A new digital strategy for Croydon – seeking your ideas
Launching strategy.croydon.digital - a public consultation on the vision and strategy for a more digital Croydon.
“It looks like you’re writing a digital strategy. Would you like help?”
Yes we are, and yes we would.
Today, we’re launching strategy.croydon.digital – a public consultation on the vision and strategy for a more digital Croydon. [Update October 2020 – this site is now closed. You can read a summary of comments received here].
This is a big deal. Croydon hasn’t had a digital strategy before, and we need one to make sure we’re clear where we’re going and how to get there.
The new digital strategy will replace our expired IT strategy, update our Smart City plan from 2017 – and look broader than those 2 topics to bring together everything from how the council becomes more digital in its DNA through to how we make sure our borough thrives in the 4th industrial revolution.
This strategy will not only guide the work we do in my team, but also define what we need to do in collaboration – across the council and across all sectors – to make the most of digital, data and technology for a more sustainable, more prosperous and more desirable Croydon.
It will also, we intend, be short.
This is for everyone. Anyone with an opinion on how we can make Croydon the best digital council and borough is welcome to get involved. Whether you live, work, play, run a business or non-profit organisation in Croydon, or you are outside the borough and looking in, we want your views. So please spread the word.
(We’ll also be gathering views through other means to make sure we reach a representative sample, not just those who are more comfortable responding online).
This is a conversation. For starters, we’re asking for your views on 3 big topics. Hop on over to the consultation site to see what those are and to start feeding in your ideas, suggestions and comments.
From later this week, you’ll also be able to see and respond to each other’s comments, making this a conversation in public between all interested parties, not just a one-way engagement with the council.
We’ll keep the 3 open questions running until early May, after which point we’ll update the site with the draft strategy itself – so you can comment and feedback on it as it takes shape.
We look forward to hearing what you have to say.
3 thoughts on “A new digital strategy for Croydon – seeking your ideas”
Hmm, I think I would frame this differently and capture more details about the consultee. Like age, ethnicity, equalities monitoring anybody?
Thanks Fraser. We did consider that but want this to be a mass, open engagement with minimal barriers to entry (so not collecting too much personal info). We’ve got a wider engagement plan to make sure we reach representative sample of the borough’s population.
I get that, and I applaud the open way in which you are going about this..but you might have been able to do some interesting correlation. There is something missing about scope – what has been decided and what can be influenced? What will happen to comments?
My take is that, ordinarily this activity is useful to capture new ideas plus stakeholder priorities and preferences. Then it is better to develop, shortlist and consult on options based on your criteria for success.
I don’t know if you *have* to comply with PSED for engagement activity (compared to formal consultation) but be careful…if this is consultation then the Gunning principles could apply!
Keep up the good work, quite jealous of the momentum you are creating…and take care of DB!