Local Council as a Platform. How councils will turn into Ubers.

The Future of Councils as a Platform

The phrases ‘council as a platform’ and ‘government as a platform’ have been around for a few years now but not everyone has got to grips what this really means and how radically it could affect online council services in the future.

In fact, the phrase seems to have been around at least since it was mentioned in a paper back in 2010 on the future of government-run digital services. This concept is often described as being about having a common, shared IT infrastructure that allows councils or government departments to provide shared digital systems to users. However, it could be used in the future to provide much more than that.

To understand what this concept is all about and how it could work in the future, we need to start by looking at the current challenges to local council online services that have made this such a potentially powerful idea.

The Current Challenges

Councils all across the UK face big challenges in maintaining IT systems that can handle the incredibly wide range of services that they provide. This problem becomes particularly acute as their systems get older while customers now expect the same slick online experience that they receive elsewhere.

Customers can also end up confused and frustrated by the often bewildering variety of local authority and central government websites, each with different platforms and potentially varying log-in credentials.

The fact is that councils all over the country offer virtually the same services to their citizens but often in wildly different ways. The need for a consistent, standardised approach is one of the key factors in the suggestion that councils as a platform could be the way of the future.

In addition, rather than offer the full range of services themselves, they could simply guide the user in the direction to the service provider that best suits them. In this way, local authorities could act more like Uber, Airbnb or Upwork by signposting their users through their portal rather providing the services themselves.

Ideally, in the long term this could lead to local councils viewing themselves as one national body aimed at solving people’s problems, rather than as a disparate set of authorities each with a different way of working.

Examples of How It Could Work

We can already see some examples of how this could potentially work in the private sector. Many companies will outsource locally before going offshore to service their clients. Eventually, they will only provide just the platform until it can be based on artificial intelligence and they can let machines provide the services.

UK councils are still at the concept stage of this process but with a little bit of imagination it is easy to see how they could streamline the customer experience by acting as a portal that points users in the direction of a recommended service provider seamlessly and effectively.

For example, a council could decide to close their bricks and mortar libraries as well as their online library access. In place of these services they could have an agreement that sees them send their citizens to a company like Amazon to get discounts on e-books or audio books.

Social care is another area that is ripe for the councils as a platform approach. Those in need of care could be quickly linked to the most appropriate carers for their situation through a portal that works like the freelancer sites Upwork and Freelancer.

In this way, each citizen enquiry would be fed through to the recommended service provider that would work best for them. The user would get a fantastic experience and the council would alleviate a great deal of the need for expensive IT infrastructure maintenance and upgrading.

Possibly the best example of all comes with the success of the NHS Jobs platform. Recruitment bosses at the NHS have cut costs massively and also ensured a faster recruitment service by building a shared platform that is used by hundreds of NHS employers.

What Comes Next

Some important suggestions are already being made at high levels towards adopting this sort of process. For example, Leeds City Council CIO Dylan Roberts spoke in 2015 about the need to “adopt Government as a platform” as part of a move towards “delivering outcomes rather than services”.

The good news is that the technology to make the next move already exists. This means that perhaps the very next stage is to work out what top level services should initially be passed through the portal in this way.

The examples covered earlier give us a good starting but there are many other council services that could also be delivered more smoothly and efficiently by adopting the council as a platform model.

Before long, each British citizen could have one online account that they use to access any national or local government service that they need in a way that suits them. Doesn’t that sound like a better way of making IT work for everyone?

Mostafa Hashem

Managing Director and Lead Consultant

Smartlytics Consultancy

www.smartlytics.co.uk