Dundee's Digital Strategy aims to embed a digital culture within the workforce as part of our transformation to deliver efficient, customer-focused services. To achieve this, employees must be comfortable with technologies and have the necessary skills and access. Our Learning and Organisational Development Team undertook an assessment of existing skills - we became the first local authority to use the SCVO Essential Digital Skills Toolkit to survey our entire workforce - and worked to upskill employees and improve digital access for those who had little or no access to IT on a daily basis.
We developed a Digital Champions' network and now have a diverse group of more than 60 passionate staff volunteering as Digital Champions across all services. This workforce-led initiative empowers and engages people to develop their own expertise to support the wider workforce. Champions lead a programme of digital skills learning sessions on a range of topics - 50 delivered so far, with 289 employees attending and sharing their learning back in the workplace. The team's approach is regarded as a model of excellence by the Scottish Digital Office and they are enthusiastic about sharing learning with other local authorities.
The challenge
Dundee City Council's Digital Strategy has clear aims to inculcate a digital focus and embed a digital culture within the workforce as part of our transformation for the future. We recognise that, in order to achieve these aims, we need to ensure all employees are comfortable with current and emerging technologies and have the necessary skills in order to support our citizens. Our workforce have been encouraged to actively increase their knowledge by pursuing what technology can achieve for their service, rather than just passively using the tools and technology provided. This also meets the outcomes of the `Our People' Strategy, Dundee City Council's approach to ensuring that our most valuable asset - our people - are engaged, motivated and developed to meet the challenges posed by new demands and new technology and think about smarter ways of working to deliver excellent services to our customers.
Actions and approach
We needed to know more about the basic digital skills levels of the whole workforce to identify gaps and learning needs, so in September 2018, we became the first local authority in Scotland to use the SCVO Essential Digital Skills Toolkit to survey our entire workforce.
We worked with our champions to look at the best way to launch the survey, create a bit of a buzz and most importantly, engagement across our workforce. We developed the concept of Digital Skills Week which highlighted the launch of the survey and provided a platform for champion-led digital skills sessions, and our online learning resources. The Digital Skills Week concept has been adopted by the Scottish Digital Office.
Digital Champions came up with the idea of taking the survey out to staff 'on the job'. The survey was loaded onto tablets and a range of locations were visited such as environment depots, care homes, community centres and sheltered housing complexes. 1,045 people engaged with the survey from all parts of the workforce and results show that 66% of employees have all the essential digital skills. This is very positive news as the majority of the workforce are ready to take on the digital challenges in our rapidly changing workplace. This gives us a baseline from which to measure an increase in digital skills over the coming years.
The key objectives of the Digital Champions project were to:
- Undertake an assessment of existing skills and make learning and development plans to upskill employees to the required level of ICT competency, and to increase digital awareness for their roles across service areas.
- Improve digital access for members of the workforce who currently have little or no access to IT on a day-to-day basis.
The ongoing planning and development is done collaboratively with the Digital Champions directly so that they are fully involved in driving relevant change across the wider diverse workforce groups.
We developed our champions network through a series of gatherings. These have been fun, informal sessions, run quarterly, to share ideas and progress. We used a co-design approach to develop the role of champion, involving champions at every stage. We now have 67 champions across a wide age range, and across all service areas, some of whom deliver a programme of bite_sized, champion-led digital skills sessions offered to the workforce via MyLearn, the council's e-learning platform. We continue to recruit and develop new champions in all areas, to promote digital skills learning and to support others in their teams.
In addition:
- We worked with Barclays to develop a Dundee City Council branded landing page on their Digital Wings online learning resource.
- We worked with environment and social care staff groups, who would not otherwise have daily access to council IT facilities, on accessing MyView (which lets people see payslips, apply for leave, update personal records etc) on their own devices, and encouraging an informal digital champion approach within their teams to help with rollout of this initiative.
- We have worked with other local authority partners at both a regional and national level to create and share best practice around digital skills, learning from each other and making best use of resources.
We overcome challenges and use opportunities to connect the high-level vision for the digital strategy to all levels of the organisation. We engage with managers and seek their commitment by exploring benefits and efficiencies through new ways of working. We report on our progress to the Digital Oversight Board, a group of senior officers overseeing the council's overall digital strategy, ensuring that the project is a good fit with wider council objectives.
Impact and results
We have developed a rolling programme of champion-led digital skills learning sessions, which are available via MyLearn and will be adapted as we progress. Fifty digital learning sessions have been delivered so far, and 289 employees have attended from a range of services. Participant feedback includes “I will share what I have learned at our next team meeting to let my colleagues benefit from this learning”. Champions leading sessions report that they have grown in confidence and enjoy sharing their knowledge and expertise with others.
We have worked with teams in both environment and social care to move 223 members of staff so far onto digital payslips. This has been achieved through the delivery of a series of bite-sized learning sessions, showing them how to access MyView on their own devices and encouraging them to become informal champions, rolling out this initiative to their colleagues. This strand of the project is continuing to grow with the stretch aim of having more than 90% of the non-office based workforce on MyView by the end of 2019.
Our work has received national endorsement:
Jackie Martin, Programme Manager at Local Government Digital Office says: “Lots of great work using service design to create a volunteer digital champion network”.
One Digital (UK wide organisation for digital inclusion) says: “Great to hear about the fantastic engagement Dundee City Council experienced when using the essential digital skills toolkit with their staff”.
Our People Strategy says “It is through our people that we will realise our ambitions to be a world class city and ensure positive outcomes for the people of Dundee”. The energy and enthusiasm of those who have engaged voluntarily as Digital Champions highlights the creativity, commitment and expertise across our workforce groups. This project demonstrates authentic distributed leadership of change involving many different people committed to improvement beyond their specific remit. The individuals involved are amazing and together contribute to the exciting developments for the organisation and to influence how our services respond to the challenges and opportunities of the future. The direct impact will be that our workforce is fully included in an emerging digital world and that people using our services receive the best.
How is the new approach being sustained?
Our Digital Champions network will be key to our ongoing digital transformation as we move towards cloud based solutions. They will become `early adopters' and assist workplace teams to make the move to new applications. In 2/3 years' time, we will redo the SCVO Essential Digital Skills Toolkit and confidently expect to find even higher levels of skills and engagement across the workforce.
Lessons learned
The Learning and Organisational Development team recruited a diverse group of staff across all services who have a passion for technology and have worked with us to organically develop the network. The team spends time building relationships and finding out the interests and skill sets of each champion. This has enabled us to develop and deliver a wide range of relevant digital learning opportunities.
We encouraged environment employees to become informal champions within their teams to promote the use of MyView on their own devices. We created an online group using a social media tool 'Yammer' that allows 2-way communication between the project team and the champions in a less formal way and has also allowed us to share ideas, progress and resources.
Our model has created a whole-council approach to learn together and maximise opportunity for innovations to be rolled out. Our Digital Champions network links closely with Digital Leaders across the organisation, for example within our children and families service. Through our champions network, school champions are now working together to develop new Glow learning resources available in schools, enriching and enhancing the support available for learners and teachers.
Next steps
By creating a Digital Champions network we have created a solid foundation to support the aims of the Digital and IT strategies. The roll-out of digital transformation projects, such as moving to cloud-based solutions, will benefit from the expertise of the champions network to support the learning and development needs of the workforce. The creation of hubs across the city has allowed those without email accounts to access information both personal and work related and improved engagement and communication. The digital skills audit has provided a baseline for our workforce as we continue on this improvement journey.
We have a lead role within the Scottish Digital Office sharing our learning around the development of Digital Champions and we have been invited to present to other local authorities. We have delivered a national webinar and produced a case study shared by the Digital Office. Our approach is promoted regularly as a model of excellence, and we are often contacted by others involved in digital transformation to share key aspects of our model.
For further information on this case study, please contact
Niall Reid
niall.reid@dundeecity.gov.uk
01382 438186)