Delivering a digital council

Increasingly citizens expect to be able to access services quickly and conveniently at times and in ways that suit them. The rapidly changing technological landscape provides opportunities for councils to meet this expectation by implementing digital services, which can be provided cost-effectively to citizens via websites and mobile apps.

Connect sets out an ambitious programme of work across the full range of council services. Delivering this programme necessitates the introduction of new technologies, both to engage directly with the citizen, but also to more effectively use citizen data to deliver better targeted and more efficient services in the future.

At a national level Scotland’s Digital Future: A Strategy for Scotland describes a vision of public sector transformation enabled by digital technology with flexible structures and processes capable of adapting to future needs. It calls on public sector bodies to redesign services around the citizen, which will require collaboration across all public sector organisations.

To help facilitate this within councils, Digital Office Scotland is the digital transformation partner for Scottish Local Government.

This Digital and ICT Strategy sets out how we will exploit new technologies to help deliver its vision of improving the quality of life for everyone in South Lanarkshire. It describes how services will be delivered as “Digital First” and how we will work with partners, users and suppliers to create the secure data infrastructure to support digital services.

The strategy also sets out the technical foundations necessary to realise our digital vision. This includes ensuring that appropriate and sustainable computer systems, networks, ICT skills, software and data services are in place to support the transformation to a citizen centric and digital council both in the short term and in the years beyond.