Delivering the LGR Digital Dividend
Originally published in LGC
This time last year saw much of the sector on tenterhooks, awaiting delivery of the English Devolution White Paper and the new government’s vision for reshaping local economic destiny. A year on, we now see that the command for local government reorganisation (LGR) in 21 county-district areas, the Treasury’s pound of flesh for funding the economic growth baubles of mayoral strategic authorities, is to the fore.
Having dutifully submitted LGR proposals to Marsham Street on time in recent days, the side quest has become the main act. With elections deferred, trust broken and doubts creeping in over the political capital and institutional capability of central government to deliver on last December’s devolution promise, for practical purposes attention must now refocus on the nuts and bolts of safely delivering the most significant structural upheaval outside of central government since the 1970s.
If the creation of new unitary authorities is designed to increase productivity and streamline governance, to the desired end of providing residents with better quality public services, we need to look at the means. And in this respect, the logistical challenge of merging multiple district authorities into these new authorities cannot, however, be overstated. This is particularly relevant when considering the need to integrate the multiple back-office technological systems which underpin public service delivery.
If handled well, such integration could reduce costs whilst improving the responsiveness and accessibility of local government systems, making them easier to monitor and manage – and ultimately ensuring residents receive better quality local public services.
In Localis’s latest report, Connected Devolution, commissioned by TechnologyOne, we examined the current policy context for technological integration and LGR, drawing on cutting-edge research and best practice examples from home and abroad to produce an analysis of the risks, opportunities and potential ways forward for successful, transformative LGR.
Our study concluded that the policy goal of creating fewer and larger councils is a social as well as structural challenge for local government in seeking to secure a safe and legally compliant ‘day one’ for the councils forged from local government reorganisation.
Connected Devolution makes a series of policy recommendations to central government, strategic combined authorities as well as existing and new local unitary councils, on how to deliver a digital devolution dividend from the overhaul of local government structures.
Among the key findings uncovered in the report was the sub-optimal digital readiness of the local state. The digital readiness of English local government is held back by pervasive legacy dependency, fragmentation, supplier lock-in, and constrained finances. While national digital ‘rails’ provide useful precedents, they are fundamentally incomplete for the comprehensive integration demands of LGR.
Capacity issues are a binding constraint. The overarching limiting factor is organisational capacity, with only approximately two percent of local authority headcount staff in digital/data-adjacent roles, a human factor significantly frustrating LGR systems integration. This necessitates ring-fenced skills funding and professionalisation against frameworks like the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework.
Governance and local leadership will have to play a central role in this. LGR outcomes hinge on the new operating model and how decision-making powers are allocated across the merging entities. Leaders must align political and executive sponsors behind an interface-first vision and adopt a ‘rails-first, interface-led’ strategy to guide convergence. Effective governance must embed cyber and data ethics from the outset.
There is great public value potential of data integration for prevention to be harvested. Integrated services become deliverable when data from many standalone organisations is consolidated into a single, jointly governed analytics “spine”. This is necessary to enable truly preventative services and complex cross-agency care planning.
And in the context of devolution and public service reform, collaboration must be the dominant operating context. Regional collaboration is no longer optional but must be the fundamental operating context for LGR success. Realising this will mean using archetypes like networked administrative organisations or community product consortia to pool expertise and standardise assets across local boundaries.
Successful transformation means treating the integration process as a combined social and technical challenge – with a focus on standardising processes and data across organisational boundaries rather than a mere IT system replacement or contract renewal.
We are at a critical moment, and well managed integration which combines empowered digital leadership, disciplined commercial strategy and realistic multi-year timelines can help achieve promised efficiencies. But failure to do so will derail public service reform and frustrate the devolution agenda, whenever that gets back on the rails. By this criterion, doing local digital well will be fundamental to any hopes for connecting regional economic growth goals to improved neighbourhood public service delivery.