It’s been a jam-packed few months for Digital Dorset since the beginning of April when we last told you what we’d been doing.
‘Digital Dorset’ reflects what we do in the county to help make people’s lives easier through the use of technology and information or data. It’s about delivering great services that are designed around people’s needs, making sure people can access those services and continuing to improve them based on what customer feedback tells us.
It describes the projects led by teams in the Digital and Change service at Dorset Council and also our partnership work with other organisations.
Our vision, which was approved in April, is to become a digital council in a digital place.
We have themes that run through all the work we do:
- Increase connectivity
- Attract investment
- Increase skills
- Showcase new technologies
- Be a thought leader
- Recruit talent
- Celebrate achievements
- Prompt discussions
Increase connectivity and attract investment
Good connectivity is essential for Dorset to be a digital place.
We have been working hard to take every opportunity we can to get better connectivity for our residents. Although 96% of Dorset can get superfast speeds, the remaining four per cent are struggling to cope with modern online demands – an issue made worse by the Covid pandemic.
In March we announced that Dorset was one of only six counties in the country to be in the first group for funding for the government’s Project Gigabit. This will bring ultra-fast broadband to the some of our most rural and hard to reach parts of the county. We have been carrying out initial work to help the government identify the areas that will benefit from this funding.
At around the same time, a new voucher scheme was launched by the government to help communities get better fibre connections to their homes and businesses. We have been talking to communities we think can benefit from this scheme and helping them in their applications.
We are also lobbying to get better connections for everyone in Dorset, particularly those premises with broadband speeds under 10Mbps.
Unless national interventions are targeted at these areas, around 8,000 Dorset homes and businesses will remain left behind.
We recently sent a report to the government in response to its ‘call for evidence’ on getting better broadband to the very hard to reach areas. Our report outlines the actions we would like to happen so our most rural areas do not get left behind in the digital age. We encouraged residents and businesses in Dorset’s most rural areas to respond with their ideas too.
Increase skills
Having great connectivity is no good without the skills to make the most of it. We know that 35,000 people in our area are completely offline – that’s 11% of the county who are missing out on opportunities because they are not digitally connected. Making sure everyone gains the digital skills they need is incredibly important.
We have set up a programme of embedded digital champions to train frontline staff who will help their customers get online. And our first group of champions are already on board. These champions work in libraries and will help their customers with things like how to use Zoom or pay bills online.
Our volunteer digital champions continue to do their sterling work in helping people with any digital problem. Throughout the pandemic they gave advice via our Digital Hotline and now they are also returning to libraries and community centres to offer face-to-face support. The Digital Hotline – 01305 221048 – is still live and over the last three months we received more than 200 calls.
We work with many people and groups to reduce digital exclusion and it is important that we share our thoughts and plans for action. We held a session with partner organisations to review what our ‘Routes to Inclusion’ work had achieved over the last year and how stakeholders could help us in the future. The session included guest speakers and gave everyone a chance to discuss what they had learnt about digital inclusion from working through a pandemic.
Showcase new technologies
Our ground-breaking research and development 5G RuralDorset project continues to receive international recognition.
Back in early June they successfully installed and achieved connection to the world’s first 700 MHz 5G network built to serve real life use cases, rather than testing in a laboratory. This will provide the connectivity needed to run the coastal public safety trials which will help save lives along the Jurassic Coast.
They also welcomed onboard the British Geological Survey who will help run a research programme using 5G connected sensors to monitor cliff and land stability. This work will monitor the ever-changing stability of cliffs along the Jurassic Coast and help predict disastrous cliff falls.
The Lulworth First Responders also had their emergency response vehicle fitted out with the latest connectivity technology by Excelerate, one of the 5G RuralDorset partners. This will support the team in their ability to respond to situations and make poor connectivity a thing of the past.
Thought leadership
We also want to be a thought leader in the digital world and we use every opportunity we can to talk about the work we do, which links to all areas of connectivity, skills and use.
Digital Leaders Week is the UK’s biggest single gathering of people focused on digital transformation. We were very proud to have eight of our team speak at the conference on a wide range of subjects. You can catch up on the presentations if you missed them (Digital Leaders Week – YouTube).
We spoke at other events too. As the unitary authority with the most elderly population in the country, we presented on how greater use of technology is inevitable to meet this growing social care challenge and protect other valued services.
Part of being a thought leader is considering the technologies and ways of working or living that are coming up on the horizon. We were pleased to have Mark Blackman, the then corporate director for education and learning, talk about the future of education on our podcast (Volume 4: Learning @ home by Digital Dorset Podcast • A podcast on Anchor) Mark gave us an insight into how digital might change the way people learn.
Recruit talent
We had a big recruitment drive in the last few months and our new recruits mean we can do even more. Watch out for profiles in future newsletters as we give you more of an insight about the work we are doing.
Celebrate achievements
We have entered a number of awards in the last few months that recognise the hard work of people across Dorset Council, including our part in ‘Community Heroes’ during the Covid pandemic and for ‘Local Authority of the Year’. We are keeping our fingers crossed that we will be able to share some successes with you in a future update.
We also celebrated our first year of working with 365TRIBE to boost our internal digital champion programme which helped increase the confidence of our employees by an average of 11%. This means that we are in a better position to help our residents with the services they need.
Prompt discussions
We are busy planning our next Festival of the Future, which will take place from 4 to 8 October. The Festival will provide many opportunities for discussion about all things digital. Sign up to our newsletter to keep in touch with the latest announcements!
Keep in touch!
Why not sign up to our newsletter and keep up to date with all things #DigitalDorset? https://dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/e-news
And if you’d like to know more about any of the work we’ve been doing, get in touch connectingdorset@dorsetcouncil.gov.uk or follow #DigitalDorset on Twitter and Facebook.
But Digital Dorset is much more than the things we do – it belongs to us all, so we are keen for others to join the #DigitalDorset conversation. Let us know what you’ve been doing and we can share it with everyone else!
