GDS Local’s sourcing the stack initiative is part of our commitment to co-create a vision for local government technology. We’ve been looking closely at how councils describe their technology to gain a better understanding of technical architecture across local government, and one of our findings was that there is no common model used by councils.
There could be huge benefits to councils and their service users from adopting a common technical architecture model, and to help co-create and deliver this we’re exploring the idea of providing a platform for councils to map their technical architecture.
Between 20 February and 6 March we published an expression of interest (EoI) for councils to tell us whether they thought this is a good idea.
What councils told us
Across the responses, councils consistently described the value of a technical architecture platform to assist decision making to enable a coherent technical estate.
54% of councils said they are already documenting their technical architecture, but the vast majority of those are using spreadsheets and many councils highlighted this an inefficient and limiting way to do this.
Respondents thought a shared technical architecture platform could be hugely beneficial for councils going through Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) during this parliament. In the case of district councils that will need to aggregate multiple technology estates into one new organisation, whilst counties may need to disaggregate data and technology into multiple new local authorities.
Other key potential benefits for all councils included:
- The creation of a single source of truth for applications, integrations, data and ownership within a council
- Clearer impact analysis to support investment, assurance, council change boards and technical authorities, and risk management
- Identification of duplication, overlap, and underused systems, enabling rationalisation and savings
- Stronger alignment between services, business capabilities, data, and technology
- Improved ability to explain architecture to nontechnical stakeholders, including senior leaders
These benefits were often framed as prerequisites for transformation so having a platform to assist with this would be hugely beneficial.
What we’re doing next
From the expressions of interest, it seems there is a clear demand for offering a common platform for councils to document their technical architecture, and there are two next steps for GDS Local to take with interested councils.
Firstly, we will investigate which platform might be appropriate to use with a request for information to the market. There are many commercial products and other tools to use but we would need to get something in place that meets the needs of councils and fits around the timetable of LGR.
Secondly, we will scope out how we measure the benefits of this approach, which we need in place before we move forward with this. It seems that there are many potential benefits, but for this approach to be sustainable it needs to evidence its value.
If you responded to the expression of interest, we will be in touch with you about this soon.