Anyone who holds the opinion that the private sector still leads the charge on innovation might consider readjusting their preconceptions. So says Microsoft UK’s industry adviser on smart places, Linda Chandler. Working in the tech giant’s local and regional government team, the London Development Agency’s former chief information officer is now charged with shaping industry thinking on digital transformation across the UK’s cities, towns and communities. And, she says, there is a quiet revolution afoot.
Local authorities up and down the country are no longer tentatively discussing, debating and deliberating the power of innovation to level up. They are springing into action. Quietly, yes. But springing into action all the same.
“People are always pointing to the private sector for examples of where innovation happens,” says Chandler. “But, as budgets shrink, local authorities are not only getting squeezed into looking seriously at technology to add value and level up, there is also less competition in the public sector and more collaboration, which is a great accelerator.”
Another great accelerator is investment. And, as Chandler sets out on her mission to advise and lead on UK-wide innovation, unlocking fresh sources of capital will play a major role in her quest. “Innovation isn’t just about kick-starting technology projects,” she says. “It is about being able to articulate its societal value and start to unlock revenue streams that aren’t just the IT budget. This should be about cutting into those big infrastructure, property and social care budgets that, until now, have not typically had a huge digital component.”
From London to Aberdeen and from Birmingham to Manchester, Chandler is working with local government and businesses on projects, schemes and programmes that she believes represent a huge step forward in future-proofing our UK cities. Because digital innovation is about much more than technology. It is an “inevitability” for the survival of thriving urban hubs.
Predictive and preventative services
Microsoft UK’s and, specifically, Chandler’s work in the public sector is more far-reaching than some might realise. Last year, the tech firm signed a three-year memorandum of understanding with the UK government to help public sector organisations make the best use of cloud computing. It has also delivered in-depth guidance to boost local authority cyber security measures and, as Chandler will attest, works closely with local councils across the UK to help them to update and improve their cities and social infrastructure networks.
Aberdeen, where the local authority has used the Microsoft Cloud to overhaul its social care services, is a prime example. The city is now working with the tech company as it moves away from its economic reliance on oil and gas. Together, the pair will work on a programme to leverage data to drive “predictive and preventative services” to ensure the city continues to attract talent and is able to support its local community.
“We are very involved with Aberdeen at the moment,” says Chandler. “They have to transition from one whole sector to another as they move from oil and gas to renewables. They need to create new jobs for a new world as they disappear from an old one.
“Green skills are very important here but so are digital skills – that’s all part of it. It is not about building up a network of digital start-ups in an area, it is about honing digital skills in every sector, including renewables. This is the sort of economic regeneration that we are talking about when we think about levelling up.”
The Aberdeen story, she adds, is just one in a long list of city or region-specific programmes where innovation and digital advances are being used to address a pressing and very real local problem rather than areas desperately trying to be smart for the sake of smart. And that, she says, has been a game-changer.
“Smart cities in the early days, maybe a decade or so ago, were a bit of a solution looking for a problem,” she says. “Fast forward to what we are seeing now, and we have some very big problems that, in my opinion, can’t be solved without technology. The climate emergency, the sustainability agenda, social care reform, future-proofing, to name a few.
“Digital is not the only factor required to tackle these issues, but it certainly needs to be an intrinsic part of that. Cities and places have been on a journey, adopting digital over time and we have got to a point now where there are lots of models to follow and plenty of success stories. Where regions once competed – and I think at a time they all wanted to be the Silicon Valley of the UK – there is much more collaboration. Everyone has realised that they can do digital differently and can apply it to the region’s specific problems and needs. And that’s very effective.”
Social and economic value
For Chandler, advising cities and regions with their area-specific challenges and goals makes up a large chunk of her role at Microsoft. It will be the lessons learnt and the solutions garnered from this, she says, that will help the public sector understand the social and economic value of innovation and change. Even if it is not instantly obvious in every case.
And, of course, it isn’t always instantly obvious. Chandler says there are generally three categories a solution or future-proofing strategy will fall into. Those with obvious use cases and clear fiscal value, those that are uncertain and require a degree of exploration and “unpicking” first and, finally, things that have already been tried where there was no obvious return on investment but that could prove to be the first iteration of a solution that unlocks financial returns once tweaked.
The first two, she says, are self-explanatory. Often it is that third category where opportunities to truly innovate lie. “Let’s think about car parking,” she says. “If you are a local authority and you are using sensors to detect whether spaces are being used in a certain car park, then that is innovative, and it might be useful in terms of that particular business case. It could indicate how many disabled spaces you need and how well your car park is being used. So, you deploy the tech and gather the data. But that’s it. That’s job done. There is no real reason to keep monitoring that.
“But that doesn’t mean you should be done with investigating parking patterns as a city or local council. This initial work using sensors could be a jumping off point for more sophisticated solutions and more innovation in the future. If autonomous cars landed on our streets tomorrow, where would they park? Would they park at all? Or would they roam and just do drop-offs and pick-ups? What might that mean for space currently being used for car parks? And what should it mean for your city infrastructure?
“Currently there is no way for an intelligent vehicle to communicate with city infrastructure in a holistic way. So, we have started to shift the conversation away from monitoring car parks to parking being part of the infrastructure of our urban centres.”
Chandler refers here to apps, already in existence, which can digitise curb sides. And curb sides, she says, are on track to becoming one of our cities’ most lucrative assets. But only if the digital infrastructure is there in advance. Cities must start to prepare for a future where revenue from car parks disappears entirely. If cars are ultimately replaced by autonomous vehicles specialising in curb side drop-offs and pick-ups, those curbs become an asset with a value.
“Suddenly that conversation about using sensors to measure fixed car parking spaces in a single car park can be developed into a conversation about a dynamic asset such as curb sides. If you start to think about digital futures, you start to think about completely different, often incredibly scalable, revenue models.”
Back to basics
Chandler is the first to admit that the digital futures element of her role is a “really big conversation to have”. Particularly with local authorities and public sector clients which, while more digitally advanced than many might give them credit for, are still getting their heads around levelling up and future-proofing through innovation.
It is crucial then, she adds, to ensure that every grand plan, every future model and every digital advancement is taken right back to basics in the first instance. “It is about asking what is doable today to ensure we are designing our cities to make the future possible,” she says.
Examples of what is being done today not only include the work that Chandler and Microsoft are doing in Aberdeen. Chandler also makes reference to Birmingham’s forward-thinking digital strategy where there is a razor-sharp focus on getting the city, the technology and the local authority all working together to introduce a new governance structure.
She also highlights the South London Partnership, a sub-regional collaboration of five London boroughs which has received a chunk of funding from Innovate UK to experiment with innovations across local economy, healthcare, infrastructure, place and skills.
“They are doing interesting things like monitoring gullies and culverts with IT devices to gauge water levels,” says Chandler. “That way they can see whether they are doing their job and whether they need cleaning. This kind of preventative maintenance can help stop flooding and save an entire situation building up into an emergency. They have also been experimenting with use cases around assisted living, monitoring falls. There are some which would have a huge knock-on effect on public services.”
Unlocking investment
It is this collective value, combined with the plethora of demonstrative use cases across cities and regions, that Chandler hopes will solve a perennial issue when it comes to investing in anything on a substantial level.
“There is always a question over who is going to pay for this stuff,” she says.
On one hand, it is a good thing that so many of these innovations cut across a number of different sectors as it creates a case for unlocking investment beyond the IT budget and, as Chandler previously mentioned, cutting into some of the other, bigger sources of capital. The flipside is that it becomes everyone’s and no one’s problem and important advances start to slip through the net.
“When solutions cross a number of boundaries, we can find ourselves in cost and value conversations that become imbalanced as the payer won’t always get the value back,” says Chandler. “Where there is a solution that delivers social value does the health part of the equation pay? Does social care pay? Part of my job is to help with these conversations. If something is intrinsically the right thing to do but there is a struggle with the business case then we need to get involved beyond the tech and liaise with the relevant people to help them identity, add value and add weight to their investment arguments.”
And if the hurdles can’t be overcome? Well, that’s not really an option. Digital isn’t a choice, reiterates Chandler, it’s an inevitability.
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