Southwark signs up to make services digitally fit for the future

4 July 2018

Southwark has joined other local authorities across the country to co-publish the Local Digital Declaration today (Wednesday 4 July). The declaration is a ‘call to arms’ to inject some energy and investment into the public sector’s work to bring services into the digital age, and designed to complement existing local transformation campaigns like the one happening in Southwark.

Cllr Kieron Williams, cabinet member for jobs, skills and innovation, said: “Increasingly people are looking online to get the best access to services, job opportunities and other benefits. At Southwark we are committed to ensuring our services are meeting the needs of our residents, are easy to use and inclusive, and in doing so keeping the cost of delivering those services down as much as possible. 
“Improving our digital services is a key part of achieving this and so we are delighted to be part of this collective action that is now being taken across the sector.”

As a co-publisher, Southwark Council will be eligible to bid for funding and support from the new Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government programme, be in a position influence future decisions and get better bargaining power and more flexibility from our IT suppliers.

The declaration embodies five principles to deliver the next  generation of local public services. These are:

  • We will go further to redesign our services around the needs of the people using them
  • We will ‘fix our plumbing’ to break our dependence on inflexible and expensive technology that doesn’t join up effectively
  • We will design safe, secure and useful ways of sharing information
  • We will demonstrate digital leadership, creating the conditions for genuine organisational transformation to happen
  • We will embed an open culture that values, encourages and supports digital ways of working from our workforce

You can read the declaration full on the Local Digital website www.localdigital.gov.uk/declaration, which gives more detail on the principles and the commitments we’ve made in order to lay the foundations for the public services of the

Page last updated: 04 July 2018

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