We started the week by thinking about our communications strategy.

The main purpose of this exercise was to make sure we’re clear on the main audiences who need to engage with our work and agree on the key messages we hope to share with them.

We began by drafting our high-level vision statement, which is the change we want to see in the world. Here’s our first attempt:

We then thought about LOTI’s mission; defining the role we want to play in achieving that vision. In particular, we wanted to emphasise our focus on using technology and data to deliver real-world outcomes.

To explain how we deliver on that mission, we crafted a ‘LOTI in a nutshell’ statement, which explains our role as a vehicle to enable better collaboration between London boroughs on projects that have a strong element of digital, technology and/or data.

Using Pipeline

A key audience we want to reach is other colleagues working across the local government sector, as the outcomes of LOTI’s projects may feed into their work.

To that end, we published our summer projects concerning Seamless Wi-Fi, Digital Apprenticeships and Information Governance on Pipeline, a service from LocalGov Digital to aid innovation and collaboration in local government digital.

Project Updates

Seamless Wi-Fi

For our Seamless Wi-Fi project, we invited network managers across our member boroughs to join our Basecamp project space. Together, with a representative from JISC and Camden’s Fabio Negro, we’ll use this platform to support them during the implementation of GovWifi, Govroam and Eduroam.

Digital Apprenticeships

We had a productive conversation with Cate McLaurin and Alex Jacobs from Hackney (lead borough on this project) in which we started planning a discovery phase to focus on user needs.

Our early thinking is that there are at least four groups of users whose needs we need to explore and understand:

1. Line managers in ICT/Digital and Technology: need to know what steps to take to create, recruit, and manage a variety of digital apprenticeship roles in their team(s) so that they can easily deliver a successful apprenticeship programme.
2. Members of LOTI: need support to successfully implement their own apprenticeship schemes so that they can fulfil their commitment to creating 100 digital apprenticeships by September 2020.
3. Potential Apprentices: need to know that the role they are applying for will give them the best chance of success in their future career so that they can make informed decisions.
4. Current Apprentices: need to have access to and benefit from the experiences and networks of their peers so that they can gain maximum value from their apprenticeships.

Next week, we’ll share our plan.

Meanwhile, Cate and Alex have volunteered to lead discussions and field any practical questions from our member boroughs about creating a digital apprenticeships scheme, via LOTI’s Basecamp project space.

Information Governance (IG)

Last week we published a draft Information Sharing Protocol for London and have received lots of useful feedback. Thanks to those who have contributed to this document, which we will be reviewing with our members at our IG workshop on 6 September. We’ve been working with Fozlu Miah and Sudip Trivedi from Camden (lead borough on this project) to finalise the content of that workshop and circulated the agenda and pre-reading to our members.

Future Project Ideas Bank

Thank you to everyone who has already submitted a suggestion to our Future Project Ideas Bank.

Please do share your ideas by 6 September for consideration at our next all-member workshop on 20 September. If you’d like to find out more about what we’re looking for, please do read our blog.

What’s next?

Coming up next week, we’ll be:

1. Developing a plan for the Discovery Phase for the Digital Apprenticeships Project.
2. Conducting further research to inform our Information Governance workshop.
3. Continuing our visits to member boroughs to find out about their priorities, challenges and ideas.

Thanks for reading!

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