I sat down with IT leaders from the local government supply chain, Robin Denton – Microsoft - Director of their Local Government division; and Derek Wise - Chief Product and Technology Officer at Civica.

A thank you to Fintan Hastings for facilitating this conversation and Robin and Derek for their authentic and honest views on the sector.

Today's topic was: "how technology is transforming local government, how it can tackle some of the big challenges ahead."

Our conversation was orientated around four key sections:

In Part 1 we explored:

• Looking at the art of the possible
  • Sometimes the solution for LG leaders is simpler than it might seem, such as leveraging existing technologies at their disposal (data, smartphones etc)
• Democratisation of digitalisation
  • As local authorities become more digitised, it’s vital that no citizens or communities are left behind or excluded
  • How can LG leaders harness the wealth of data they already hold to make sure this doesn’t happen?
  • Could data sharing (across public services) be part of the solution here?

In part 2, we explored:

• Getting to why?
  • Rather than just looking to technology as the solution to different problems, we need to keep drilling down to the ‘why’?
    • What are LA leaders trying to achieve: ease financial pressures? Support vulnerable people? Tackle inequality?
    • How can technology be the enabler of those goals?
    • Is the solution procuring new tech, or making smarter use of the tech they already have?
• Social value
  • This is an increasingly important topic for LG leaders
  • How can digital technologies help make SV ambitions a reality? How can LG leaders make smarter use of the data they already hold to deliver real social value?