Designing a new digital strategy

Challenge

Birmingham City Council were looking to develop a new digital strategy to replace the outgoing one developed in 2016.

They needed to design a strategy that underpinned the Council's strategic objectives and its ambitions of digital and data transformation. The strategy needed to tackle pain points of both staff and the people of Birmingham, embedding digital into every decision and ways of working. It also needed to be concise, engaging, measurable, and remain relevant.

Solution

The team conducted extensive User Research across Birmingham to understand the needs of citizens, businesses, and staff. Using a human-centred design approach, we developed a collaborative Digital Strategy focused on addressing key pain points.

By mapping research findings to strategic themes, testing content and design with diverse users, and creating an adaptable implementation plan, we collaboratively crafted a comprehensive and accessible strategy that aims to embed digital considerations into every aspect of governance.

It remains a live document that is iterated on a quarterly basis.

Impact

The process has been a learning experience for the whole project team, with Agile delivery and new human-centred design concepts to some Council staff. The team involved in delivery have got their hands dirty and truly embraced working in an agile way, using human-centred design to underpin our approach. We have been applying these approaches to develop a digital strategy, something that we hadn't done before, and there were not many examples of this elsewhere in Government.

We are really proud of what we’ve achieved through this process, as a team and as a Council. We have a delivery plan that sets up the Council for success!