Vicky is one of the creators of CLGdotTV, where she also produces and presents programmes. She has 25 years experience of delivering projects in and for public sector organisations including government departments, local authorities, the NHS, and professional associations. Much of her work has been around digitally-enabled innovation and improvement.
@vickysargentIn 2018 we covered use and misuse of data; climate change; accessibility; smart places; health & social care transformation; identity & authentication; the Local Digital Fund and more. Here’s some highlights:
Climate change and environmental issues: these are likely to feature strongly on CLGdotTV in 2019 following contributions last year from Dr David Greenfield on the Government's new Waste Strategy and the Katowice Climate Change Summit. Waste services are a prime candidate for local digital transformation as we heard in a session on service design from June.
The data opportunity: we had some great data discussions on managing demand in health & social care; the Leeds approach to getting health and care data flowing; unconscious bias in the use of data; safe use of sharing tools to combat fraud; why data is not just for ‘geeks’; and the potential of blockchain.
The care crisis: in a year of waiting for that Social Care green paper, we discussed skill shortages, how the system looks from a carer perspective; risks from care home closures; how unpaid carers contribute value equivalent to a second NHS; Extracare provision and why there’s not enough of it; reducing demand for care by focus on wellness and prevention; and why ‘nobody wants to live in a care home’.
Digital health & care: digital technologies can make a huge contribution in supporting human interventions in health and social care and efficiencies in service delivery and management. Contrary to popular perception, progress is being made. We heard about care home quality reporting in Rochdale; care visit outcomes recording technologies; smart phone testing for Atrial Fibrillation; digitial collaboration across health and social care in Leeds; and social care information and advice online from NHS Digital.
Smart places: many places are getting 'smart'. We’ve been hearing about projects and programmes in Leeds – our ongoing podcast series with Dylan Roberts; York, where we’ve recorded a number of programmes about the developing rewards from acting early on connectivity; Shropshire, which is making investments in smart care; Bedford, which is getting ahead on digital democracy.
How MHCLG is steering ‘local digital’: we devoted several shows to Whitehall’s 2018-launched initiative to get councils to develop and share their digital innovation. Paul Maltby and Emma Collingbrindge (late of Stockport council) explained its rationale; Linda O’Halloran discussed response to the call for projects, and later, how selection for funding focused on replicability. Georgina Maratheftis of TechUK covered the response of the private sector, while Emelia Cedeno of Crown Commercial Service and Poss Apostolou of DXW drew out the links between the fund and initiatives to ensure that SMEs can access opportunities to support councils in their digital journeys.
Ensuring access for all: in September we heard about the new EU Accessibility Directive (no, it won’t go away with Brexit) and how GDS will be supporting and monitoring compliance. In November Linda Chandler and Amanda Derrick described how your local neighbourhood could be made more accessible for everyone thanks to a talking map app and crowd-sourced local data.
Council customer accounts: time to ‘roll back’?: lots of discussion from our Linked in post about this item recorded at our 27 June ‘Audience with..’ event. Out panel agreed (as did many in our audience) that councils need to be thinking differently about collecting and using customer data for identity and authentication.