Hillingdon Council commits £9m to tech revamp in digital strategy

Hillingdon Council will invest £9m to improve the way residents access services as part of a new digital strategy for the next three years.

Agreed on 10 October, the strategy sets out four main principles, which include prioritising residents’ needs, carrying out an agile approach to delivery, delivering new business models driven by data, and adopting a “one council” approach by creating project teams and shared goals. 

The strategy will also create five distinct workstreams, which will focus respectively on building services online by default; sourcing better data to make better decisions; modernising council infrastructure and systems; building digital capacity and inclusion; and delivering a digital place. 

Through these principles and workstreams, the West London council will aim to streamline residents’ experience when accessing services and information so they can carry out basic transactions quickly and only make contact with the council once; create a modern, digital skilled council workforce; and understand residents’ needs through the use of data insights to shape the service improvements.

The strategy will further aim to improve services while either maintaining or reducing the overall costs.

“While we have, to date, already made a host of digital improvements, this new strategy and investment of £9m in digital technologies will significantly propel our vision of being a more digital council into reality and immensely improve our resident, visitor, business and staff experience,” said councillor Douglas Mills, Hillingdon’s cabinet member for corporate services.

“The document provides a broad, overarching framework for effective business planning and strong performance management within the council to drive the transformation of services to continue to meet the changing needs and expectations of our residents and allow people to transact with the council quicker and more effectively.”

According to the strategy document itself, making services online by default will include a revamp of the council’s website so that it is understandable and users can easily find the information they need without having to contact the council. It added the website will be accessible via single sign-on and get users to where they need to be within two or three clicks.

Payments will also be put online for all payable services, making the council cashless for all but the most vulnerable residents.

On Hillingdon’s use of data, it added it would engineer its systems data so it’s easier to combine and analyse, and work with suppliers to get better access to our own data; improve its data warehouse to deliver insights and gain “a single view of the customer”; and utilise machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve customer experiences and make the council more efficient.

The council’s data capture and collection efforts will be used, for example, to track the performance of assets, such as boilers in council housing, energy use and sustainable energy management systems.

The council will also carry out a data cleansing and reduction programme to eliminate duplicate records and make data extractable and accurate.

To modernise its systems and infrastructure, the strategy committed the council to developing a “clear architectural vision and mapping for all council technology systems”, which will include building integration points and automating current systems, while ensuring that any newly procured systems use open application programming interfaces (open APIs) to make their future integration easier.

This will also entail a “review and refresh” of all back-office systems so that they can be transitioned to “modern, cloud-based technology”.