Southend-on-Sea City Council: From legacy systems to meeting public digital demand

Southend-on-Sea City Council’s Director of Digital & ICT, Carol Thomas, divulges the challenges of technology transformation for a growing population.

Society is changing. As populations increase and a myriad of global challenges arise, government-funded organisations are becoming more digitally-savvy in a bid to meet the varying needs of diverse local districts. Many of these challenges remain the same region to region—particularly in the UK, where chronically-underfunded local councils are very much behind on their ability to leverage technology.?

The result? Public demands are changing and authorities are operating with legacy systems in need of updating.?

It’s not very often you begin a conversation about digital transformation with a history lesson—though the subject itself dates back as far as the 7th Century—but in this case, it’s warranted.?

Southend-on-Sea was recently granted city status and is situated on the south coast of the UK, but it wasn’t always a city, nor was it as digitally-driven as it is today. Southend came from humble beginnings, starting out as a small settlement called Prittlewell, which expanded over the years to accommodate the 180,000 residents that live here today. This gradual increase in population, and the size of Southend, led to public demand for a governing organisation that moves with the times—and on smaller budgets.?

Addressing a common challenge in the modern day, Southend-on-Sea City Council (SCC) faces the demand for all the necessary services while the purse strings are tightened further, forcing localities to stretch their resources wherever possible.?

Tackling commonplace issues for the people of Southend never incorporated digitisation until recently. Now, as the organisation’s?Director of Digital & ICT, Carol Thomas?leads the digital transformation of SCC. She was able to take an under-performing IT team and turn things around during the coronavirus pandemic, which further tested the organisation’s ability to adapt to modern challenges through digitisation.?

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