Cambridge City Council - Digital, Data and Technology (DDAT) Strategy

Cambridge City Council has embarked on a transformation journey that will reshape the council into a modern, sustainable authority capable of meeting and responding to the demands being placed upon public services to act quickly, cooperatively and within the financial frameworks and conditions prevailing at that time. To enable these ambitions, the council has created a programme ‘Our Cambridge’ that will create the operational capacity and capability to deliver the transformation.

A key element of our future organisation is the need for a Digital, Data and Technology Strategy and detailed implementation plan for Cambridge City Council, and we are looking to partner with a supplier with a demonstrable track record to support us to define our strategic requirements as an organisation.

The Council’s current Digital Transformation Strategy was produced in 2018, setting out priorities and key themes that aim to build a digital Council, benefit residents, and take a digital by design approach. It successfully highlighted a range of opportunities and aspirations, potential technologies, promotes innovation, and emphasises more effective use and application of data. However, the action plan that supported this strategy to prioritise these opportunities, address how, by whom and when they should be implemented, or establish what additional operational resource would be required to deliver the Strategy; has lapsed since the Digital Board closed.

Five years on, an updated Strategy is now required that accurately reflects the rapid adoption of digital technology in 2020 and post-pandemic changes in Council staff working practices, how residents and communities expect to engage with us, and how service and staff needs have evolved and in what ways. In response, a new five-year Digital, Data and Technology (DDAT) Strategy and implementation plan is proposed, that will:

• Clearly set out the Council’s vision and framework for a strategic approach to digital, data and technology that includes the ‘why’, ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘who’ and ‘when’ and takes a whole Council approach. This will be an overarching strategy and will include or reference other digital, data and technology related key strategies, programmes, and projects (see overview of requirements and specification section below).
• Be fully aligned to the wider Our Cambridge transformation programme and its wider ambitions, the Corporate Target Operating Model (CTOM), and is mapped to the Corporate Plan.
• Establish a core set of design and delivery principles to safeguard digital transformation across the organisation and develop consistent approaches across operational activities and projects including data standards, online content principles, and design authority.
• Develop a Data and Information Management strand that enables the Council to realise the latent potential of its existing data assets by bringing together information held across multiple systems.
• Develop a Technology and Innovation strand with a clear vision for the longer-term plan for how the Council will interact with technology, learn from current and emerging trends, and use tech as an enabler to create value and increase our organisational impact.
• Support the embedding of the new operational model that will define the future working relationship between digital, data, technology and organisational design and strategy (to be set out separately in the Digital Target Operating Model (DTOM) final report and embedded through the DTOM implementation plan).
• Support incremental learning and change, and take a ‘think big, start small’ approach, applying a phased maturity curve to clearly communicate and measure where we are on our digital transformation journey and where we aim to be (our target state), e.g., ambition to become a ‘digital Council’.
• Establish synergies, avoid duplication, and align with (but not directly deliver) a range of existing DDAT related Council projects or strategies that are underway.
• Work with partners to identify, understand and implement innovation, best practice and learning from elsewhere, and utilise the skills, insight, experience, and capacity that resides in our partners, in line with the “partnership by default” principle adopted by the Our Cambridge transformation programme.