Our Digital Strategy sets out the shared vision of the London Borough of Sutton and the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames outlining how we will use technology to help us realise our ambitions for the borough. It explores the opportunities presented by the adoption of new technologies in order to improve the lives of the people that live and work here as well as businesses and visitors.

There are a number of pressures on Local Government including demographic change, the rising cost of services and to deliver services with significantly reduced budgets, and higher resident expectations. Whilst the Boroughs have high levels of connectivity and digital skills we recognise that not everyone has, so we will ensure we continue to offer phone and face to face to ensure we are inclusive.

An increasing number of places are turning to “smarter” approaches in planning their future, in creating a modern infrastructure and in delivering services. We are playing an important role in shaping thinking in how innovation can be harnessed to improve our boroughs. The councils are committed to adopting such “smart city” approaches to cope with the many challenges ahead and to create new opportunities for business and local communities.

We have spoken to residents, businesses, partners, experts, voluntary sector to gather views from the tech sector,
universities, councils, and community groups.

This strategy sets out how the councils visions have evolved, and underpins and complements the council’s existing strategies and vision.

Our Vision

To engage and empower stakeholders to help provide the services they need through the use of future
technologies, making it easier and improving lives. Improving the Borough through better connectivity.

Our vision is informed by the following principles:

• Shape demand -redirect resources to where they are most needed
• Engage with communities and businesses – using digital platforms
• Resilience -delivering fit for purpose infrastructure for the future
• VFM- delivering cost effective services
• Inclusive (Digital) -included in everything we do
• Citizen focused – rather than service focus
• Enable self service

Approach

As we move towards delivering digital services, we need to redesign how services are delivered from the customer’s perspective; to become a truly digital council rather than an online simulation of existing manual processes.

An example, the creation of an online form to trigger a call back from council, is different from providing a truly digital service. In a truly digital service, the submission of the form would automatically trigger the appropriate action, required to fulfil the customer’s request.

We are currently undergoing a full assessment of our ways of working, the back office systems and how information is managed.

Many of the services we provide are physical activities such as recycling collections or care for vulnerable adults. These may not be digital products but the processes that enable a resident to receive these services can become digital to the fullest extent. These can include online booking of appointments, digital payments, online application forms and access to customer profile information.