start due to some leadership uncertainties and real concerns about risks – recent suggestions of more resources coming into the sector, and a move towards neighbourhoods as the proper focus for service provision, supported by new developments like Primary Care Networks and Integrated Care Systems. Against this background the West Midlands Workforce Alliance is providing a promising ‘safe space' for some challenging discussions around such topics as pay disparities and disconnections between different parts of the system to be faced and resolved contructively.

Heading up one of the country's newest councils - one that only came into being on April 1 - Matt is also the policy spokesman on digital leadership for the council chiefs' body Solace. In this digital age, he says, the speed of change requires leaders be even more curious, willing to learn, and prepared to invest time in thinking about what's coming next. One of the benefits of today's tech for leaders is that it makes it easier for them to be visible, even with a highly dispersed workforce, providing they are prepared to take advantage and make time for things like regular vlogging and participation in interactive and live-streamed meetings. Digital skills and behaviours are now essential for employees, and new hires must demonstrate these. However the existing workforce should also be supported to acquire them, and its notable that where new skills are acquired, attitudes also change as new possibilities are understood. As for automation anxiety, given the local authority cuts that have taken place in the last few years and the resulting increases in workload, people can see the benefits of having time freed up from routine, repetitive tasks to allow time for higher quality interactions to take place where these are needed.

iHub is 80% externally funded, from sources like InnovateUK, Horizon2020 and the European Investment Bank. Only four posts are currently funded by OCC to run council activities like transport modeling, research to support policies, and business case development. Other-funded work is looking into things like solving the problems of rural transport provision (now that austerity has removed many bus subsidies), piloting use of council assets to provide ‘mobility as a service', as well as projects around green energy, public health, drones, and more. The unit has developed provision of ‘innovation' as a service to the rest of the council, helping service teams get to grips with the process of innovation so that they have the capabilities to carry forward projects once developed, by themselves. iHub also collaborates with Oxfordshire's universities and local industries to help identify and pilot innovations that can be taken up by the council or elsewhere, in an approach very much in line with the Government's Industrial Strategy. Working in collaboration with commercial brains and adopting a more commercial approach to innovation has been a new and instructive experience for the team. This programme and podcast is sponsored by Rapier Systems. Established in 2003, Rapier Systems designs, builds and manages Wireless Infrastructures for clients in the public, private and third sector. Customers range from hospitality to healthcare and aquaculture. An unwavering focus on wireless means we are trusted to manage Scotland's largest Metropolitan Area Network delivered entirely by Wireless and we are the most prolific provider of public realm Wi-Fi in the UK. Responsible for many industry firsts, including first use of true Gigabit Speed Microwave for the NHS in England and Wi-Fi at Sea for the renewable energy sector in Scotland

Staff picking up enquiries handed off from Monty, the Monmouthshire Council website chatbot, have needed training to ensure they put aside council speak and adopt the simple, text-friendly language these machines have learned to use. This was one of many interesting nuggets of information to emerge from the discussion stimulated by Monmouthshire's decision to open up a new customer service channel that allows customers to submit queries into the council website as text and receive automated answers rather than having to use navigation or search to get there. Some users clearly don't realise they are ‘talking' to a machine. Many of the issues raised whenever ‘bots' are discussed arise in this conversation: the threat to jobs, the benefits of freeing staff from answering questions like 'when's my bin day?' to handle more important and complex enquiries, instances when users prefer the anonymity of speaking to a machine, and the return on investment in this technology. Our panel agree that text and voice-based interaction is moving ahead rapidly for all customer-facing organisations and public services are no exception. Integration with existing systems is the big challenge. This programme is part of the Free Thinking series produced by CLGdotTV in association with Paul Tonks founding director of Tailor Made Projects Limited

Dr David Greenfield asks materials designer Lucy Hughes and Richard MacCowan CEO Biomimicry UK all about design solutions that mimic the natural world. Nature's solutions often are more elegant and less wasteful of energy and resource than human solutions.   ‘Biomimicry' can offer a route to developing products, processes and structures that are less wasteful. The creative process can also start (but doesn't have to) by using natural materials already considered to be waste. Lucy Hughes describes how her award-winning product uses the bits of fish normally discarded and algae to make a biodegradable, single use, plastic film, that can be used in wrapping food as well as for other packaging applications.  The advantages are clear but as our panel points out, our systems of waste management may not be ready for such products and they could easily end up in non-compostable bin bags and routed into landfill.

Leatham Green, Executive Director of the Public Services People Manager's Association (PPMA) in conversation with Fiona McAdoo Associate Director of Organisational Development at London Borough of Camden discussing how you find, nurture and keep "talent" in the public sector. Careers in HR & OD in the public sector can be challenging and rewarding. Persuading graduate recruits that this is the case is not easy. Fiona McAdoo has a wealth of experience and a passion for her job that has surprised even her. Leatham Green has years of experience in both the HR front line and in the PPMA the public sector professional HR association. Podcast sponsored by HammondClarke Recruitment

Dr David Greenfield asks Adam Woodhall, spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion and Cat Fletcher, head of media at Freegle to explain how sharing will deliver a less resource-greedy world. Fresh from April's Extinction Rebellion protests in London, and with plenty of stories from the heart of the activity, Adam Woodhall told the CLGdotTV audience that sharing thinking about use of resources via protests sets the stage for sort of practical action that can be facilitated by organisations like Freegle. Freegle was founded in 2009 and aims to increase reuse and reduce landfill by offering a free online service where people can give away and ask for things that would otherwise be thrown away. Cat Fletcher said that the impact of Extinction Rebellion for the organisation and its 1000+ volunteers was immediate and positive. She stressed that the benefits of sharing are not just about the environment either. There is a human connection made whenever something is passed from one person to another, to become part of a different life. As Reuse Manager at Brighton and Hove City Council, Cat's day job is equally concerned with saving stuff the council doesn't need any more for further use - in unbelievable quantities – which, as she explains is a far better outcome than recycling, where products have to be taken apart (more use of resources) before anything can be done with them.

Joe Tibbetts talks to Richard Vize a journalist well known in the public sector/delivery of public services space,  Kushi Gujral of Protect the whistleblowers charity and Georgina Charlton of Guys and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. Whistleblowing has been around for a long time as people have felt compelled, often at significant personal cost, to report wrongdoing by colleagues at work whether fraud, professional misconduct, bullying or mistreatment of people in care. As our panel explains, the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 has been a game changer, since it provides legal protection to workers from detrimental treatment or victimisation from their employer if, in the public interest, they blow the whistle on wrongdoing. Protect runs a legally privileged confidential helpline for people in public and private sectors who want to raise concerns about something happening at work, with the majority of enquiries coming from education, health and social care. Advances in last few years in getting organisations to take it in board are encouraging - but there is more to be done.

Paul Clarke of Esri UK, Graeme McDonald of Solace and Stuart Cole of Oxfordshire County Council explain how crowd-sourced, interactive maps help create active citizens. Stuart Cole, who is part of the Innovation team at Oxfordshire County Council says that digital maps are enabling a whole new degree of interaction between local authorities and the people who live ‘in their patch'. Citizens can contribute their local knowledge (eg reporting potholes or problems with footpaths) and their views (eg about local development plans) and councils can share this crowd-sourced data with them in a time and cost-effective way. Map-based tools are also helping galvanise local volunteers to support local services like libraries and parks and an important consequence of this is that it tends to increase people's interest in their local area and its publicly available facilities. These developments have been facilitated by significant improvements in the usability and presentation of digital mapping tools, so that they are much easier for the non-specialist to use than they were even five years ago.

Dr David Greenfield draws out key aspects of the current Strategy consultation with Robert Vaughan and Linda Crichton of Defra, and Stuart Hayward-Higham of SUEZ Recyling & Recovery. Our second edition of the New Circular Economy Show focused on the consultation - due to complete May 18 - on measures that will have a major impact on household waste collections. The consultations cover proposals including deposit return schemes (DRS) in which people will be paid for returning drinks containers; extended producer responsibilities (EPR) under which producers will need to produce packaging that is easier for households to recycle; and measures to encourage greater consistency in council waste collection arrangements. Issues discussed that are likely to be close to the hearts of local politicians, waste managers, local businesses and householders include: the Strategy's ambition to raise national recycling rates from 45% to 65% by 2035; the desire for a ‘dramatic' rise in weekly food waste collection from its current base of 15%; possible introduction of free garden waste collections; and greater consistency in what and how councils collect for recycling including the suggestion that bin colours should standardize According to Stuart Hayward-Higham a big part of the challenge is behaviour change, since achievement of a 60% recycling rate requires ‘90% of people to do 90% of the right things 90% of the time.' Details of future New Circular Economy Shows, presented in collaboration with Dr David Greenfield can be found on CLGdotTV's eventbrite page (‘follow' this page to receive alerts about future events).

Rachael Tiffen, Local Government Director at Cifas, and Essex CC Head of Assurance Paula Clowes, discuss why fraud isn't a higher priority for councils and why it should be In 2013, the National Fraud Authority estimated that local authority fraud cost the taxpayer £2.1bn. That's a lot of money, but when it comes to individual councils, fraud may not make in onto the corporate risk register because fraud losses known to individual departments are seldom aggregated at corporate level. Were councils to add up total losses from fraud across all areas, they would be better able to see the size of the problem and allocate resources to tackling it, focusing on areas like housing, schools, social care, and procurement where the biggest problems are likely to be found. And the cost is not just financial: as we hear in this discussion, the impact is also on members of the public, who may miss out on homes, school places and other services, and on council staff, who may be affected in all sorts of ways by the actions of a dishonest colleague. This programme takes a high level look at fraud prevention and discovery as a curtain-raiser to a series CLGdotTV and Cifas will be rolling out over coming weeks, looking at different aspects of fraud in more detail, and presenting some case studies. Rachael and Paula's conversation includes information about some recent frauds, including one in which a finance officer siphoned off £2m from Barnet Council to fund a gambling habit and another in which a headteacher was funding a lavish lifestyle while pupils shivered in their coats because there was no money to heat the classrooms.

Llewelyn Morgan of Oxfordshire County Council tells CLGdotTV's Joe Tibbetts about iHub, the 24-strong innovation unit he leads that is 80% externally funded. Most of this funding comes from sources like InnovateUK, Horizon2020 and the European Investment Bank: only four posts are currently funded by OCC to do core council activities like transport modeling, research to support policies and business case development. Other-funded work is looking into things like solving the problems of rural transport provision (now that austerity has removed many bus subsidies), piloting use of council assets to provide ‘mobility as a service', as well as projects around green energy, public health, drones, and more. The unit has developed provision of ‘innovation' as a service to the rest of the council, helping service teams get to grips with the process of innovation so that they have the capabilities to carry forward projects once developed, by themselves. iHub also collaborates with Oxfordshire's universities and local industries to help identify and pilot innovations that can be taken up by the council or elsewhere, in an approach very much in line with the Government's Industrial Strategy. Working in collaboration with commercial brains and adopting a more commercial approach to innovation has been a new and instructive experience for the team. This podcast is sponsored by Rapier Systems Established in 2003, Rapier Systems designs, builds and manages Wireless Infrastructures for clients in the public, private and third sector. Customers range from hospitality to healthcare and aquaculture. An unwavering focus on wireless means we are trusted to manage Scotland's largest Metropolitan Area Network delivered entirely by Wireless and we are the most prolific provider of public realm Wi-Fi in the UK. Responsible for many industry firsts, including first use of true Gigabit Speed Microwave for the NHS in England and Wi-Fi at Sea for the renewable energy sector in Scotland – We Live Wireless!

Stuart Lester of Transport for the West Midlands and Toby Bennett, Local Government Lead at Commonplace discuss how data is being used to manage the travelling public. Transport for the West Midlands is part of the West Midlands Combined Authority which brings together Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Sollihull, Dandwell, Dudley and Walsall to bring strategic transport planning to these footprints and to an even larger travel-to-work area that is home to 4.2 million. Commomnplace is an online engagement platform used by local government, developers and others to provide open community engagement to reduce risks arising from regeneration, housing, transport and infrastructure projects. This discussion reveals some of the work being done by TfWM to bring together huge quantities of data, some collected by traditional means as well as ‘high velocity data becoming available from mobile networks, CCTV and satnav, and projects carried out by Commonplace to dig deep into community sentiment around controversial projects. Issues also discussed include the problems of sharing data from private and public sectors (trust, commercial sensitivity, GDPR); how to give the travelling public the right amount of information at the right time, and how to persuade people to change travel behaviours that work for them but harm others who may be affected by eg poor air quality.

Khadiza heard about apprenticeships at school and, unable to go to university for financial reasons, started at Camden aged 17. Two years later she has achieved level 4 in project management, working within the Economic Development Department. Tahir became an apprentice more recently, after dropping out of university. He has achieved level 3 in business administration working within the council's community safety and emergency team. He'd not previously realised the wide scope of council activity or the careers on offer in the public sector. Both apprentices are enthusiastic about the work (although it is harder than being a student says Tahir…) and the fact they can earn while gaining qualifications. But above all they relish the opportunity to work for, and give back to, the community in which they grew up. Both now have firm ambitions to continue their careers in public service and improve the places where they live. The strong message emerging from the session was that councils should visit their local schools and work with social media to ensure that young people are exposed to information about opportunities on offer via apprenticeships.

Brett Leahy, chief planner at Redbridge and Richard Sankey of Arcus Global explain how smarter planning will deliver a better planning service as well as greater job satisfaction for planners. Planners don't enter the profession to spend their life checking applications for extensions, and chief planners shouldn't find themselves answering phone calls from the public chasing progress. This is still happening in too many councils and it doesn't need to. Application of AI to the planning process in Milton Keynes led to a reduction in planners' live caseloads from 80 per officer to 25 per officer. The planning applications process is very much rules-based and aspects of it like validation (checking drawings and documents and loading them into a document management system) and checking against permitted development rules can be automated. Planning professionals are then freed up to focus on place-shaping and engaging local populations with future development, including the provision of new, council-built housing. Place shaping activity under the local planning framework is also well served by new technologies that through, for example, visualisation can give the public a much better idea of proposed future development.

Andrew Walker, managing the LGiU's Homelessness Commission, Cllr Stephanie Cryan of LB Southwark and Dawn Eckersley of the East London Housing Partnership explain the depth of the housing crisis and how councils are responding The Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 - part of the Government's aim to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminate it by 2027 - has expanded councils' duties significantly and will fundamentally change their approach to the issue. But as our discussion reveals, rough sleeping is simply the most visible manifestation of homelessness, which also takes in the 80,000 plus households in temporary accommodation, and larger numbers in precarious housing, poor housing or reduced to ‘sofa surfing' – all situations that could lead to homelessness at any time. This discussion explores how councils are responding to the Homelessness Reduction Act and its challenges, but as importantly, looks at the deep-seated causes of the current housing crisis, from a broken housing market, the impact of Universal Credit, the policy of selling off council homes, and the chronic failure to build new social housing. Further details of the LGiU Homelessness Commission, due to report later this year, and its interim recommendations can be found on the LGiU website. LGiU will be making a series of programmes with CLGdotTV on topics including democracy and elections, childrens' services, the future of the high street, and more. Follow our eventbrite page to receive updates.

According to Andy Begley, who heads up adult social care, housing and public health at Shropshire Council, and is Co-Chair of West Midlands ADASS, better informed providers, consumers and commissioners should lead to a more positive view about the future of social care. People who have care needs, and their families, can use technology and web-based services to identify and access information and services that in the past might have needed to be supplied by council teams. This enables a shift in control of the sort that consumers have welcomed in other areas of life, like shopping, banking and travel. Professional social care services will of course continue to be needed, but can be supplied more flexibly, based on better-informed conversations with service users and their families. The same better-informed, more ‘grown-up' approach applies to commissioner- provider relations, which, making use of the wealth of data held by and available to councils, could help deliver a more sustainable provider market. For this to happen, behaviours need to change, with commissioners less hidebound by traditional case management driven systems, care users and their families more willing to take control, and providers being given more access to council-held intelligence about local demand for services and more flexible procurement approaches.  

The use of sensors to monitor individuals' wellbeing is set to take off agreed Roy Grant of York Council, Mark Low of Pinacl Solutions and Karantis 306's Nick Hampson, in the recent CLGdotTV discussion on care in the home. Thanks to investment by the Council, York is the most connected city in the UK, and is now starting to use this connectivity to enable technologies relevant to residents' health, social care, housing and other needs. There is a huge range of sensors now available to collect and analyse data about individuals' activity within their home and what conditions there are like – for example, whether the ambient temperature is high enough for an elderly, perhaps immobile, person. Remote monitoring enables family or paid carers to understand much better the experiences of the people they are looking after during times they are not physically present (perhaps 23.5 hours of each day). This is not just about emergencies like falls: a disturbed night, flagged by unusual data patterns, may give early indication of a problem that if treated quickly, could prevent a hospital admission. As the panel point out, any means of identifying early intervention – whether involving a person's health, or a property's dampness - can be key not just to individual and community wellbeing, but also to making best use of available resources.  

PwC UK drones lead Elaine Whyte, Dedrone's Amit Samani and Tris Dyson of Nesta discuss the economic and social potential of drones and whether public anxieties might be allayed through regulation and control by public authorities.  PwC has estimated that the UK drone market could be worth £42bn by 2030 and deliver productivity gains worth £16bn. The technology is already enabling huge savings on inspection and surveillance with people-free delivery solutions just around the corner. Public good has been demonstrated in use by the emergency and rescue services and in the delivery of medical supplies to remote locations. On the other hand, memories of the Gatwick Airport shutdown are fresh, and people are justifiably anxious. Data collection by Dedrone around UK airfields confirms that a significant amount of illegal activity is going on. Public anxiety has slowed or halted other technologies in their early days (think wind farms and GM foods), so the drone industry is looking to regulation and other means to increase public confidence. How local authorities might respond - by being part of the management of ‘the space up to 400 feet off the ground' is discussed, and reference made to Nesta's ongoing Flying High programme which in its first phase worked with councils in Bradford, London, Preston, Southampton and the West Midlands to develop visions for a future with drones.

In typical ‘smart city' discussions, agreed our panel, most of the people around the table are from organisations and represent sectors like education, energy, retail, and transport, and in these discussions, people are reduced to personas like ‘commuter' or ‘consumer'. But in real life citizens inhabit several personas and there is need for policy-makers to take a more user-centric and joined up approach for the benefits of the smart life – that technology now enables – to be realised (and to be perceived by citizens, including the person providing your taxi ride). Without this joining up there is a danger that we are sleepwalking into a future none of us desire. And the speed of its arrival may take up by surprise. Compare a photo of a London street in the 1880 with one just 40 years later, by which time petrol driven vehicles had completely replaced horse-drawn equivalents. We are in a period of similarly revolutionary technological change with huge implications for infrastructure planning and the daily lives of citizens. Local authorities are playing catch up with technology and are yet to fully understand that their effectiveness will be determined by their ability to use, and share wisely, the data they generate.

Leatham Green of the PPMA and Jonathan Key of LabourXchange tell Jane Hancer of CC2i that public sector approaches to recruitment, retention and management are stuck in a pre-digital age It is well known that local authorities and other parts of the public sector face staff shortages in professional and less skilled roles, leading to significant expenditure on recruitment and agency fees. Yet hiring practice remains long-winded, bureaucratic and rule-bound, an approach that works neither for organisation nor candidate, and could change if the will was there, says HR specialist Leatham. Today's technology allows for much greater flexibility in hiring people and enabling them to work when and where they are available says Jonathan, whose online platforms match small units of supply and demand and are about to be piloted with councils seeking new ways to plug a huge and growing care skills gap. ‘Digital' can make ‘office-based' roles more accessible to candidates with other responsibilities and allow organisations more flexibility but too many managers still want to see people ‘in the office' and fail to provide the human support that is needed alongside the tech tools.

Jason Kitcat (Essex CC) Richard Farrell of Netcall and Sleuth Co-op's Hilary Simpson discuss how local authorities might overcome challenges of legacy systems, digital skill shortages and the persistence of old-style procurement. As Director of Corporate Development, Jason is working for change by getting his Essex colleagues to focus on citizen outcomes and experience, using the tools of service and interaction design, ethnography, data and analytics, recognising there will be many different ways forward, not all of them involving technology. Richard, whose role at low-code platform provider Netcall involves thinking about the future of IT, says he spends a lot of time ‘filtering hype' and agrees that tech should be subservient when it comes to change. The company is still getting asked to automate bad processes, and culture remains the biggest challenge. Skill shortages are also a problem for public service organisations that cannot offer 24-year-old coders Macbooks, pizza and ‘beer o'clock'. But there are various solutions, including making use of the ‘missing 50%' of the IT/digital workforce (ie women); growing your own; making more use of flexible contracting via the new digital frameworks; and using low-code to deliver customised applications created by business analysts rather than coders. Procurement comes up again as an issue: why are legacy suppliers STILL getting the contracts? Nobody ever got fired for hiring the usual suspects still applies, apparently, although there is agreement that GCloud and the other new tech frameworks are becoming real game-changers. This content is sponsored by Netcall  

As awareness grows of the environmental, even existential, consequences of our take/make/use/throw approach to resources, minds are focusing on the benefits of a ‘circular economy' in which materials and manufactured goods are routinely recycled and re-used, and not just once. Our panel members welcome the Strategy, but don't underestimate the massive challenges it represents, including the 65% recycling targets set for local authorities. While some councils have already made changes that will help them meet new demands, others are less well prepared. One feature of the Strategy that comes in for much discussion is the focus on the design of products and packaging. Its been suggested that up to 80% of the environmental impact of a product or its packaging is determined at design stage. And yet as our panel point out, there is at present little dialogue between designers and the waste management industry. Incentivising on the one hand manufacturers and retailers (producer pays), and on the other, consumers (deposit and return schemes), to change behaviours is discussed. So too, inevitably, is the question ‘exactly which recyclying bin does this wrapper go in?' Waste professionals they may be but our panel ‘fess up to being as confused as the rest of us with some of the materials passing through their shopping baskets and fridges into the bins.

This wide ranging discussion provides an excellent primer for those vaguely aware of, for example, legalization in Canada and some states in the US, the row about medical use of cannabis, and reports of police services these days ‘turning a blind eye'. The conversation covers: Pros and cons of legalization Why many politicians are reluctant to engage with this topic Variations in UK law enforcement around cannabis use Why festival owners are a major barrier to drugs testing schemes Whether legalization is inevitable and will it most likely come from the political left or right?

CLGdotTV will be talking with Beth regularly in 2019, and with some of the SMEs she mentors, to better understand the difficulties innovators face in getting their good ideas taken up by public sector organisations. In this introductory conversation, Beth suggests there is general acceptance in the NHS and elsewhere the public sector that harnessing innovation from SMEs is ‘a good thing'. But making this a reality is a different matter. Traditionally, public sector organisations have not been geared up to buy ‘innovation' and increasingly formalised procurement processes are pushing them to be over-prescriptive in their specifications. Innovation schemes and associated funding need to foster and enable collaboration and partnerships with SMEs, since sustainable innovation will only come from deep understanding of challenges that need to be overcome. Expecting SMEs to work from outside complex public sector organisations and come up with fully finished, readily procurable products and services is not realistic. Within the NHS, initiatives being developed by Academic Health Science Networks are helping, while in the local authority sector, the Department of Communities' Local Digital Fund is enabling SMEs to work alongside councils on a range of exploratory ‘discovery ‘ projects

Project Manager Laura Folkers of the Worcestershire Office of Data Analytics, and Charlotte Shepard Information Officer for Redditch & Bromsgrove Councils, one of the partners, discuss the project approach and anticipated outcomes. WODA has been awarded £57,500 from the Local Digital Fund for a discovery project to look at how registration data for births, deaths and marriages can be securely and ethically shared to improve services and reduce fraud. The Digital Economy Act 2017 enables more sharing off data among local public sector partners. The ‘Tell Us Once' service – an existing initiative for sharing this data - does not have a 100% take-up, is not used in all authorities, applies only to data volunteered by the public, does not cover marriage data and does not extend to eg NHS organisations. Laura and Charlotte describe some of the anticipated benefits of sharing births, marriages & deaths data more widely, how the project is unfolding, and where they anticipate having got to by March, when the project will end, with the possibility of its progressing to a further 'alpha' phase of work.  

  OpenStreetMap is a global project whose aspirations to ‘map the planet' – because maps & data created by government agencies are not always free to use - were dismissed as ‘impossible' when OSM started just over a decade ago. Built by a community of GIS professionals, humanitarians, community activists and others who contribute and maintain data about roads, cafés, railway stations, phone boxes, defibrilators and more, OpenStreetMap makes maps that are open and free to use for any purpose. In this conversation, Brian describes how developers can use OSM to integrate mapping services into their applications without incurring licensing fees, and why the public sector is a bit late to this party. He explains why OSM can often provide a much more up-to-date picture of dynamic cityscapes than ‘official' maps that must undergo lengthy QA processes, and outlines how teams of OSM volunteers routinely support relief agencies by swiftly recreating maps that natural disasters have made useless. The conversation also covers how to be an OSM volunteer, and what we'll be discussing in future programmes, including ownership and licensing of map data, the economic value of opening up this data, and projects OSM is involved in around journey planning and routing and the creation of Welsh language maps.

Councils unhappy at paying agency rates, care workers who feel underpaid and undervalued, and care recipients suffering the consequences, could all benefit from a new co-design project currently being put together by the public sector crowdfunding platform CC2i. CC2i is working with SME Labour xchange to develop a concept, already proven in the hospitality and logistics sectors, for local authorities hiring social care workers. Essentially, the digital platform enables identification, training and matching of candidates who are unemployed or underemployed but interested in working full or part time as a carer. If successful, ‘Carers xchange' could increase significantly the capacity of a notoriously hard-pressed sector. The initial business case, which will be further developed during the discovery project, suggests a saving to local authorities of £5 per care visit. Last year, CC2i worked with 50 local authorities to co-fund and co-design digitally enabled projects, including projects in social care, alongside a range of SMEs. Care xchange requires three councils to invest £10,000 each, plus time inputs for investigation and collaboration over a six month period. Further information can be found on the CC2i website.

Observers surprised that some of the projects selected for funding under the programme – eg managing missed bins, providing taxi licensing services or dealing with FoI requests - are not at the forefront of innovation are missing a key point. The Fund is not about blue sky innovation, but rather about ‘fixing the plumbing' of everyday services by making it easy for all councils to replicate a good digital solution that has been proven elsewhere. Take missed bins. Many councils have worked out good solutions for the particular context, collection practice and supplier set up that operates in their patch. But such solutions cannot easily be replicated elsewhere because typically they won't integrate easily with back office systems and processes operated by other authorities and the technologies used by their contractors.  Local Digital Funding is for creating, testing and documenting solutions in such a way as they can be easily plugged in anywhere, rather than being reinvented endlessly to accommodate 300+ different local set ups.    

Businesses and manufacturers will pay the full cost of recycling or disposing of their packaging waste, under a major new government strategy unveiled Tuesday 18 December 2018. The move will overhaul England's waste system, putting a legal onus on those responsible for producing damaging waste to take greater responsibility and foot the bill.   The announcement forms part of the government's ambitious new Resources and Waste Strategy, the first comprehensive update in more than a decade. It will eliminate avoidable plastic waste and help leave the environment in a better state than we found it for future generations.

Dr David Greenfield of SOENECS and Joe Tibbetts of CLGdotTV unpick the climate change threat and consider some possible solutions. All against the background of the 2018 Climate Change Summit in Katowice, Poland and Antonio Guterres the UN secretary-general in his address to the conference delegates beseeching the 190 countries attending to speed up the pace of negotiations on climate change and to be willing to make compromises. "To waste this opportunity would (waste) our last best chance to stop runaway climate change," Mr Guterres said. "It would not only be immoral, it would be suicidal."

When we talk about Smart Places more often that not we mean cities or large towns. But remote communities cannot remain viable unless they can encourage people to stay and even, difficult to imagine, people to move there. Sustainable communities need sustainable businesses not only to provide employment and provoke inward investment but also to encourage that sense of community that we now recognise as being essential. Today none of this is possible without broadband, IoT and the whole connectivity thing. Rapier Systems are based in Dalgety just across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh and work with councils like Angus and cities such as Perth and Dundee  but it was their work on the west coast at Drimin, looking across the Sound of Mull, that made us call them in to tell us what they were up to. Richard Watson MD at Rapier will be at An Audience With CLGdotTV No 4 - This Smart Life on 6th february (look here) If you want to talk to Richard there may well still be a few seats left in the audience, call Ben Webber on 07718 929374 to check availability. Be warned, this may look like an ordinary event but each session becomes a CLGdotTV programme and you should arrive prepared to make a contribution from the floor. In This Smart Life your words spread out around the world and our programmes are watched by thousands of people.  Follow us on Twitter @CLGdotTV. Follow our front page on connectedlocalgovernment.tv 

As Head of Commissioning, Vulnerable Adults, for Essex County Council Rebecca Jarvis recognises that more needs to be done to prepare patients and their families for leaving hospital. Poor support can lead to deterioration in health and wellbeing and at worst, a return to hospital. Amy Ricketts, a senior designer at FutureGov is leading a project with the Council to design the sort of support that might improve outcomes, including the holy grail of keeping people out of hospital. This conversation takes a detailed look at the early stages of the project, including discovery work with patients and their families in hospital as well as with a range of project partners including an Essex hospital, the local CCG, and voluntary and community services. It describes the way that patients and families are typically passive agents when it comes to discharge, and how the interactive digital tool now being tested could allow them to take more control leading to better, more sustainable outcomes. The tool works by suggesting different ways individuals can manage specific needs post-hospital and connecting them with the appropriate sources of support.  

Putting in the infrastructure for connectivity is today's equivalent of the Victorians putting in sewers – you have to make the infrastructure investment to reap the rewards - says Roy Grant, who is Head of Super Connected Cities & Digital Innovation, City of York. STEP, the City's Department for Transport funded smart transport programme, is the first city-wide development built on the fibre network. As York has ‘run out of tarmac', the historic city needs tech solutions to solve problems of congestion and poor air quality These will require engaging residents, visitors and businesses in projects that will encourage behaviour change, impacting when people travel and how they choose to do it. Over the coming months, CLGdotTV will be broadcasting a number of programmes about different aspects of York's smart city programme. On 6 February Roy Grant will chair Health & Well Being - The Caring Home a panel programme in ‘Audience with GLGdotTV No4 This Smart Life' talking about social care developments enabled by the fibre network. One of these is fitting IOT sensors to dwellings, bringing many potential improvements for residents, while also making it less expensive for local authorities, social landlords, and health and social care organisations to deliver their services.  

‘St Albans Unlocked' is blazing a trail with huge potential benefits for the health and wellbeing of local communities. Linda Chandler and Amanda Derrick are working with an app called Soundscape, developed by Microsoft to help people with visual impairments find their way from A to B. Soundscape (an app which is free to download) describes for users the location and key facts about the road crossings, buildings and other landmarks around them as they move about. But it needs these to be marked accurately on Open Street Map, on which the app is built. Volunteers in St Albans are adding data to OSM to ‘unlock' the locality for Soundscape users. These need not only be people with visual impairments. The app could support anyone who finds getting around challenging (eg those with mild dementia), as well as being enjoyed by local residents and tourists alike. For local authorities, a solution to the problem of maintaining information about local assets, that engages communities and supports vulnerable locals, has got to be worth exploring further.

In our first podcast in this series, Dylan described the benefits of a city having an approach to ‘smart' that is genuinely shared between the council and other public services, particularly health. In this and each of five following podcasts we will discuss one of six aspects the city has identified as being key to building a smarter Leeds, which you can read more about on Data Mill North's Smart Leeds page. Three of these aspects, connectivity, digital skills and data, are cross cutting. Three others focus on vital areas of public service delivery: health & wellbeing, housing and travel & transport. In this podcast, we focus on connectivity.

Kirklees Council were prompted to develop an online self-assessment process for financial support requests when increasing demand following the Care Act left their existing 100-days-to-process service unable to cope. 80% of requests are now completed online (including by the very elderly), 18% by phone - using the same process, but mediated - and only 2% now require a home visit. Time and money saved all round is significant, and developers Looking Local (co-owned by Kirklees Council) are supporting a new collaboration by Kent, Stockton and Nottinghamshire Councils to take forward an online care needs assessment project. The project has been submitted for funding from the new Local Digital Fund. EveryLife Technologies' Pass System is a digital tool and platform that replaces the paperwork involved in managing people's care and medication whether they are in residential care home or receiving homecare. Lianne and Taffy discuss the processes involved in bringing about these innovations, how collaboration – council to council or council with providers - works, the constraints of traditional procurement methods, and the need to engage care workers in both design and implementation of new technologies. Key technologies in the pipeline include sensors for prediction and picking up unknown issues, and voice recognition, which could dramatically cut the time and cost of recording information about care visits, and as well as enabling the cared-for to provide feedback.