A manifesto for local government

We believe that the knowledge, talent and skills to transform services are already within councils. They are the people who know what needs to change.

Sadly, these skills often leave the sector as good people are unable to make a difference with legacy applications. With the right digital solutions – like low-code – and the right technology partners, local government can grow the capability and capacity to fix the plumbing itself many times over. We will work hard to support that talent. Through mentoring for digital leaders, peer learning opportunities, recognising excellence through national awards, highlighting and amplifying areas of great practice and by delivering top class learning and development resources for council staff.

We believe in enabling councils to break free from the constraints of legacy applications and vendors. Collaboration and sharing are important ways to achieve that. We know that diverse ideas lead to better outcomes.

So, an important part of our approach is to facilitate councils to learn from each other, to collaborate and share their developments. It saves time and money as councils can share and consume good digital services that have already been developed and tested. This helps them to accelerate their digital transformation.

Our AppShare and our Community are how we are very visibly following through on this commitment.

Solutions should reduce the total cost of ownership for councils. We will always be open and transparent about our pricing, so there are no surprises. We also think that it should be easy to understand licencing so that councils can have cost certainty – this is not always the case in the current digital solutions market. We guarantee to always have transparent licencing so councils can budget effectively.

Our licencing for Liberty Create, our low-code platform, is site based, as we want to encourage councils to use it as widely as possible without constraints so the total cost of ownership reduces with each new application or service that is deployed. Forrester says that low-code platforms – like Liberty Create – can increase software development speeds by up to 10 times that of traditional processes. Faster development means a quicker return on investment.

Delivering value back to the public purse must be a goal of any supplier to local government that claims to be ‘passionate about public service’.

We believe that open standards and open integration in our low-code platform, Liberty Create, promote innovation and make it easier for local government to link applications and data together. Many legacy applications lock data away but our low-code platform helps unleash that data.

It gives councils access to their data so they can use it to drive service improvements.

Councils should be able to see the benefit where an integration in Liberty Create has already been developed. If another council needs that integration, then it should be available to them. Similarly, if a council has built an application in Liberty Create – like Blue Badge applications – then that should also be available to other councils.

The problem with some legacy suppliers and solutions is they have taken local government for granted. They’ve often had contracts for years without challenge and councils haven’t been able to get more value from their investment. We don’t take our customers for granted. We know any investment is a big decision for them and we always want to prove that they made the right call.

One of the ways we differentiate ourselves is by delivering ongoing innovation and new product features without additional charge, like the addition of AI to Liberty. This substantially improves councils’ ability to do more with their investment.

Local government never stands still, so neither should we.

Some solutions in the current digital marketplace are not delivering what customers need because local authority customers’ needs are changing at a faster rate than the solutions they are using. This means that customers often have to fit what they need into a solution that might have been suitable once but now constrains those needs. This might be where the customer wants ‘full end-to-end transformation’ but their solution only helps with part of the journey.

We know they want flexible solutions from responsive suppliers that help them transform across the whole enterprise, not just the front door. We know that because we regularly listen to what our customers are saying. We will continue to listen to what our customers say. And act on it.

This commitment is the most important one on this list.

As a solutions provider to local government, our key focus is on providing solutions that deliver the greatest positive impact to citizens. Alongside this, we want to ensure that council employees have the tools that they need to help them to do their jobs. That’s ultimately why we do what we do. If our solutions don’t do that, then we are not being successful.

As well as impact, time to value is a really important measure of success. We are constantly looking for ways to reduce the time between a council choosing our solution and getting value from it. Some of the things in this manifesto, particularly sharing and reuse, help with that. But we continue to work in partnership with our council customers to make that time to value as short as possible. The sooner we can do that, then the sooner councils can become digitally autonomous.