Innovation and Efficiency

Creating a common digital direction

19.04.18: Phil Rumens, chair of the LocalGov Digital Steering Group and digital services manager for West Berkshire Council, urges local authorities to make use of the Local Government Digital Service Standard (LGDSS) in order to exploit the full opportun...

Get what you pay for, and only pay for what you get

19.04.18: Matthew Sparkes, deputy director for financial services at the Crown Commercial Service (CCS), on the public sector benefits of the brand-new Spend Analysis and Recovery Services framework. Every year, government bodies including central de...

Council cuts waiting times for land searches by 8 weeks

11.04.18: Homebuyers in West Dorset are benefitting from faster land searches after a council implemented new measures. West Dorset District Council put an improvement plan in place in 2016 to deal with a backlog of applications for conveyancing sear...

Seizing the opportunity to shape drone usage

04.04.18: Kathy Nothstine, lead for future cities in Nesta’s Challenge Prize Centre, explains how a new scheme will help local authorities harness the use of drones to improve public service delivery. The technology enabling unmanned aerial veh...

Does the UK need a cohesive smart city strategy?

18.12.17: Eddie Copeland, director of government innovation at Nesta, argues central government must have clarity of vision to ensure the smart city agenda isn’t heavily focused on technology, but rather on existing urban challenges. For years...

Smart Cambridge makes rapid progress

18.12.17: Dan Clarke, programme manager at Cambridge County Council, explains how Smart Cambridge has evolved since it was established in August 2015 by the local city deal, and reveals what’s coming next. Cambridge has made it into Britain&rsq...

Driving inclusive growth in the West Midlands

14.12.17: PSE’s Josh Mines reports from the Social Value Conference 2017, where mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street explained how social value is benefitting his region. One of the values behind the combined authorities that have been set up...

The rise and fall of the smart city concept

10.12.17: Nicola Yates, CEO of Future Cities Catapult, advocates for a smarter public sphere that stays ahead of the technology curve rather than entirely reactive to market developments. The ‘smart city’ rose to prominence as a marketing...

Cost benefit analysis of government infrastructure ‘misused and poorly communicated’

20.09.17: The government must improve its system for valuing the costs and benefits of its infrastructure to improve the delivery of key projects, experts have today revealed.   In a report called, ‘How to value infrastructure: Improving c...

Public bodies go local as over £1bn spent on digital services with SMEs

25.08.17: Local authorities and other public sector organisations have spent a whopping £1.2bn with SMEs on cloud and digital services since 2012, meaning almost half of digital spend is being invested in smaller companies. In new figures publi...

New LGA tool shares innovative ways councils can fund arts and culture

16.08.17: The first-ever online resource to help councils develop innovative ways of investing in local culture under increasingly stretched budgets has today been released by the LGA and Arts Council England. Named ‘Culture Hub: good practice...

Local government needs ‘at least 100 more’ co-location plans by 2020

01.08.17: Local government needs to try to engage in at least another 100 co-location schemes with other public sector bodies by 2020 given their simplicity and cost-saving potential, PSE has been told. Speaking to us shortly before the launch of the...

LG mutual mooted to reduce £650m a year council insurance costs

20.07.17: The Local Government Association (LGA) has today announced that it is “exploring options” to set up a local government mutual to reduce the huge amounts that councils currently spend on insurance. The mutual would support author...

Innovation in commissioning services

26.06.17: Malcolm Harbour CBE, who wrote Parliament’s first report on innovation in public procurement in 2008 and now chairs the LGA expert group on this subject, justifies the need to integrate commissioning into innovative procurement and identif...

Putting digital at the heart of service delivery

28.04.17: Following the recent Smart Essex Digital Summit, which was hosted by Essex County Council, David Wilde, executive director and chief information officer at the local authority, tells PSE why, in order to prepare for the challenges of the future...