Image showing Luton Council’s DDaT service at our third ‘away day’, with Director of Digital, Data and Technology, Atika Mohammed, on stage during the opening introduction.
📋The agenda
As always, we had a lot to share this quarter! It’s a long blog post but demonstrates just how good our away days are! Links in the agenda will take you straight to the bits you want to read!
✅What we’ve done
Well, LOADS! So far, we’ve:
- delivered multiple projects to move things forward technologically
- made a cultural shift
- improved our position with the organisation
- upskilled ourselves
And that’s not just us blowing our own trumpet 😉 This is just one of the many comments shared with us on the effect DDaT is having throughout the organisation.
“The change in the last year has been phenomenal. IT used to be a service hidden away somewhere, that we never saw and only contacted if we had to. It’s so much more visible now. The director is out here with everyone; we know what they are working towards and it feels like they are trusted with an exciting way forward.”
As Atika commented, “if our colleagues can feel the difference, then residents will too”.
⏩What we’re working towards
In a nutshell, we’re working towards becoming a new kind of council – a ‘living council’.
If you haven’t heard of Luton 2040 yet, it’s our vision for Luton. It’s bold and ambitious, with the aim of transforming Luton into a healthy, fair and sustainable town, where:
- everyone can thrive
- no one has to live in poverty
🌱Bringing 2040 to life
Image showing the elements that will bring our Luton 2040 plan to life, as listed below.
Ending poverty
- Relates to having 20,000 residents in poverty and our neighbourhood approach
- Targeted mission
Jobs, safety and homes
- Relates to our corporate plan and being a new kind of council
- Bringing Luton 2040 to life – how we deliver now
Five key strategies
- Delivered through our 2040 governance model
- Wider work than underpins everything we do
Performance
- OKRs and a corporate performance report
- Holding us account for our delivery
Currently, DDaT is prioritising and allocating resources to the jobs, safety and homes element.
📖What a ‘living council’ looks like
To explain a Living Council, Atika read an excerpt from a book to us – a book that inspired her thinking. Chapter 14: a letter to the next generation, from Living Council by Jens Gemmel von Dollinger.
Jens was kind enough to share the excerpt with me for this blog, so read chapter 14 here.
Atika says of the chapter: “This really resonates with me. Even though it’s written for the future public servant, I believe this applies for existing public servants too. This is exactly how I want DDaT as service to operate, the culture we should have and the type of people we need.”
Huge thank to Jens for allowing us to share his words. If reading it has left you feeling inspired yourself, buy the whole book from retailers listed at the bottom of this post 😊
The changes that will move us to being a living council are listed here.
The old council
- A council built on hierarchy, not networks
- A culture obsessed with compliance, not curiosity
- A place where spreadsheets speak louder than people
A living council
- One that redesigns itself around people, not paperwork
- One that breathes with its community
- One that sees prevention as default, not luxury
- One that treats data as an insight, not surveillance
🎯Where we’re going – the DDaT service plan
We have a solid set of objectives and key results that will serve DDaT, the wider council and our community.
Our objectives are:
- better experiences for people and communities
- digitally confident workforce
- financial sustainability
- strong and secure technology foundations
- a data informed organisation
As shown in the image above, the key results range from migrating our online forms to a low code platform and transitioning to Power BI reports to reducing specialist gaps in DDaT to transitioning and everything in in between!
And we now have the infrastructure in DDaT to make this happen. With two new heads of service in place to complete our DDaT senior management team (SMT), the future looks bright!
💬Talking of the SMT…
We added a new segment to the away day… a lively and informative chat with the whole team of DDaT service heads!
Image showing six members of the DDaT SMT, answering questions from team members during a panel. Team listed from left to right:
Nicola Egan, Head of Innovation, Delivery and Data
Hazel Lunn, Head of Technology and Infrastructure
Donna McLeod, Strategic Manager, DDAT Security Compliance and Governance
Atika Mohammed, Director Digital, Data and Technology
Ben McCartney, Head of Workplace Experience
Kevin Rowe – Head of Digital Development
The questions were varied and interesting, allowing us to get to know the team better – especially Nicola and Kevin who both joined DDaT recently. Here are a few of the more light hearted examples…
What made you join Luton Council?
- Atika joined because she lives in Luton
- Ben joined because of the 2040 vision
- Nicola was excited by the team and to work with Atika
- Kevin has created a low code platform before and excited to do the same with Luton
Will AI take my job?
- NO! It’s a support tool, not a replacement for the team.
What’s your favourite time at work?
- Hazel and Donna both said the ‘COVID-19 era’ as there was less red tape, giving them the ability to react quickly!
📌How DDaT needs to underpin our transformation programme
Image showing Clive Roberts talking about the Resident Experience programme in Luton and how DDaT has collaborated to bring this to life.
Clive Roberts, is out Business Change Manager for Customer and Organisation Development. He’s also heading up our Resident Experience programme and talked about the reasons DDaT will underpin the work that needs to be done to achieve the programme objectives.
- We share a common goal’
- We operate in the same space
- We face the similar challenges
- We deploy similar skill sets
- Our best outcomes to date have been when we co-deliver
He also talked us through the financial and SMART (non-financial) benefits of the programme, along with risks and what the programme focuses on.
🏆Celebrating success and AI
Ben McCartney, Head of Workplace Experience, led this section of the day. He merged two subjects together to encourage people to celebrate successes with their peers, colleagues, through direct reports and AI. The session included:
- a reflective discussion on gratitude
- group exploration of team success
- understanding AI tools and prompting
- hands‑on creation using AI
- storing and reusing templates
Number 4 included giving us all a challenge! To use AI and prompts to create a recognition badge for DDaT achievements. AI did us proud! 😊
Images showing recognition badges for achievements, created as a DDaT task at our away day
🌐New website coming to life!
Next, we came to one of my favourite subjects. As Digital Lead, of course I’m biased!
Our Strategic Digital Service Manager, Jayvik Patel, talked about the final designs and functionality of our new Luton.gov.uk website – due to launch in less than 2 weeks! I do wonder if he might’ve set a new record in super-fast site migration? 🤜 🤛
Jay’s session focused on:
- optimising and testing
- resident engagement
- following common patterns
He also discussed some of the functionality within the open source CMS we’re building on – LocalGov Drupal, in particular:
Huge thanks to Annertech, Upsun, Ben Hills-Jones and Steph Wilson for making up the LGD dream team for this project!
🌈Digital inclusion in Luton
Next, it was my turn to talk. As much as I love to talk, I’m REALLY not a fan of talking in public 😱 But I am passionate about the subject, which helped! My presentation talked about:
- GOV.UK’s digital inclusion action plan
- the benefits of a digitally-included population – for both residents and the council
- how up to 66% of households in Luton may be linked to lower digital confidence and higher digital exclusion risk
- the Digital Inclusion Working Group’s own DI plan to:
- gather inclusion-related data through a town-wide survey
- create a directory of resources in Luton
- offer free data and devices to those who need them
- provide training for basic digital skills
- have digital support in community venues
- share more EDI information on the new website
As a result of a conversation following this session, I’m now working personally with Councillor Roche and our Sheltered Housing Manager to offer basic digital skills in Luton’s shelters though Learn My Way (part of our Good Things Foundation account).
👨💼More guest speakers! Our chief exec and a local councillor
Image showing our Chief Executive and councillor for housing on the DDaT stage.
Closing the day, we heard from our Chief Executive, Mark Fowler, and housing portfolio holder, Councillor Robert Roche. In an effortless conversation (no need for prompts for these two!) they spoke highly of the DDaT service, mentioning:
- the good work that’s been done in the service since taking it back in-house
- the positive feedback they’ve received
- where we are with our technology
- how technology is essential to the ongoing function of the council
They also discussed more in depth the investment needed to get us to an even better place.
“Investment into good technology will have the effect of saving money.”
On that note, that’s all for now folks! See you back here for next quarter’s facts-and-fun-filled DDaT away day! 👋
Retailers selling Living Council
Written by Jens Gemmel von Dollinger.
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