Local government and GDS open consultation for common digital standard

Common standard would help local authorities assert their collective bargaining power during procurement

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is asking council staff and other interested parties for their views on a draft standard for delivering digital services.

The draft local government digital service standard has 18 key recommendations, including creating a service using the agile, iterative and user-centred methods set out in the Government Service Design Manual, using open source tools, making source code open where possible, and using open standards where available.

Other recommendations include evaluating tools and systems that will be used to build, host, operate and measure the service, and evaluating what user data will be provided or stored and ensuring that it is secure, and complies with the law.

The draft recommends that there should be a plan in the case of the digital service being taken temporarily offline, and that analysis tools should be used to measure the success of the service and this should in turn be used to help put together the next stage of development.

Phil Rumens, vice chair of LocalGov Digital, the organisation that brought a number of councils together to work on the digital standard, believes that "2016 will be the year local government digital teams start working more closely with GDS around common services, standards and registers".

He added that there were several benefits of working to a common standard, such as: councils being able to review other councils' services; collective bargaining power when services are procured by councils; and, better collaboration between councils.

Earlier this month, Buckingham County Council digital head Matthew Cain called for councils to work together - particularly to influence suppliers. "If we say together ‘this is our standard, help us meet it', it will be much more powerful than going it alone," he said.

Cain added that in November last year, his council adopted a digital standard. "We consciously followed the central government standard. That's important for our users - we can give them consistency between central and local government digital services. But it also avoids us reinventing the wheel.

"The central government approach, led by GDS, has been tested at scale. When they find a fault, they will do so more quickly than we will. And we can then [make] changes accordingly," he said.

The consultation period ends on 19 March.