As Martha Lane Fox's team develops a new vision for digital's role in the UK government, LGD co-founder and Product Lead, Will Callaghan, argues for greater use of collaborative cofunded models like ours.
I've been avidly following online conversations about the new 'digital centre for government' in the Department for Science Innovation and Technology and am hopeful in a few ways.
First, I’m reminded of Tom Loosemore's first central government pub get together back in 2010. It felt like something seismic was happening then, and I feel the same way now.
Second, there's a lot of great thinking about. Top of my list is Richard Pope's Platformland book which I've been recommending pretty much every chance I get. It's a compelling vision, and we ought to get going with it.
Third, since leaving GOV.UK, I've done digital work in eight UK councils alongside countless public servants who're delivering against the odds. There are a whole lot of talented people who want to shake things up and do more for citizens.
That's why LocalGov Drupal, the project I and others founded in 2019, recently reached a major milestone. We’re now being used by 50 councils across the UK and Ireland. In the spirit of GDS, we celebrated with shiny stickers. Unfortunately, there was no cake.
We've found that many local government colleagues — when they have time and headspace — jump at the chance to work with like-minded people in other organisations. They want to build together, swap notes, avoid bear traps, and create new good practices. Far from seeing their circumstances as special or unique, they’ve embraced strength in numbers and common needs.
Go with what works
LocalGov Drupal’s collaborative crowdfunded model ought to be part of the digital centre of government conversation. It sits alongside ideas about broader and deeper use of open data and APIs, helping councils to team up and buy better software and GOV.UK providing platforms that only it can. See also decent training, lean techniques, innovative procurement, working in the open and showing the thing.
So what is it about LocalGov Drupal that works? Well, in no particular order:
- We're building once and better, cutting costs while taking into account the experiences of many more councils and a more diverse range of citizens. The results are open source so anyone anywhere can use, remix, and contribute.
- We're crowding in money and expertise to tackle challenges that individual councils shouldn’t have to solve on their own. That’s everything from updates from Drupal 9 to 10 (and now up to 11), and major undertakings like automagically turning PDFs into HTML.
This probably needs some backstory. LocalGov Drupal has been self-financing since January 2022 when support from the UK Government Local Digital Fund ended. We founded the Open Digital Cooperative to steward the code base and grow the community. To fund the co-op’s work, we ask LocalGov Drupal suppliers to pay a mandatory annual fee and councils a voluntary one. This generates around £250k per year (and growing), with the majority spent on code and the rest on growing and supporting our community.
But that money is the tip of the iceberg. The goodwill we see from councils and suppliers on Slack and at our meetups is invaluable. Many of our suppliers contribute in-kind on top of their annual subs, sharing know-how that only the biggest councils can afford.
- We're offering council colleagues more autonomy and, to be frank, hope. As austerity bared down on the public sector, our project provided new ways of getting good work done. Colleagues have learned so much from each other, and many say LocalGov Drupal is the best part of their job.
- Our not-for-profit cooperative model means we should stay the course long-term. We were recently surprised by an offer to buy us and kindly replied, "No, sorry, we're not for sale." That’s kind of the point. Plus, as a co-op, our council and supplier members are at the heart of our decision-making. I'm convinced this 180-year-old model should play a bigger part in our digital future.
We need more gardeners
At this year's LocalGov Camp, Theo Blackwell said the public sector "needs more gardeners". I took that to mean organisations and people that foster the growth of public code and the communities around them.
The Open Digital Cooperative is one such gardener. We're not-for-profit and our company articles encourage us to start more collaborative projects. They don't have to be Drupal based, they could be anything.
With this in mind, here’s a few things we'd like the Digital Centre Design Panel to consider:
- Identifying future ‘gardeners’ and supporting them. LocalGov Drupal began in Brighton & Hove and Croydon Councils, where visionary leaders like Ali, Annie, Tom, Dave and Neil provided top cover for our teams to push forward. Plenty of people want to do this in local gov, and they need help.
- Rebooting the Local Digital Declaration and Fund. Without these, LocalGov Drupal would likely never have made it off the ground. The commitment and funding provided the headspace and skills for council colleagues to take a break from their day jobs and dream bigger. Without this support, future work will struggle.
It’s worth looking at fewer bigger projects funded for longer, coupled with data standards and legislation where needed. A lot like Open Digital Planning, which I now advise part-time alongside my role at LocalGov Drupal.
There also needs to be a greater emphasis on skills transfer to councils, with a shift from funding projects to teams. In many Local Digital Fund projects, critical work was done by suppliers who had to stop when budgets ended. These projects are complex, need decent runways and careful planning to spin out.
- The local gov legacy tech burden and how a collaborative co-funded model such as ours could help. Others have called for Open Digital Highways, Waste, Social Care and more. Most councils spend time and money on a Local Offer website, for example, when such sites could be templated and rolled out nationwide. Essex built a good one using LocalGov Drupal.
- More opportunities for colleagues to train, preferably on real projects. Others have called for the GDS Academy to be relaunched - a great idea. Then, thinking aloud, how about adding hack events to the various GovCamps so council teams get to experience tests and learn techniques? It’s worth a couple of pilots. We also offered LocalGov Drupal as a vehicle to get on-the-job experience, and the offer still stands.
- More conversation between central and local government about the platforms that only GDS can build. Local gov is sorted for form builders, but we could really benefit from One Login, for example.
- Supporting and promoting projects where public sector organisations team up to buy higher quality software. This work is a companion to the building we do, and we think it happens a fair amount. Seeing more projects talk openly about their successes and challenges would be great.
Outside of LocalGov Drupal and wearing a different hat, I'd like to see more done about digital skills teaching in schools and a joined-up and properly funded approach to digital poverty. That's for another blog post.
I'm convinced the digital centre is partly made up of cross government people supported to pull together with projects like ours. Let's get on and do it.