Appendix 1 Southwarks Digital Strategy-1

Southwark’s Digital Strategy
Your Digital Council
February 2016
APPENDIX 1

“We are delighted to present Southwark’s digital strategy. This document details our ambitions as a digital council and
as a digital borough, it explores the value digital can bring and the challenges we will inevitably encounter.
The arguments for going digital are persuasive, especially in the current economic climate. Funding from central
government to local government is being drastically reduced. Southwark Council will have to save more than £60million
over the next three years. This is a key factor in our realisation that no amount of “salami-slicing” of costs can deliver
the services we need. Instead, it requires a radical re-imagining of how we deliver services and manage operations.
If we embrace digital, the potential is enormous: reduced costs, increased efficiencies, better interactions with
residents, better use of data and - the great prize - improved outcomes and better lives for the people we serve.
It will take hard work, creativity and cooperation to achieve. The political will is there, the realisation that re-imagining
services from a customer perspective will vastly improve what we do is there. We must seize both and make
Southwark a truly digital council and borough.”
Councillor Fiona Colley,
Cabinet Member for Finance,
Change and Performance
Councillor Radha Burgess,
Deputy Cabinet Member for Digital
Strategy
Foreword
Southwark’s Digital Strategy • southwark.gov.uk • Page 01

Our Vision Statement: “As a digital council we
use technology in our operations and service
delivery to improve outcomes and the lives of
the people we serve.”
Our Goals
In writing this strategy we had three objectives in mind:
• to create a practical guide that would set out the case
for digital and empower our service managers to lead
digital service design and transformation
• to inspire and initiate conversations across the council
and the borough about our digital ambitions, learning
from residents, managers and staff
• to clearly document how we will ensure the digital
strategy is delivered and sustained over the coming
years. In order for the strategy to succeed, it must be
‘live’ - updated and reviewed at regular intervals.
Southwark’s digital strategy is the first step towards
embracing change and re-imagining our attitudes to
digital infrastructure and service delivery.
There are major challenges in achieving this vision. Two
of the biggest are legacy systems and the scale of
change required. We have a sprawling, large portfolio of
business applications and data, built in a pre-digital era
and not fit to support modern online services; we also
need to ensure sufficient focus and prioritisation of the
change management effort required to make this a
success. Rationalising our business applications,
updating technologies and investing in digital training
internally and externally are both critical to success.
With this document, we set out how we as a council and
borough will address those challenges, and how we will
keep up with the changing habits of our residents, their
expectations and needs, and help achieve the incredible
opportunities digital technology offers to improve our
services and the lives of residents.
What Does Digital Mean?
With a new emphasis on digital, we will use technology to
improve our customers’ experience so we get services
right first time. By streamlining our services and
incorporating digital tools, our customers will move away
from traditional methods of contact to digital interactions
by preference - known as “digital by default.”
Going digital is less about IT technologies and hardware
and more about developing a culture internally and
externally that embraces digital as the norm. This
includes our approach to using digital tools as part of
service design and choosing to use digital as a legitimate
way of communicating with our customers. The
technologies we use and our ability to access them as an
organisation whilst intrinsically linked will be separately
addressed by the Technology Strategy, led by IT.
We have identified the two key initiatives in Southwark
going digital as becoming a digital council and
developing a digital borough.
In 2014/15 across our three My Southwark
Service Points we had 146,743 customer
contacts such as helping people with enquiries,
payments and documentation and 25,163 self
serve interactions with people independently
using the digital facilities provided to carry out
transactions online. We have seen a steady
increase in the use of self serve facilities.
The case for digital in Southwark

A digital council will mean putting our customers at the
centre of all digital change, and developing and
maintaining an internal digital culture. We must be
supremely aware of the digitally excluded and ensure
that there are non-digital channels for those who really
need them. We must also continuously improve the
digital services we provide.
As a big, complex organisation that provides hundreds of
different services to our customers, over time we have
developed separate processes and have become used to
asking our customers to interact with each service in a
different way. The way we have set up our services
online makes it very difficult for our customers to get the
information they need or to carry out an activity or
transaction easily and independently. This inconsistent
approach has become increasingly frustrating, confusing
and time-consuming for our customers and indeed for us
when processing requests and collating customer data.
This is something we are actively changing.
We want to inspire confidence in our digital services for
all of our customers. We want going online to be the first
preference when customers choose to interact with us;
for it to be digital by deafult. For customers to trust our
services online and actively choose them first, we need to
create truly accessible, good quality digital services – and
to do that, we need to transform how we work, starting
with continually listening to our customers and
incorporating their feedback when making improvements
and changes. We also want to have a consistent look
and feel to our digital processes for our internal and
external customers. By being bold, re-imagining and
redesigning our services, and embracing digital tools and
processes, we can improve the customer experience and
make financial and resource savings across the
organisation. With these savings we can increase our
capacity and focus our time and expertise on
understanding and helping those who need support to
get and stay online. The better our online services are,
the faster our customers will move away from choosing
traditional methods of contact, like the phone, to digital
interactions.
The Government Digital Strategy of 2012
1
set the scene
for digital change and has since been the catalyst for
digital transformation across central and local
government. The Government Digital Service estimate
savings between £1.7 and £1.8 billion per year from
moving services from offline, face-to-face or phone, to
digital channels. A key part of this saving is attributed to
transactional services such as online payments, saving
both customers time and the government money.
A Digital Council Is a Better Council

A further impetus for change in Southwark is decreasing
budgets from central government and the impending
additional 40% cut to our spend over the next three
financial years. Since 2011/12 the government has cut
Southwark’s council budget by £90 million and in 2015/16
we lost a further £31 million. As per the Council Plan we
have faced and will continue to face financial cuts, but will
not let them limit the scope of our ambition.
In order to do more for less we need to radically rethink
how we deliver services, to look for innovative and
improved ways of working and reach out to our
customers to understand and deliver what they want. We
must rethink and diversify how we deliver those services.
Our digital capability is central to us creating sustainable
and legitimate solutions to the issues we face. We must
act now or risk compromising valued and vital front line
services to be able to meet budgetary commitments.

A digital borough will mean we will extend our support to
the wider community, improve access to infrastructure
and actively support people to use it.
At Southwark Council we are committed to delivering a
fairer future for all of our residents. Excellent digital
services are a central way we can make this a reality. By
actively improving our digital offering we will:
• Minimise waste and duplication of internal processes
• Create and maintain a web presence that customers
choose to consistently use
• Make greatly needed financial and resource savings
across the organisation
• Be able to reinvest savings and resource into
supporting the vulnerable in our communities.
A Digital Borough Is a Better Borough

In Southwark we regularly ask our residents about their
access to and use of the internet and their preferred
method of contact when engaging with the council. These
insights help us build a picture of what our customers
think of our services. They also help us to identify areas
for improvement and changes we can introduce that will
knowingly benefit our residents, businesses and
communities.
With 17% of Southwark residents not having basic online
skills, it is clear that having access to the internet does
not necessarily equate with the ability to use it
2
. Four
specific groups of people have been identified as being
less likely to have access to the internet or have basic
online skills:
• residents over 60 years of age
• disabled people
• council tenants
• unemployed or low income households.
These demographic groups are particularly at risk of
being digitally excluded, meaning unlikely to access a
service provided or requested via the internet. The barrier
to inclusion, identified nationally, is largely motivation, as
53% of households without internet access think that they
don’t need it, and lack of digital skills a secondary reason
for not being online.
Housing Self-Serve: A Case Study
The housing self-serve portal, which launched on 13
October 2014, enables customers to independently raise
repairs via self-serve, check individual repair history and
review account balances for rent or service charges.
Previously these services were only accessible via phone
or email which put a huge strain on resources to manage
demand.
Whilst portal development has introduced significant
improvements for our customers, the project experienced
challenges that have taught us valuable lessons in
digitising complex services.
Lessons Learnt
Five key lessons have been learnt from the Housing Self-
Serve project that can apply to any future digital change
project.
• Determine clear governance, roles and responsibilities
from the outset. A Project Manager must be appointed
from within the service area to lead change, manage
stakeholders and ensure their buy in.
• If working with a back office system, liaise with key
stakeholders with detailed understanding who can
document current capabilities, data requirements,
current processes and any requirements relating to
new products.
• Establish quality control measures for existing and
future processes. This can minimise the poor quality
and inconsistent interactions customers have with a
self serve product.
• Fully understand the requirements for the project and
research what other suppliers have to offer before
committing to purchasing a product. Many of our back
office systems are complex and it may be that there is
not an off the shelf product that will link in easily.
Understand what the new requirements are before
purchasing something as amendments could be made
to an existing system at a lower cost.
• Understand security requirements for any systems.
Engage with IT as early on as possible into a project to
understand what security checks will need to be carried
out for the system, by whom, at what point in the
project and how long they take to avoid potential
delays.
Response
Customer response to the portal has been very positive,
with users saying that they are ‘very impressed with the
new system’, and customer satisfaction is higher for the
online self-serve portal than via email or phone. The
challenge now is to encourage widespread take up of the
online portal, particularly with council tenants. Despite
continuous active promotion we are not seeing take-up
by those in social housing.

Benefits to customers
• Customer satisfaction has improved and fewer formal
customer complaints have been made
• Convenience for the customer: the service is
accessible online 24/7.
Benefits to Southwark
• Introducing the self-service portal enabled us to phase
out non-emergency repairs calls during out of hours
and all rent-related calls to the Contact Centre
• Set a precedent for potential customer self-serve
interactions across Southwark
• Substantial contribution to expanding council’s digital
offering and shifting customers away from traditional
methods of contact
• Streamlined back end processes as self serve requests
require less time/skill to process.
Between April 2014 and March 2015, 497,658
calls were answered at the Contact Centre

As we move services online, we need to completely
redesign how services are delivered from the customer’s
perspective, to become truly digital rather than an online
simulation of existing paper and manual processes. We
are examining our current ways of working, the back
office systems and how information is handled.
Many of the services we provide are physical products
such as recycling collections or care for vulnerable
adults. These may not be digital products but the
processes that enable someone to receive these services
can become digital to the fullest possible extent. These
can include online booking of appointments, digital
payments, online application forms and access to
customer profile information in My Southwark.
We will enable the digital by default approach by:
• Making services accessible online 24 hours a day on
any device including smartphones and tablets, so that
applications and payments can be made at any time,
anywhere, in a way that suits our customers. This is
keeping pace with other modern businesses and
therefore with our customers’ expectations of accessing
services and products.
• Providing pertinent advice and information that is
succinct. We will review website content and use
customer insight tools to constantly improve the
information, empowering customers to easily find what
they need on the website to carry out a transaction.
This will reduce the need to phone or email the council.
• Diverting calls away from the contact centre and face-
to-face interactions at the Service Points with easy to
use digital services, saving money, time and officer
expertise.
To make this happen, we need to act as a Digital Council,
and in embracing this challenge we will:
• Establish a standardised approach to digital service
redesign
• Utilise corporately endorsed digital tools: online
application forms (eforms), digital payments, CRM and
My Southwark
• Streamline internal, manual processes and scrutinise
back office systems
• Make best use of IT infrastructure to enable sharing of
non sensitive data across departments
• Share our experiences and lessons learnt from
engaging with customers and from enabling change.
Who is managing the transformation?
The Cabinet Member for Finance, Modernisation &
Performance, the Deputy Cabinet Member for Digital
Strategy and the Strategic Director of Housing and
Modernisation are leading digital transformation for the
organisation. The Transformation team (in Housing and
Modernisation), will coordinate organisation wide digital
change as a Digital Transformation Programme whilst
providing support and expertise to design and implement
digital service improvements, realise efficiency savings
and improve customer experiences.
The Digital Strategy for Southwark is closely linked to the
2012 Customer Access Strategy where we first
articulated the need to improve the way customers
access services, change how we engage with customers
and invest and interact with technologies to the benefit of
the organisation and our customers. The principles
outlined in the Customer Access Strategy as below are
still applicable.
• Taking responsibility for customer service because
an efficient, effective local authority relies on customer
focus being embedded at all levels of the organisation
• Getting it right first time because customers rightly
expect that basic enquiries can be resolved correctly at
the first point of contact
• Digital by default because digital council services are
designed to take advantage of digital data to optimise,
transform and create new and better ways of providing
services in ways that customers now demand and
expect
• Treating everyone with respect because we have
committed to treating our residents as we would want
members of our own family to be treated.
How we will become a
digital council

The challenges we face
It is clear what we need to do and exactly why we need to
do it but we must recognise that this will not be easy and
that there are certain challenges we will encounter.
Councillors and officers alike are familiar with the
difficulties and frustrations accessing and utilising IT
infrastructure. These issues will need to be addressed so
we can build trust in our technologies and a greater
confidence that will enable us to create reliable digital
services for all of our customers and staff. A Technology
Strategy will be published, outlining our plan for
addressing existing issues and future-proofing our
infrastructure whilst considering the ambition of the
Digital Strategy.
For many Local Authorities, it is commonplace to find a
large number of business systems holding key customer
datasets, each designed many years before the
technologies and concepts of digital were known. This
digital way of working will be different, but by creating an
organisation-wide set of standards and key principles to
help introduce change, we can ensure that services are
supported and that our customers experience
consistency and high standards from every council
interaction.
Reflecting on the significant challenges there have been
with IT system reliability, it is natural that there will be
some reluctance to further trust technology systems to
handle key business processes. In addition, digitally
designed processes will be significantly different from the
way services are currently delivered, so there will be
significant hurdles to overcome to make this change
successful. To achieve this change, we will need to
recreate our organisational culture, gain buy-in and a
sense of urgency in order to introduce change that will
have positively impact our customers. Just as we want
our customers to choose digital, we want staff to embrace
digital as a new way of thinking to be able to provide
better services more efficiently. It is crucial we get our
staff excited by digital opportunities. We have the
expertise and knowledge within the organisation to
support this culture change with training, sharing of
experiences and best practice and by establishing a
robust governance to ensure that these principles work
for us.
Research suggests that a face to face
interaction with a customer can cost a local
authority £10.53, managing a basic phone
query can cost £3.00 and a customer
interacting online or carrying out a transaction
£0.08.3
.

Our digital strategy will be underpinned by four principles. These principles will guide the way we work and help us
deliver the changes we make as an organisation.
Principle 1 - “Putting the customer at the
centre of digital change”
Many of the ways we work as an organisation have been
designed to reflect our internal structures and reflect
processes that have built up over time. We will change
this by putting our customers at the centre of the way we
work. We will put ourselves in the customer's shoes and
re-imagine services around them, using digital tools to
make their experience of interacting with us smoother and
quicker. We will develop relationships with our customers
where they feel confident that the feedback they provide
will be acted upon.
Principle 2 - “Putting digital ways of working
at the heart of our organisational culture”
We will change the way we think of ourselves as an
organisation by embedding digital ways of working at all
levels of our organisation. We will build our digital
capability, encouraged by our senior managers, by
investing in our infrastructure and the skills of our
workforce. Wherever possible, we will make digital ways
of working part of everyone’s day jobs and cultivate an
environment of digital self-confidence and capability. We
will provide a digital infrastructure that staff can rely on to
make their jobs easier.
Principle 3 -“Ensuring that everyone can
share in the benefits of digital change”
As we change the way we work, we will ensure that our
customers are not left behind and unable to access the
services and support they need. We recognise that the
most vulnerable in our community may need extra help.
By doing things more efficiently through digital, we can
make best use of our time and expertise, reinvesting it
into supporting the vulnerable of our community in
accessing our services.
Principle 4 - “Committing to continuously
improve our services”
We will take an iterative approach to maintaining and
improving our services by making small and incremental
improvements. Instead of completely rethinking our
approach every few years, we will regularly check in with
our customers and obtain feedback so we can
continuously improve our services. In doing so we can
save money by minimising the need to overhaul and
redesign our services from scratch every few years.
Southwark’s four digital principles

At Southwark we have identified five priority areas to
focus on that will enable digital change - a transformed
website, best use of our infrastructure, business
intelligence and analytics, digital inclusion and digital
communication.
Priority 1 - A transformed website
We will completely redesign and modernise Southwark’s
website following the principles and standards set by the
Government Digital Service. Thanks to feedback from
customers, we recognise that the design and structure of
our current website can be counterintuitive and
confusing, often reflecting our internal organisational
structures and service names. It’s not very user-friendly.
Currently we have a significant number of web pages that
display expired information, irrelevant or duplicated
content or broken links to web pages that no longer exist.
We will create a website that is both well designed and
well used, rooted in the digital principles of this strategy.
The website redesign is all-encompassing; from rewriting
web content on every web page through to renaming
service areas based on what our external customers call
them.
Transaction-led – Our new website will be a
transactional led website with the emphasis on easy
access and use of self-service facilities such as online
application forms and online payments.
Up-to-date and relevant information - We will continue
to provide key information but really analyse its purpose
ensuring that we are not duplicating what other websites
publish (such as the NHS) and that key words and
phrases are at the top of each page, in clear view, where
possible. Services will receive training and guidelines on
how to write engaging information for the web and where
key facts should be placed on a web page to help
customers access it quickly. All web page content will be
regularly reviewed, maintained and owned by the service
and the use of data analytics tools will confirm to us what
customers want to read and what is no longer applicable.
Mobile and tablet-enabled - The design principles for
the redesign are mobile and tablet led as many of our
customers use them to access the Southwark website, so
information and transactions will look and work as easily
as they would on a desktop.
Three clicks - Our aim is for customers to access what
they want from our website in just three clicks. To support
this, we’ll create a search function that will be a
prominent part of all our web pages to help customers
access what they want quickly.
Rethinking the way we view success – We will adopt
new success criteria for our website. Previously we
valued how long customers stayed on a webpage or how
much time they spent viewing the website altogether.
This will become obsolete. Instead we will use analytical
tools to see how quickly transactions were carried out
and how little time customers spent on web pages. This
will demonstrate to us that the information we are
providing is succinct and relevant, enabling the customer
to transact with us efficiently and confidently. Any web
pages that do not meet the criteria can then be amended
to meet customer need or removed.
Our priority areas

In 2015 we had 1,127,494 views of the website
from mobile phones.
In 2015 we had 2,793,327 views of the website
from desktops.
Secure and personalised customer accounts – We
will increase the functionality of My Southwark, our
secure personalised customer account. My Southwark
currently enables customers to report repairs online,
make enquiries, view housing rent or library account
details, view localised services such as nearby libraries
and leisure centres and have personalised home pages
presenting information expressly wanted. It can also pre
populate application forms, remembering key pieces of
information that do not need to be re-keyed on multiple
occasions.
My Southwark is a popular and well used digital tool but
our aspirations for its development are greater. We will
increase our ability to personalise content and actively
push pertinent information to My Southwark users.
Through tailoring our email communications in particular
we want to enhance and improve the experience of
interacting with us.
As of the end of 2015 we had over 120,000 My
Southwark customer accounts.
Putting customers in charge - We want our customers
to become more like partners and not passive recipients
of our services. Our website and My Southwark
improvements particularly will support customers to
initiate service requests, manage communications and
receive regular electronic updates and notifications from
us at regular intervals until a service has been delivered.
We will also encourage and enable customers to find the
information they need on our website without having to
call the contact centre or get in touch with us by other
means. This way of thinking will enable us to consider
how data is open and best used across the organisation
internally and how pertinent information is open and
available to our customers at their convenience with
minimal officer involvement.
For example, instead of someone sending in a Freedom
of Information request which an officer collates data on
and responds, instead we can make this information
accessible and readily available to view on the website.
“I found applying for my Blue Badge much easier than it was a few years ago. I just had to go online to apply, which
was really easy and the badge came much quicker than in the past. I also like that I can now check my rent account
and council tax bill online too.”
Philippe, Borough and Bankside

Redesigning our services around the customer is a key
part of our digital strategy. To enable this we will
challenge and review our business applications, the
systems that hold information about our customers,
record details of transactions and account balance
information. We currently have a high number of systems
with many services having systems tailored to their
specific service area only.
Auditing our existing business applications - When
considering how an existing service can include digital
processes and tools we will not be bound by existing
technologies and applications. We will audit our existing
systems to gain a clear understanding of the capabilities
of the system and if it is being used to its fullest potential.
With this we will also review our processes that
incorporate use of systems to see where there is waste
or duplication. We expect that significant financial savings
can be realised through the phasing out and
decommissioning of some of our back office systems and
processes, and the introduction of alternative systems
could bring about resource efficiencies. A beta approach
to introducing digital services will be supported. This is a
phased roll out of a change so customers can try the new
product and give feedback so the project can be
amended iteratively. This is particularly useful if the
changes are very different to the previous way of working
or if the scale of the project is quite large, benefitting from
a break down into sizeable changes.
Creating successful digital channels our customers
want to use – Channel Shift relates to customers moving
from one method of contact, largely traditional, to another
digital method and preferring to use it, not reverting back
to previous behaviours. For the digital services we have
already set up and those that we will imminently we will
review on a case by case basis whether to switch off
those old channels. To ensure that our digital channels
are successful we need to ensure they are well-designed,
as simple as possible and intuitive. A Channel Shift toolkit
will be published to assist in getting customers to use
digital processes that are either readily available or soon
to be introduced.
An agile approach to procurement – Part of providing
excellent and innovative digital services for our
customers will involve us adopting an agile approach to
procurement that will encourage flexible relationships
with technology providers. This could mean entering into
contracts with shorter time frames, working more easily
with multiple suppliers at the same time, each with their
own specialism. Importantly for our customers this could
put us in a better position to keep pace with technological
innovation and able to meet demand by commissioning
new platforms quickly and at competitive costs. We have
already started to introduce this new approach by
engaging with smaller suppliers across the architectural
supply chain and widening our pool of contacts in the
sector, so we can find the right company at the right price
not just automatically reverting to the big companies we
are so used to working with.
The best tools for the job – A key component to
modernising processes will be to make sure our staff
have the best business and productivity tools for the job.
We need to streamline the applications used and re-
engineer our processes to ensure the most efficient
handling of tasks.
Priority 2 – Making best use of digital infrastructure

Each service collates customer data in some format and
by making better use of data analytics tools we can gain
a greater insight into customer need. We can see what
information people access through our website, what
people are looking for when using a search engine, if a
desktop or smart device is used, if they are a new user or
what the demand is for our online application forms or
digital payments. For any digital service improvement
introduced the collation and analysis of data is crucial for
successful customer take up. Using intelligence collated
from the website, social media, application forms,
surveys or complaints can enable us to better
commission services our customers want and support
continuous improvement in service delivery. Where we
do not collate comprehensive data it is important to
determine exactly what information on the customer base
would help manage future service demand and put
measures in place to collect, manage and share these
data insights.
There are many data silos in Southwark. We want to be a
high performing organisation, getting the best value and
making the best use of our data so we are looking into
mechanisms that will enable us to extract, analyse, share
and store data securely.
Reducing manual processes- The back office
predominantly refers to formalised systems that store
customer profile data such as payments, contact
information and details on what service was requested.
The middle office on the other hand refers to any manual
processing of information, requests and payments by an
officer in one or multiple teams in order to be able to
provide the service requested. We often have to manually
enter data into one or more back office systems to store
the customer’s information as well as respond to
customer queries either by phone or email. By joining
together technical capabilities and systems we can
minimise the need for manual intervention when
providing a service.
We will critically analyse our middle office functions to
determine if digital tools can carry out such functions,
increase automation and transfer customer data directly
to a back office system. For example, by introducing a
customer appointment booking interface online that is
directly linked with the back office system of the service,
we can negate the need for customers to call and book
an appointment.
The results of increased automation in the middle office
are streamlined processes that are easier for customers
to access and officers to process, reduction of waste and
duplication, and the delivery of significant financial
savings.
A single view of the customer- We will use software to
enable us to take a single view of the customer and
collect pertinent data to enable us to respond to customer
queries and requests in a joined up manner.
We currently use CRM (Customer Relationship
Management) in our customer service centre to log
customer service requests that come in via phone, email
or online application forms. It acts as the workflow
management system linking service tickets to the correct
back office system or to a contractor to process.
CRM plays a crucial role in how we engage and interact
with our customers to provide services. A CRM IT system
enables us to store data on an individual customer basis,
to have one view of all their interactions with us and use
the analytical functions. It is one of the key digital tools
we will look to expand use of in order to realise efficiency
savings and support the provision of great customer
interactions with us such as direct appointment booking.
As more services become set up to utilise our CRM IT
system and collect data this will provide an invaluable
customer insight which will enable services to respond to
demand and make more focussed decisions. The
benefits of a CRM IT system are the opportunities for
increased automation and best use of officer time as
oversight of service requests are provided entirely in one
system, minimising rekeying, duplicated or incorrect
information.
Enhancing our digital skills – We are committed to
cultivating a digital culture and creating a buzz in
Southwark around digital transformation. This is an
exciting period of change and we want everyone at all
levels of the organisation to feel empowered and
motivated by what we are looking to achieve. In creating
this stimulated and supportive environment we will look to
each service area to identify a Digital Champion, or more
than one if there is interest. These Champions will be a
key contact for colleagues to discuss digital projects and
approaches with who may have an interest in technology,
gadgets or data. By having an informal network of Digital
Champions we will be able to gauge appetite for change
across the organisation and potentially any opportunities
for collaborating on projects.
Priority 3 – Smarter ways of working through business intelligence and analytics

Our more formal approaches will be to create useful and
interesting training sessions, toolkits and opportunities to
share learning and knowledge across Southwark and
with our counterparts externally. Our first activity is to
assess what digital skills and readiness we have as an
organisation and target training and support to address
any skills gaps. As digital confidence in individuals and
teams across the organisation grow we will look to
support areas that are more hesitant, ensuring that no
service gets left behind.
It will be important for us to promote our digital ambitions
and culture particularly when recruiting new people to
Southwark. We want people who will embrace our
approach to digital and have the skills and behaviours we
need to make things happen. Our recruitment
competencies and behaviours will be updated to reflect
our ambition and principles and ensure we attract high
calibre candidates who can see themselves taking an
active role.
It costs £6.45 to manage a query in the contact
centre.
To manage a stage one complaint costs
between £200-£250. From April to September
2015 we had 4672 stage one complaints.

Work to minimise digital exclusion in Southwark started in
2013 with focus groups set up to gather resident views
on what problems to solve, and how best to solve them.
With further workshops and discussions in 2014 we
concluded that the problems to focus on were:
• how to stop people being left behind by the fast moving
shift to online communications and transactions
• support the empowerment of individuals and
communities to develop digital skills
• enabling the council to modernise approaches without
making life difficult for people with minimal or no digital
skills.
To help solve these problems we decided to set up
volunteer Digital Champions based in and from local
communities who are able to train other residents to learn
basic digital skills and to develop confidence in using the
internet to access council services. We are setting up 15
local Digital Inclusion Hubs, with 67 trained and
supported volunteer digital champions who will work to
support 500 new learners to develop digital skills and we
intend to expand the opportunity to even more of our
residents.
The digital inclusion project will keep pace with and
coordinate with all new digital initiatives in Southwark,
starting with:
• Proposals to create a single digital platform for health
services, potentially linked to My Southwark, lead by
the Clinical Commissioning Group membership and
Southwark’s Engagement and Equalities team.
• An EU funded project to create new community
engagement web tools, led by Southwark’s community
engagement team.
• The move towards universal credit online services.
As an organisation we must focus on making digital
services for the majority of our customers to access
independently but also devise inclusive manual
approaches and processes for the vulnerable and less
digitally able in our communities. Services must promote
and support appropriate digital transitions in order to
realise much needed financial and resource efficiencies.
If a digital service is being developed then it needs to be
well researched in terms of the customer base and take
up otherwise costs will be incurred elsewhere to enable
customers having access to the service.
“I have learnt computer skills from scratch when I started my job in a local community project which is also a digital
inclusion hub. I started with learning how to turn on a computer. I can now send emails, pay my council tax online and
report repairs to the council online. I have cut down on having to use the phone to do all those things I can now do
online. My family are so surprised, and now they say I am a wizard for learning all of this.”
Kathleen, Bermondsey
Priority 4 - Ensuring digital inclusion

We want Southwark to be a place where everyone can
access services, find the information they need, take part
in conversations and share their views. We must ensure
that people across the borough and of all backgrounds
can be a part of this. We want to use our channels to not
just deliver services but also emphasise our community;
to provide our residents with the means to be active
citizens who take responsibility for future of their
communities and borough.
Success means an improved reputation and specific
goals being achieved, such as residents knowing to send
in school admissions forms on time or getting more
people using our free swim and gym offer. Our challenge
is to continue develop our existing channels, along with
new ones, to maximise the reach and impact of our
messages, encourage behaviour change and increase
involvement from residents.
Digital marketing - Digital channels are, along with print
and face-to-face marketing, a low-cost, high-impact way
for us to share relevant, timely information and issues
with our residents, issues and information they potentially
would not otherwise be aware of, for a low cost. Digital is
a major element of our marketing, including both owned
and paid for, and is a key channel for us to inform
residents about events, services and campaigns. We
have 14,000 followers on Twitter, one of the highest
levels of resident engagement in London.
Targeted, paid digital advertising allows us to reach those
residents who do not follow the council, either through
social advertising or digital display and increasingly a
significant part of campaign budgets are going towards
digital. We are developing in in-depth digital
communications strategy to maximise opportunities and
future proof our communications.
Conversation – The evolution of social channels means
that residents are increasingly expecting a conversation,
rather than just to be informed. We should maximise the
opportunity for user involvement to generate content on
issues that resonate with them. We can be targeting
posts towards topics that invite discussion and which
show us to be taking the lead; we can steer the
conversation but we need to be brave about the topics
we bring to the table and how open we are to differing
views.
Evaluation – Southwark will investigate tools social
media analysis, prioritisation and routing. For example,
analysing the sentiment and content of posts and then
reporting this activity to the relevant service areas, along
with adjusting social media posts to reflect resident
interests.
Priority 5 - Increasing pride and engagement in the borough and with the council via digital
communication channels

Southwark’s Local Offer website provides online
information about the services and opportunities
available locally to children, young people and families.
The service is primarily for those with SEND (Special
Educational Needs and Disabilities) from ages 0 to 25
and is a statutory requirement of the Children and
Families Act 2014.
The Southwark Information and Advice team provides a
range of services to support parents and young people
and actively develops, coordinates and updates content
on the Local Offer website.
There are more than 100 statutory items that must be
included in the offer. Southwark’s offer includes ideas
and feedback taken from consultation with several
hundred of parents and young people during the design
phase.
• In the first year (2014/15) the total number of pages
viewed was 39,886
• Both Twitter (179 followers) and Facebook (67 likes)
accounts have been created to promote the local offer
and provide easy access to information, advice and
support
Benefits to Customers
• Access to services and information is now fairer. Prior
to having all services online and in one place, customer
access was reliant upon meeting the right person to
suggest what is available locally.
• The online resource is available 24/7 which ensures
that parents or young people who are studying or
working full time have access to information, advice
and support at any time.
• The offer provides a comprehensive platform to ensure
all parents and young people can access real time
information about events and changes to services or
new services as they happen.
Customers can find a range of provisions that they can
access for free or at cost.
The forum section of the local offer website gives
customers the opportunity to engage in strategic planning
and influence the design of SEND services.
Benefits to Southwark
• The analytics and feedback process informs our
commissioning team what services and support our
customers want. For the first time this information can
be used to inform planning and in the joint
commissioning cycle.
• For the first time staff across services working with
families and young people have access to the most up
to date, accurate information regarding services and
advice. This ensures consistency and more efficient
communication across teams.
• The online service encourages customers to seek
information and advice independently. If a customer
calls the service an email is sent with a link to the
appropriate information on the website to encourage
them to check online first next time.
• Direct feedback and interaction with families and young
people helps us to decide what families want and need
• As a proportion of customers are able to access the
local offer on line this leaves more time for our staff to
focus on delivering face to face services to the most
vulnerable and hard to reach families.
• This approach ensures that the council is compliant
with the Children and Families Act 2014.
Digital Inclusion
• The Team has 3 drop in sessions per week at
Sunshine House for customers who prefer to speak to
someone face to face. Last year over 1,000 people
were seen at the drop in. In addition we offer 1:1
booked appointments which include breakfast and after
hours meetings for working parents, meetings at
schools and at home where a customer is unable to
leave the house.
• The Team provides a phone service available 9-5 daily.
The team will access the local offer on behalf of the
customer and provide the information they require.
• We have prioritised promoting the local offer to all staff
working with young people and parents with SEND so
that they can access the offer on behalf of the
parent/young person they are working with.
• Where possible we are encouraging and modeling
using the local offer so that customers can access their
own information. We are piloting a project with year 11
pupils in selected schools to encourage them to use
ICT and other methods to seek their own information,
advice and support.
Digital Services in a Traditional Environment: Children’s and Adults’

Southwark’s digital strategy is the impetus for digital
change in Southwark Council and the foundation for all
service design activities. It is a live document that will be
regularly reviewed and amended to reflect not only our
on-going ambition and priorities but also our
technological capabilities.
In order to promote and support digital delivery in
Southwark we will carry out a number of key activities
and establish a governance and performance framework
that will create uniformity across the organisation,
measure success and customer satisfaction.
The initial areas of focus to achieve by the summer of
2016 are:
• Broadening the existing customer experience
framework of measuring channel shift to all high
volume transactional services. Measuring the success
of digital change could include the proportion of
services offered online, volume of successful
transactions carried out online versus traditional
methods or the degree of resource efficiencies realised.
• Develop robust governance to review and challenge
service process, reinforcing the digital strategy, tracking
progress and supporting transformative digital change.
• Establish a network of digital champions across the
organisation to act as a reference point and advisor for
change.
• Start digital knowledge sharing events across the
organisation, including training, workshops, informal
lunchtime learning, service reviews or digital rapid
improvement events.
• Expand the current Digital Transformation Programme
to capture projects and digital action plans across the
entire organisation. This includes establishing a new
Digital Transformation Board.
• Publish a series of toolkits to support service managers
in designing and introducing digital processes, utilising
business intelligence and applying robust monitoring
and evaluation techniques.
• Bring together digital marketing campaigns
encouraging customers to make best use of their
MySouthwark account and to be aware of new digital
services.
• Schedule the next review of Southwark’s digital
strategy to ensure that it continues to reflect the needs
of our customers and the ambitions and capabilities of
the organisation in line with other relevant strategies
including the technology strategy.
• Attract digital business to Southwark through lobbying
for high speed broadband throughout the whole
borough, explore options to deliver high speed Wi-Fi
across the borough and marketing Southwark as the
best place to set up for digital businesses.
There are many digital projects underway in the council
and these will become better supported under the
umbrella of the digital strategy principles and will benefit
a large number of customers. The initial next steps are to
complete the following digital projects during the spring of
2016:
• Launching the first phase of the new website (beta),
with a specialist web team established and a
programme of continuous review commenced.
• Improving the eforms and portals for environment
(waste) requests, so that these are easier for
customers to submit online.
• Completing the next phase of the housing repairs
online project, which will allow customers to manage
their appointments online (repairs can already be
requested and tracked).
• Simplifying licence applications to be eforms instead of
pdf forms (removing the need to download print,
complete by hand and post).
Our Next Steps

Customers: At Southwark our customers are anyone
who interacts with us in any manner. This can include
residents, businesses, community groups, councillors or
officers across Southwark Council.
Digital tools: Corporately endorsed pieces of
infrastructure that improve the process of receiving and
storing customer information digitally. This includes
eforms, digital payments, My Southwark and CRM.
Eforms: Online application forms that enable services to
accurately store customer request information using pre-
set fields as chosen by the service area based on the
customer base and their requirements. This minimises
the need to use unstructured emails that can often initiate
lengthy email communications to resolve customer
queries.
Digital by Default: A digital service that is so compelling,
accessible and easy to use that customers elect to use it
as a matter of first preference, over and above any other
method available to them. This is also sometimes known
as digital by default when taking a more service oriented
approach.
Digital payments: A digital tool in Southwark that
enables customers to pay for specific services online
using a debit or credit card on completion of an online
form. Customer transaction data is then sent to the
service to notify that a successful payment has been
made. Direct Debits, Standing Orders and direct transfers
into a bank account such as BACS can also be seen as a
digital payment as funds are received electronically and
minimal or no officer involvement is required to complete
the transaction.
Digital transaction: Any service that allows the
exchange of information, money, permission, goods or
services between Southwark Council and our residents,
businesses or communities.
Digital infrastructure: A broad reference to existing
digital tools, capabilities and frameworks that we operate
within.
IT Infrastructure/platforms: A broad reference to
existing IT tools including hardware, software, networks
and facilities that are in place in order to develop, test,
deliver, monitor, control or support IT services.
Footnotes
1
Government Digital Strategy: November 2012
2
Digital Exclusion in Southwark: 20 March 2015
3
Channel Shift: Realizing the Benefits, GovDelivery
Glossary

Appendix 1 Southwarks Digital Strategy-1

Appendix 1 Southwarks Digital Strategy-1

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