Connectivity and tackling the challenges facing our Places

For local government, we have seen the rediscovery of our role in place-shaping, economic survival and growth and in enabling communities to support each other. The 3 core drivers of local government remain: the protection of the vulnerable, increasing prosperity and ensuring we live, work, learn and play in welcoming and vibrant places.

2020 and 2021 also brought technology and Digital to the fore in service delivery for businesses and the public sector and how and where we live and work. For the first few months, the mantra was about the “new normal” of working from home and frequent shopping online and both have become mainstream in 2022 in the forms of hybrid working, hybrid retail and hybrid learning. Despite the best efforts of some technology legends like Elon Musk and more traditional politicians demanding the return of their workforces to the office full-time, the overwhelming majority is for keeping the transformation.

Alongside COVID we face a longer-term challenge: Climate Change. COP26 brought the need to change back into sharp focus along with the harsh reality that time is short, if not too late.

These raise some significant challenges for our Places and communities and here are just a few to be getting on with:

1. What do we do with town centers designed for in-person shopping?
2. How do the economics of transport work for flexible travel?
3. How do cities cope with smaller daytime populations?
4. How do we contain and reverse the drivers of Climate Change?
5. How can we improve the quality of life in our homes?

So, what’s connectivity got to do with all this? The last 15 years have seen a quiet revolution of infrastructure across the UK and the world. Broadband, Superfast broadband, then Ultrafast broadband alongside 3G, 4G and 5G and other wireless solutions have rolled out across the UK, transforming how we communicate whilst the wider technology world has kept pace with unlocking its potential. So much so that we were able to flip our working and learning practices over within the first couple of weeks of lockdown. Video meetings and consultations are the norm. Lonely and vulnerable people have been reconnected with friends and family virtually.

Back to local government and what’s next. The underlying infrastructure for the demands of connectivity is robust and growing rapidly, but how it’s accessed, managed and used remains fractured and often weak. It’s certainly not used efficiently.

The future of connectivity is convergence, service management and resilience designed around what places need and not what bits of technology are deployed or do.

We’ll take three practical examples to bring this to life:

Safe and Healthy Homes
Everyone has heard of the Internet of Things, right, but what does it do? Put simply, it is devices that collect information and carry out specific activities across, spread across a data network. Take our homes, IoT can be used to monitor pollution, access, damp, energy consumption and dangerous items (gas cookers, heaters etc). Now put these together and collate the data generated and you can deploy services to improve the home environment and protect vulnerable people. North has already deployed this as a service with social housing organisations to improve the quality of life of their residents.

Safe and Secure Places
IoT technologies and connectivity are already deployed across most street environments. It’s how Councils manage street lighting and often monitor pollution levels. Add in CCTV and integration with the emergency and community safety services and our places become safer without having to deploy more people on the streets. North is doing this in York, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Aberdeen.

Managing the environment
This is at the heart of what local does, ensuring our places are the best they can be, and it means looking after our roads, built environment and facilities. It also means helping to manage the environmental challenges out there. The IoT Scotland project is addressing all these challenges on a country-wide scale spanning, urban, suburban and rural localities by deploying services ranging from pollution, severe weather and flood monitoring to active street light management and public safety.

Joining the dots
The highways of tomorrow are digital, carry data and are already built. The challenge is how can we ensure they are used both efficiently and without duplication of effort. It is also to ensure that what they are used for supports our people and places and ambitions around increasing prosperity, protecting and caring for the vulnerable, and providing a great quality of life for all.

Connectivity as a service, and providing resilient and secure solutions designed to deliver those ambitions are key enablers for ensuring our places really are fit for the future.