This strategy explains what we're going to do to make the Royal Borough of Greenwich a truly digital council and a truly digital borough over the next four years and beyond.  

We want Royal Greenwich to be a borough where:

• everyone can thrive
• our residents can be healthy
• everyone can access the services they need - however they need to
• everyone feels safe
• we meet our climate ambitions.

This vision is set out in the Our Greenwich corporate plan and our digital strategy builds on that plan.  

Becoming a digital council is not about implementing new technology for the sake of it, but about fundamentally improving our resident, visitor, business and staff experience through simpler, better services and tools.  

‘Digital’ not a set of activities – as much as anything it is a mindset, of being service-oriented and adaptive, and having an absolute focus on improving people’s lives. True transformation involves not just putting services online, but totally rethinking how those services are offered. It’s a cross-functional activity, involving teams from across the council as well as outside.   

Our vision is for a happier, healthier and more joined-up borough through the use of modern technology and data. This was already an urgent need, but the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated both the urgency and the will to change.  

Now is the right time to focus on action. 

What we aim to achieve 

If we successfully deliver this strategy over the next four years, we will have achieved:    

• a fundamentally better resident experience of interacting with the council, both through services and information. People will be able to get what they want from us, the first time they try, and not need multiple touch points to do simple tasks  

• happier, more efficient staff, who are equipped with all the technology they need to do their jobs. They will have had some of their manual work taken away in favour of being able to focus on higher-value tasks

• a better understanding of our residents, through the smarter use of joined-up data. We will be using modern technology to join data sets and get insights which allow us to continuously improve our services and make better decisions  

• a more sustainable financial model, where we are able to improve service delivery while maintaining or reducing costs  

• a positive impact on our climate commitment, through a radical reduction in the use of paper and associated services like postage 

• a more cohesive and joined-up council, through increasing cross-functional project work, sharing budgets and goals, and being more transparent.  

This will be a four-year programme of work in terms of capital expenditure - keeping up with modern technology and services is actually a lifetime’s work.