The digital strategy is mainly focused on the council itself and making greater use of digital technology to enable us to deliver better services for our residents and businesses. But there is also an important role for the council in facilitating the use of digital technology to bring about improvements within the borough, and the way it functions. This is increasingly important as the borough, like other cities, faces the challenges from rapid growth, automation, congestion and the climate crisis. This was recognised by the council back in 2015 when it published its smart city strategy. At the same time, the council also established an innovation company, dg cities, to work alongside its in-house team, Digital Greenwich to oversee the implementation of the strategy and to collaborate with universities and business. 

The digital and smart city strategies are complementary: innovation in the council and in the borough go hand in hand. Indeed, the creation of an innovative and smart council was one of four main pillars in the smart city strategy, the others being the creation of smart neighbourhoods and communities; digital infrastructure for change; and economic growth and high value jobs. 

The newly created digital and data team will work closely with Digital Greenwich to capitalise on the opportunities from these two areas of work, and add value to each of them.   

Our intended outcomes for this workstream are to: 

• radically improve digital connectivity across the borough 

• enhance the high street offer 

• improve sustainability across the borough 

• improve our digital capability and engagement for our residents and businesses.   

To do this we will continue our work in line with our smart city strategy, including projects on: 

• city data analytics 

• the use of IOT devices to capture data to gain new insights, for example, information on the performance of assets such as boilers in council housing and energy use and sustainable energy management system 

• developing the digital economy 

• smart neighbourhoods and homes 

• sustainability in social housing.