Sprint Notes #76
December 2023
Welcome to Sprint Notes #76! In our first issue of 2024, you can read about the progress of our funded projects in December, as well as our latest news and an update on the Local Digital Declaration project.
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News from Local Digital
Thank you to everyone who has worked with us and supported us in 2023!
It’s been great to share ideas, collaborate on digital projects, explore challenges, and build the #LocalDigital community with you. We look forward to working together this year!
Improving the Local Digital Declaration — an update on our progress
In December, we created a prototype of an updated Declaration webpage in Figma and conducted some initial testing with users. After analysing the results and making changes based on feedback, we will now build the webpage on a staging version of the Local Digital website for further testing.
Our first sprint of the new year has focussed on planning for upcoming user research. We’ve identified a list of councils across the country who we want to speak to, in order to further our understanding of the needs of councils when engaging with the Declaration. We will be conducting research sessions over the next sprint.
We’re also planning some co-design workshops with members of the Local Digital team. The aim of these will be to identify opportunity areas to drive engagement within the service. We can then further explore these opportunities through research and design.
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DLUHC Digital Recruitment Days
The DLUHC Digital team is hosting its second Digital Recruitment Days event on 6 and 7 February in the North East.
Are you a product manager, delivery manager, service designer or user researcher? Whether you have years of experience or are just starting out, this event is your gateway to great career opportunities at DLUHC Digital. Find out more and register today to save your spot.
News from our Round 6 funded projects
Improving social care hospital discharges (Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council)
The Stockport project team has developed the Tableau Dashboard to include trend data and structured this to send automated email distribution as a PDF for key stakeholders. They’ve implemented a routine for loading the data several times a day, ensuring the dashboard refreshes automatically with new data.
Additionally, they’ve created a proof of concept for a form linked to a SharePoint list to reduce input errors and improve data quality.
Currently, the team is concluding the discovery project and actively engaging with stakeholders to share insights and collect feedback. The next step involves drafting a summary slide desk based on their findings.
Exploring barriers to online engagement with council services (South Ribble Borough Council)
The project’s contract with their partner, University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), was signed in early December. The project team conducted an initial planning meeting on 20 December to outline a draft roadmap. The roadmap maps out a 6-week project plan in order to deliver the outcomes in March 2024.
A project kick-off meeting took place on the 12 January to plan user research activity. The team plans to finalise the design of the research by the end of January and initiate participant recruitment, leading to the completion of the research activities in February.
Scaling a rapid identification tool for vulnerable households in an emergency (Westmorland & Furness Council)
Last month was the project’s final sprint of the 10 sprints planned for phase 1. They’ve created a prototype, app.localresilienceviper.org, to demonstrate how responders would access information on vulnerable properties during incidents and planning.
Moving into phase 2, they are collaborating with North West partners to enhance the VIPER prototype with a new technology partner. A summary of phase 1 progress can be viewed on the VIPER website.
Local Digital’s Phil James (Collaboration and Engagement Manager) and Zoe Dyson Sutheran (Admin Support Officer) attended Westmorland & Furness Council’s VIPER beta project workshop on the 10 January. Phil stated that it was “a well attended workshop as there were attendees from all 4 counties collaborating on the project: Cumbria, Cleveland, Durham & Darlington and Northumbria. There were also colleagues from Fire & Rescue, Police and the Red Cross. It was great to hear the project team’s thoughts and plans for governance and senior stakeholder group engagement.”
Investigating a digital support hub for carers (London Borough of Southwark)
Southwark have officially started the project with their supplier, The PSC. They outlined the project plan and outputs in their kick off meeting. During Sprint 0, the focus was on establishing effective project rhythms, refining stakeholder collaboration, and preparing for user research with unpaid carers in Southeast London.
January brings a busy period of unpaid carer research, with the team finalising plans and interview guides. Once they receive a list of suitable carers, interviews will begin, complemented by a flash survey circulated through carer organisations.
The PSC team plans to engage with carers at the Southwark Carers Cafe and a virtual Carers Forum for casual conversations. This month’s goal is to complete most user interviews, and to start the development of user personas and service maps.
Improving housing advice services to prevent homelessness (London Borough of Newham)
The project team has now completed the research and drafted a report, categorising key findings into three areas of influence:
- Point of access
- Upstream prevention
- Systemic factors
The 10-week timeline has proved challenging for the team in terms of gaining deep engagement. Building trust with the communities takes time, and building strong relationships is crucial for an open exchange of views. Engagement with certain lesser-heard voices, including LGBTQ+ youth, ex-military and care leavers, could have been more extensive. The Christmas period also impacted engagement with the Voluntary and Community sector (VCS).
In the upcoming month, the team plans to:
- run workshops to assess the ideas to take forward in Alpha
- produce business case and final reports
- schedule more show and tell sessions
Improving Local Authority Building Control Services (London Borough of Lambeth)
The project team launched their national officer survey, promoted through various channels including partner emails, social media, LocalGov Slack and the Local Digital Newsletter. They are now reviewing feedback from the survey, having received a good number of responses.
In December, during a workshop at Bath & North East Somerset Council, they consolidated their user research findings and personas with Marvell Consulting’s developers. Based on this, they sketched out the main options for their upcoming Recommendations report.
They received a great turnout from the Building Control service during their in-person Show and Tell at Lambeth, attended by members of the Local Digital team and heads of service and directors at Lambeth.
User journeys into adult social care (London Borough of Redbridge)
The Redbridge team have now completed their 12-week discovery phase, which concluded with their final Show and Tell.
The final report is currently being signed off and will be made available on the Local Digital website to share the project’s recommendations and outputs. Further work is progressing on prototypes, exploring possibilities for piloting them in Redbridge and with collaborative partners.
Plans for an alpha stage are taking shape, outlining the project’s intended progression. Feedback will be shared with subject matter experts and user groups this month for any final comments. The team is looking to break down the report outcomes into a future plan, utilising collaboration with partners and teams at Redbridge. Their focus also extends to scoping how the project can go further, initiating discussions around the technology required to pilot a prototype.
Procuring technology for housing services (Hackney London Borough Council)
The procuring technology for housing services discovery is now complete. You can read the final report on our website or embedded below:
The team would like to thank everyone involved: Hackney Council, TPXImpact, Woking Council, Royal Borough of Greenwich, London Borough of Redbridge, London Borough of Kingston upon Thames, Adur and Worthing Councils, as well as the many research participants from local authorities, housing associations and technology companies. The findings give recommendations across a short, medium and long term view, looking at how councils can improve procurement in their own organisation, through to cross-council collaboration and central government policy level.
Improving the automation of the starters, movers and leavers process (Southampton City Council)
Throughout December and the start of January, the Southampton team has completed Sprints 2 and 3 and progressed into Sprint 4. They focused on successfully completing the proof of concept and developing a version of the Starter/Mover form, which underwent testing with positive results and only small cosmetic updates.
Work has started on the visibility epic, including a proof of concept and a dashboard summarising the user research and personas.
The main challenge was implementing security controls, but resolution is on track in the current sprint. Looking ahead, the team aims to address minor testing issues, launch version 1 of the form this month, progress the visibility epic and improve the live form.
Continuous funding model (CFM) projects
Low Code Digital Waste Service (Dorset Council)
Throughout December, the Dorset project team were preparing for the end of project Show and Tell which took place on the 11 January. A recording will be made available on the Local Digital website soon.
For January, the team is focussed on completing the closure report and accompanying documentation.
That’s it for this sprint, thanks for reading! For the daily download on all things #LocalDigital, be sure to follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and the DLUHC Digital Blog.
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