This is the content of the ‘article’ element of the email newsletter I sent last week. Publishing here for posterity.
2025 has been a pretty tumultuous year in local government digital, largely due to the impact of the Localism bill in late 2024 and the imminent (and indeed immanent) prospect of local government reorganisation. Following the latest cabinet reshuffle, it feels like the ambitions might be being dialled back a little (note: I have no special insight other than what I read online), which probably isn’t a bad thing.
I can’t help but feel that some kind of coming together is required if the sector is to get the most out of the digital opportunity. I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in several research projects in the last year looking at some of the the big picture stuff, and to me the issue of capacity seems to be screaming out as the fundamental issue facing council digital teams across the country.
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Local government software is largely terrible because nobody has the time to put the effort into demanding and buying something better.
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Local government data is in a poorly maintained mess because nobody has the time to sort it out.
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Local government websites are still full of unintelligible content and PDF forms because nobody has the time to get round to fixing it.
I could go on (but don’t have the time, LOL!) but you get my point – many of the oft-cited root causes of digital incompetence actually have a root cause themselves – capacity.
Have hundreds of councils trying to do the same thing, over and over again, is nuts, and there could have been some potential in using the LGR process to create some scalable teams to deal with the issue. Trouble is, LGR itself creates so much work that I dare say the opportunity wouldn’t be realised for some time.
I wrote a thing last autumn about how councils could start sharing digital, data, and technology capabilities in a way that doesn’t impact local policy setting or require huge sector-wide reform projects. Shared services have a bad rep in the sector, but it doesn’t have to be that way if we do things properly and take our time.
If LGR doesn’t end up happening as widely as once was expected, it would be nice to think that some of the conversations that have started up between digital people could still result in sharing capabilities, reducing burdens, and increasing capacity across the sector.