Technology - LGC Awards 2021
This award is open to a single council or where appropriate a partnership of councils, or a council-owned company. Private sector partners can enter on a council’s behalf, with the permission of the council itself. The entry may relate to pre-Covid projects realised during the year, or a response to the Covid crisis.
Technology has the potential to bring about a far more efficient use of resources, for instance by more easily directing service users to the support they need, or as a means of running services and/or the council’s operations during the course of the pandemic. It also has the potential to land public sector procurers with huge bills for projects that do not meet their goals.
This award will go to a council which has avoided the pitfalls to devise new systems that achieve objectives such as bringing about behaviour change, improving service delivery and/or making services more efficient.
Submissions should focus on:
- A full description of the project and its aims
- An explanation of the technology involved and what made its use in your authority innovative
- A detailed explanation of how the project was funded and where the expertise for it came from, and the goals it was intended to achieve
- How staff and users have engaged in using the technology, benefitted from it, or been involved in its design/implementation
- Evidence that the project has achieved the goals in question.
Award entries will be judged upon:
- The level of innovation and ambition shown in devising technological improvements
- The extent to which the evidence shows that projects have achieved the desired goals, especially with regards to the toughest ones
- Evidence of the use of technology to drive change and innovation in service delivery
- Entrants’ ability to work with other organisations and the quality of their work ensuring that partnerships continue to meet the needs of local communities in the long-term, rather than just to create short-term improvements
- The scale of any behaviour change resulting from the new systems.
- The quality of user and staff engagement
General Entry Information
- These awards primarily cover achievement and performance in the calendar year 2020 and the first two months of 2021, and entries should have a particular focus on that period. However, judges will take into account work that began before that period, as well as achievement and performance since that period.
- The awards will reflect the fact that Covid-19 and the response to it have posed an unprecedented challenge to local government. Judges’ decisions should reflect attributes such as performance, resilience, compassion and adaptability in the face of the pandemic alongside achievement, innovation and vision. However, entries which are primarily not about the council’s pandemic response should be treated equally to those that are.
- You only have to submit a single statement explaining why you should win (up to 1,000 words).
- Please also provide a 100-word summary of your entry. Please use this as an opportunity to make a pitch to our judges about what makes your work innovative and bold.
- Please use the questions in the bullet points below as a guide and break up your submission accordingly. Some may be more applicable than others for your entry.
- Please specify which private sector partners do you work with (if any).
- While you have the option of providing supporting material, we urge you to do this sparingly, and only if you feel further evidence is required to back-up your entry. The critical information should however be included in the main part of your entry.
If you require any help with your entries contact: Rafael Younes on 020 3953 2115, email Rafael.Younes@emap.com or Jae Taylor on 020 3953 2117, email Jae.Taylor@emap.com
