Why Digital is important
In just over 2 decades the internet has become a huge part of our everyday lives. Today 86% of adults in the UK are online. More people are using online services for shopping, banking, information and entertainment because they tend to be quicker, more convenient and cheaper to use. Public expectations for better online services from local authorities are growing.
The challenges we face
There has never been a more challenging time for Local Government. Financial constraints are requiring us to reinvent ourselves to be more efficient and effective, while at the same time public expectations are growing, particularly for making it easy to interact with us in a way that suits them.
Opportunities to change
- We are committed to and recognized as delivering excellent service to our customers, putting them at the heart of what we do
- We have better information about our customers, their needs and behaviours than ever before that we can use to inform service delivery
- Improvements are constantly being made to technology and we have a rich, local community of developers and data analysts we can work with
- There are also growing opportunities to collaborate and share with others to improve our services together
The changes we need to make are less about technology, and more about our approach to how we use it to deliver excellent services.
What we aim to achieve
This strategy sets out how we will meet our challenges and exploit the opportunities open to us. We have formed it around five key objectives that articulate what we want to achieve.
Our vision is to deliver world class digital services to our customers through:
- Being Digital by Design: Making our digital services so good, convenient and easy to use that people make them their first choice and are able to succeed the first time unaided
- Promoting Inclusion: Ensuring everyone has the capability to access and use digital services to do things that can benefit them day to day
- Putting the Customer in Control: Enabling our customers to engage with us in ways that best suit them.
- Supporting Business Growth: Supporting local economic growth by improving digital infrastructure and partnering with business to exploit new digital opportunities
- Using Collaboration: Achieving better outcomes through working together, sharing good practice and making our data open by default