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techUK’s Georgina Maratheftis & Jessica Russell take a look at transforming local public services with a place based approach and invite members for their views.

There is the familiar narrative that local public services continue to face financial constraints in the face of rising demand. Recognising that these challenges are increasingly interlinked and can’t be faced by individual service providers has led some local authorities and emergency services to respond by adopting an integrated, collaborative effort that cuts across various services, agencies and providers in what is increasingly referred to as a “place based approach”. We are already seeing this in the devolved areas such as Greater Manchester for example.  

To enable a genuine, multi-agent, place based approach within a locality, the organisations and agencies involved must have: 

1. Adequate technological solutions that deliver statutory services more efficiently and effectively and will ultimately underpin each organisation’s ability to store, access, manage and share their data. This could include cloud storage. 
2. An understanding of what they collect and store and why. This will enable an organisation to make better decisions with its own data, and will likely improve the quality of data they collect and make shareable within the wider public service delivery system. 
3. A strategic approach to data sharing and collaborative working that aligns with those of external organisations and agencies. 

An excellent example of this is Wigan’s award-winning “The Deal”, which aims to use technology to facilitate the delivery of integrated services with communities at the heart of service delivery. The council has worked closely with voluntary, third sector and private sector partners, to support community initiatives which use technology to create self-reliance. Its ambition is Wigan is a place where people want to invest, work and visit. 

Lancashire Constabulary acknowledges the importance of a place based approach to deliver value to citizens in terms of crime prevention, reduction and improved community safety. In its Crime Prevention Approach it outlines how intelligence and collaboration with local authorities “can better identify and address environmental factors that aid criminality…encourage anti-social behavior” and ultimately impact the citizens’ quality of life in the locality.  

techUK’s local public services offering 

Lines between public sector organisations are becoming increasingly blurred with the delivery of place based approach. Mirroring the evolving landscape of the local public services market, techUK will be looking in more detail at how technology can support transformation and make place based public service delivery a reality. The Local Government & Justice and Emergency services programmes will be working even more closely together to integrate key, transferable themes, challenges and opportunities and add this to what we offer to our members and stakeholders who are active in this area. We want to bring the relevant communities together, and pro-actively engage with the various agencies who deliver public services that are crucial to the public safety ecosystem. 

Get involved! 

From the 1-5 April we will be holding a ‘Place based Approach to Public Service Delivery’ campaign. We invite our techUK members and stakeholders to contribute their expertise in this crucial transformation that will enable the delivery of place based public services. This includes everything from data sharing to collaboration to digital leadership so there is plenty of room for your voice. 

If you would like to get involved in the campaign week or have any ideas or thoughts that you would like to contribute to support this area of techUK’s activity, please get in touch with either Georgina Maratheftis (who leads on all things local government) or Jess Russell (who leads on all things local public safety, including justice and emergency services). 

We also hope you can join us for our ‘A place based approach to local public service delivery,’ event on 27 March 2019 at techUK.