Local Digital Declaration | LocalGov Drupal

The Local Digital Declaration (LDD) is a shared ambition for the future of local public services in the internet age.

It was written in 2018 by a collective of 45 local authorities, sector bodies and government departments including our funders the UK Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC).

Signatories of the Declaration want to co-create the conditions for the next generation of local public services. They believe that technology should be an enabler rather than a barrier to service improvements, and are committed to providing services that are a delight for citizens and officials to use.

The LDD recognises that one size doesn’t fit all, but by developing common building blocks, local authorities will be able to build services more quickly, flexibly and effectively.

It just is a very nice utopian idea, isn't it? And it's a really lovely and very good defence against these slightly parasitical third party companies to come in and capture councils and say, we'll fix this, we'll fix that and then you're stuck with them. This was just a way to, to avoid that ever happening. So ideologically, it seemed like a really good idea to also save us about £100,000 which made it a bit easier to sell to the architects and the directors here in [the Council].

How LocalGov Drupal supports the principles of the LDD

Here at LocalGov Drupal we are signatories to the Declaration. We are committed to the principles of the LDD, and are funded by DLUHC to help deliver the vision laid out in the LDD.

There are 5 key principles to the Declaration:

1. We will go even further to redesign our services around the needs of the people using them. This means continuing to prioritise citizen and user needs above professional, organisational and technological silos.

Our shared pool of expert developers and research helps individual councils meet this aim.

2. We will ‘fix our plumbing’ to break our dependence on inflexible, expensive technology that doesn’t join up effectively. This means insisting on modular building blocks for the IT we rely on, and open standards to give a common structure to the data we create.

Our code base is entirely modular, free, and open source, meaning it is not dependent on inflexible or expensive software.

3. We will design safe, secure, and useful ways of sharing information to build trust among our partners and citizens, better support the most vulnerable members of our communities, and more effectively target our resources.

Our members continually share best practice among developers and content designers and have access to shared user data and research.

4. We will demonstrate digital leadership, creating the conditions for genuine organisational transformation, and challenging all those we work with to embrace this Local Digital Declaration.

Our members are trailblazers in creating change within the local government space. They provide open-source solutions for building cost-effective websites using an innovative model.

5. We will embed an open culture that values, incentivises and expects digital ways of working from every member of our workforce. This means working in the open wherever we can, sharing our plans and experience, working collaboratively with other organisations, and reusing good practice.

We collaborate and work openly throughout the organisation. From governance to product development, we are as open and democratic as possible.

Our ethos

The LocalGov Drupal ethos includes:

an open culture that values, incentivises and expects digital ways of working from every member of the project team;
working in the open;
sharing our plans and experience;
working collaboratively with other organisations;
developing and reusing good practice;
publishing our work under open source licences.