All this month we are celebrating five years of Dorset Council signing the Local Digital Declaration.
The Declaration is a shared ambition for the future of local public services.
It was written in 2018 by a collective of 45 local authorities, sector bodies and government departments – including Dorset Council – and outlines our goals and commitments. Since then, a further 300 local authorities have signed up.
In a series of blogs, we’ll be sharing how we are meeting the aims of the Declaration – starting with a focus on our workplace digital champions.
Thanks to digital, there are so many more options available to us as a local authority to ensure we are providing services that meet our customers’ needs.
Whether that is our new and improved website, the continued development of an online customer platform and to using automation to speed up responses and increase efficiency – the possibilities are endless.
Our vision is to be a digital council in a digital place – but we can only succeed if we can keep up with the ever evolving and advancing world of technology.
But sometimes it can be difficult to keep up with the almost daily updates and new possibilities that digital offers us.
You may have heard of our volunteer digital champions who are helping people in the community with their digital skills?
But did you know that internally Dorset Council has its own army of workplace digital champions to help our staff?
And why should this matter to residents?
It matters because we can only continue to improve our services digitally by making sure all our staff have the skills necessary to see these things through.
Just like for some members of the community, the advancement of digital can be a daunting prospect for some of our staff.
Our workplace digital champions not only ensure help is there whenever any Dorset Council employee needs help, but they can also help share new ways of working – that will in turn benefit customers as well.
Take our adult social services team that cover the west of the county. Their digital champion, Cheryl Burford, recently opened up a new digital way of working to them.
As Mel Soanes, senior support officer, explained: “We have very recently launched a new team structure in social services (west locality) and as a part of this needed a new method to track client referrals.
“The old solution was an Excel spreadsheet and it was in urgent need of replacement. My colleague, Paul Gorsuch, and I were liaising with the workers and area practice managers, finding out what was needed from the new digital solution.
“Alongside this we had an ongoing dialogue with Cheryl, not only because she is a digital champion but because she’s generally very knowledgeable and enthusiastic too.
“To say that Cheryl ran with this project would be understating it. She researched and broadened her already considerable knowledge, agreed with us the best solution available and, singlehandedly. built two client referral trackers using Microsoft Lists.
“Cheryl has since been instrumental in changes, improvements and troubleshooting for the trackers, both before and after launch. She continues to be pivotal in carrying it forward.
“Paul and I honestly don’t know what we would have done without Cheryl’s expertise, determination and willingness to pick this up. She has clearly learned and retained a great deal from the digital champion programme, not only in terms of knowledge but also in terms of her confidence.
“Another of my team has been inspired to sign up to become a digital champion, so the benefits keep on coming.”
Fact file:
- Dorset Council has 235 workplace digital champions working across 200 departments in the council.
- Each champion attends two monthly webinars so they are kept up to date with any new advances and offers from Microsoft Office 365 – the programme used by Dorset Council staff.
- They are also trained in coaching, mentoring, presenting and resistance management. This ensures that digital champions don’t just have the knowledge of the products but have the people skills as well.
- To demonstrate why digital champions are needed, in the last year alone Microsoft Office 365 has introduced more than 50 new features across its suite of apps.
I have worked in communications for 25 years, first as a journalist and then in public and private sector public relations. From Southampton originally, I have lived in beautiful Dorset for the last two decades. My passion for Dorset has also turned into a passion for landscape photography. My other great loves are my family and Southampton Football Club.