Digital Coventry

• To set the scene for Coventry City Council and partners for the future direction of digital services, infrastructure and innovation.
• To be an over-arching document that gives a clear direction of where the Council, working alongside all of our partners, wants to be in the next five years – recognising that we will continually adapt and evolve to keep up-to-date with the latest advances in digital technologies.
• To focus limited public resources on achieving the best digital outcomes across the whole Council, the city and beyond. To encourage and direct investment in the digital programme by others and to maximise limited public resources.
• To encourage services, people and organisations to work together to share developments and knowledge.
• To address the growing demand for digital services and focus on what residents want in order to deliver outcomes that matter to them.
• To enable the Council, residents, businesses and partners to get the most out of digital.

The Council will play a part in delivering the Digital Strategy, but we will not do that alone. This is a digital strategy for the city and not just for the Council. The universities, businesses, residents, public sector including the NHS and the police, the voluntary and community sector will all be
progressing digital work and will continue to innovate and devise solutions. This agenda cannot be controlled or directed by one organisation alone.

The Council’s role will be focussed on helping to identify the priorities that will lead to the biggest impacts on economic growth and public service reform – this will include the infrastructure to support digital innovation in the city, providing insight and delivering public service reform directly,
including working in a more digital way as a Council and promoting work that will support every resident in the city to benefit from digital change.

Our Digital Strategy will need:

• Us to ensure that our key policies and strategies are integrated with our digital ambition and principles including planning, procurement, economic growth, early help, adult and children’s social care, education, workforce, ICT, customer journey programme and commissioning. The use of digital must be designed with the customer at the heart and is not an end in itself.
• An effective and progressive digital connectivity infrastructure in the city, including broadband/fibre, mobile telecommunications (4G) and public Wi-Fi. This supports the Council’s Local Plan and Government’s Digital Communication Infrastructure Strategy ambitions.
• Us to develop the digital skills and confidence of our workforce so they are equipped to apply technology productively and proactively to find better ways of delivering public services. We need to continue to develop specialist skills and capabilities through insight and business intelligence to enable us to achieve our ambitions. This also includes skills of influencing and working collaboratively with partners to achieve outcomes through different means.
• Influencing the development of digital skills and solutions within our communities through partners (including voluntary organisations), schools, colleges and universities, so they are engaged, not excluded from the revolution. Engaging residents digitally too so that we reinvigorate democracy across communities.
• Changing the way we design, procure and build digital systems so that the customer journey is at the heart of how new systems operate and work. Reshaping the traditional local government software and service market to ensure there is increased choice and better value for money. Suppliers will be challenged to offer functionality rich digital systems with a focus on the customer experience, data quality, integration and adaptability.
• Protecting privacy, delivering robust information, data and cyber security and investing in delivering digital resilience so that our online services can be trusted to be safe, reliable and to work through implementing the actions in our Information Management and ICT strategies.
• Redesigning and implementing business policies, strategies and processes to have digital and customer focussed design at their core.
• Focusing on, and maximising the value in, our data and information. This includes identifying our core data and information assets. Creating “golden records” for these core data sets with a focus on data integrity and quality. Making data open when we can and sharing with our partners where governance allows.
• Designing and implementing digital services which align with industry and sector standards, policies and procedures. Where these do not exist, we will define them.