At iESE we are seeing a changing focus in local government and other public services away from being the provider of services towards a model of community enablement. We think in the years ahead, 90 per cent of authorities will move away from a service delivery model towards one of community enablement where they analyse and understand demand, then seek to get as much of this demand as possible dealt with before it becomes a need for local public services.

To get to this place we have to look to the future and how it is becoming a reality a bit at the time in the best local authorities, and use this to build a better picture of what the local public services of the future should look like. Local authorities should no longer have to make decisions based on out-of-date information. Digital systems, the internet of things and data analytics can now provide information in real-time and provide accurate foresight for what is most likely to come. This changing world is providing both opportunities and risks, all of which have to be navigated to get to the best possible future. The likes of robotics, artificial intelligence and drones, are providing opportunities to improve local public services, but we also have unprecedented challenges for the environment and the economy.

To become an authority of the future, we need to plan simultaneously for the short, medium and long-term, whilst moving towards turning as many as our services as possible into what the iESE Transformation Framework describes as Level Three transformation. This is where communities are enabled, services are truly reinvented— not just improved upon – and as much demand as possible is prevented or diverted, significantly reducing the demand for local public services and making communities more vibrant, sustainable and resilient.

For example, building more hospitals to deal with the sick is right to get the waiting lists down short-term, but the real long-term challenge is increasing wellbeing so less people get sick in the first place. In the medium-term we might help people adopt healthier lifestyles whilst introducing Level Three transformations – one such idea could be increasing the level of first aid knowledge taught in the education curriculum to reduce the strain on the health service of minor injuries.

Rather than wait for Government to bail the industry out, local government needs to do what it does best and get on with delivering its own solutions. For local authorities to enable their communities they need to adopt this as the key purpose and look to reinvent their services. Working with their communities and stakeholders to provide an environment in which they can engage, communicate, be active, and innovate. In this way individuals, communities and stakeholders will find ways to develop their own solutions and create services to meet their own needs and demands. Whilst this type of approach is increasingly being spoken about, the means to achieve it are harder to see. It needs new approaches and design principles are a very powerful tool not currently widely used in public service which can be used to produce such radical change. iESE has developed two new services – one is a strategic look, while the other is a toolkit. The new services draw on design principles, which allow you to take the best of what you are doing and add it to the best of what everyone else is doing worldwide. We want to minimise the risk to local authorities by sharing best and future practice.