Podcast
At Play In The Garden of Eden
Hosted by Joe Tibbetts · EN
Two men, one an American Ai engineer and game designer living in Seattle and an English documentary film maker living in Dover, England in conversation about AI, documentaries, chess, human stupidity and the future of the human race.
83episodes
Episodes
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Better insight and information could help social care providers and consumers to a more positive future view
Mar 20, 201900:21:09Tap to summarizeAccording to Andy Begley, who heads up adult social care, housing and public health at Shropshire Council, and is Co-Chair of West Midlands ADASS, better informed providers, consumers and commissioners should lead to a more positive view about the future of social care. People who have care needs, and their families, can use technology and web-based services to identify and access information and services that in the past might have needed to be supplied by council teams. This enables a shift in control of the sort that consumers have welcomed in other areas of life, like shopping, banking and travel. Professional social care services will of course continue to be needed, but can be supplied more flexibly, based on better-informed conversations with service users and their families. The same better-informed, more 'grown-up' approach applies to commissioner- provider relations, which, making use of the wealth of data held by and available to councils, could help deliver a more sustainable provider market. For this to happen, behaviours need to change, with commissioners less hidebound by traditional case management driven systems, care users and their families more willing to take control, and providers being given more access to council-held intelligence about local demand for services and more flexible procurement approaches.
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IoT device count in care predicted to rise to 'billions' in a few years
Feb 24, 201900:39:35Tap to summarizeThe use of sensors to monitor individuals' wellbeing is set to take off agreed Roy Grant of York Council, Mark Low of Pinacl Solutions and Karantis 306's Nick Hampson, in the recent CLGdotTV discussion on care in the home. Thanks to investment by the Council, York is the most connected city in the UK, and is now starting to use this connectivity to enable technologies relevant to residents' health, social care, housing and other needs. There is a huge range of sensors now available to collect and analyse data about individuals' activity within their home and what conditions there are like – for example, whether the ambient temperature is high enough for an elderly, perhaps immobile, person. Remote monitoring enables family or paid carers to understand much better the experiences of the people they are looking after during times they are not physically present (perhaps 23.5 hours of each day). This is not just about emergencies like falls: a disturbed night, flagged by unusual data patterns, may give early indication of a problem that if treated quickly, could prevent a hospital admission. As the panel point out, any means of identifying early intervention – whether involving a person's health, or a property's dampness - can be key not just to individual and community wellbeing, but also to making best use of available resources.
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Public anxiety about drones could stymie real economic and social benefits
Feb 15, 201900:41:48Tap to summarizePwC UK drones lead Elaine Whyte, Dedrone's Amit Samani and Tris Dyson of Nesta discuss the economic and social potential of drones and whether public anxieties might be allayed through regulation and control by public authorities. PwC has estimated that the UK drone market could be worth £42bn by 2030 and deliver productivity gains worth £16bn. The technology is already enabling huge savings on inspection and surveillance with people-free delivery solutions just around the corner. Public good has been demonstrated in use by the emergency and rescue services and in the delivery of medical supplies to remote locations. On the other hand, memories of the Gatwick Airport shutdown are fresh, and people are justifiably anxious. Data collection by Dedrone around UK airfields confirms that a significant amount of illegal activity is going on. Public anxiety has slowed or halted other technologies in their early days (think wind farms and GM foods), so the drone industry is looking to regulation and other means to increase public confidence. How local authorities might respond - by being part of the management of 'the space up to 400 feet off the ground' is discussed, and reference made to Nesta's ongoing Flying High programme which in its first phase worked with councils in Bradford, London, Preston, Southampton and the West Midlands to develop visions for a future with drones.
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Ask your taxi driver: 'do you live in a smart city?'
Feb 15, 201900:39:35Tap to summarizeIn typical 'smart city' discussions, agreed our panel, most of the people around the table are from organisations and represent sectors like education, energy, retail, and transport, and in these discussions, people are reduced to personas like 'commuter' or 'consumer'. But in real life citizens inhabit several personas and there is need for policy-makers to take a more user-centric and joined up approach for the benefits of the smart life – that technology now enables – to be realised (and to be perceived by citizens, including the person providing your taxi ride). Without this joining up there is a danger that we are sleepwalking into a future none of us desire. And the speed of its arrival may take up by surprise. Compare a photo of a London street in the 1880 with one just 40 years later, by which time petrol driven vehicles had completely replaced horse-drawn equivalents. We are in a period of similarly revolutionary technological change with huge implications for infrastructure planning and the daily lives of citizens. Local authorities are playing catch up with technology and are yet to fully understand that their effectiveness will be determined by their ability to use, and share wisely, the data they generate.
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Public sector yet to get smart about workforce
Feb 13, 201900:38:23Tap to summarizeLeatham Green of the PPMA and Jonathan Key of LabourXchange tell Jane Hancer of CC2i that public sector approaches to recruitment, retention and management are stuck in a pre-digital age It is well known that local authorities and other parts of the public sector face staff shortages in professional and less skilled roles, leading to significant expenditure on recruitment and agency fees. Yet hiring practice remains long-winded, bureaucratic and rule-bound, an approach that works neither for organisation nor candidate, and could change if the will was there, says HR specialist Leatham. Today's technology allows for much greater flexibility in hiring people and enabling them to work when and where they are available says Jonathan, whose online platforms match small units of supply and demand and are about to be piloted with councils seeking new ways to plug a huge and growing care skills gap. 'Digital' can make 'office-based' roles more accessible to candidates with other responsibilities and allow organisations more flexibility but too many managers still want to see people 'in the office' and fail to provide the human support that is needed alongside the tech tools.
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Deprioritising tech may be the smart route to public service transformation
Feb 12, 201900:39:19Tap to summarizeJason Kitcat (Essex CC) Richard Farrell of Netcall and Sleuth Co-op's Hilary Simpson discuss how local authorities might overcome challenges of legacy systems, digital skill shortages and the persistence of old-style procurement. As Director of Corporate Development, Jason is working for change by getting his Essex colleagues to focus on citizen outcomes and experience, using the tools of service and interaction design, ethnography, data and analytics, recognising there will be many different ways forward, not all of them involving technology. Richard, whose role at low-code platform provider Netcall involves thinking about the future of IT, says he spends a lot of time 'filtering hype' and agrees that tech should be subservient when it comes to change. The company is still getting asked to automate bad processes, and culture remains the biggest challenge. Skill shortages are also a problem for public service organisations that cannot offer 24-year-old coders Macbooks, pizza and 'beer o'clock'. But there are various solutions, including making use of the 'missing 50%' of the IT/digital workforce (ie women); growing your own; making more use of flexible contracting via the new digital frameworks; and using low-code to deliver customised applications created by business analysts rather than coders. Procurement comes up again as an issue: why are legacy suppliers STILL getting the contracts? Nobody ever got fired for hiring the usual suspects still applies, apparently, although there is agreement that GCloud and the other new tech frameworks are becoming real game-changers. This content is sponsored by Netcall
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Will Defra's new Resources and Waste Strategy deliver the 'circular economy'?
Jan 31, 201900:46:23Tap to summarizeAs awareness grows of the environmental, even existential, consequences of our take/make/use/throw approach to resources, minds are focusing on the benefits of a 'circular economy' in which materials and manufactured goods are routinely recycled and re-used, and not just once. Our panel members welcome the Strategy, but don't underestimate the massive challenges it represents, including the 65% recycling targets set for local authorities. While some councils have already made changes that will help them meet new demands, others are less well prepared. One feature of the Strategy that comes in for much discussion is the focus on the design of products and packaging. Its been suggested that up to 80% of the environmental impact of a product or its packaging is determined at design stage. And yet as our panel point out, there is at present little dialogue between designers and the waste management industry. Incentivising on the one hand manufacturers and retailers (producer pays), and on the other, consumers (deposit and return schemes), to change behaviours is discussed. So too, inevitably, is the question 'exactly which recyclying bin does this wrapper go in?' Waste professionals they may be but our panel 'fess up to being as confused as the rest of us with some of the materials passing through their shopping baskets and fridges into the bins.
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Cannabis: legal in the UK this year or any time soon?
Jan 31, 201900:42:01Tap to summarizeThis wide ranging discussion provides an excellent primer for those vaguely aware of, for example, legalization in Canada and some states in the US, the row about medical use of cannabis, and reports of police services these days 'turning a blind eye'. The conversation covers: Pros and cons of legalization Why many politicians are reluctant to engage with this topic Variations in UK law enforcement around cannabis use Why festival owners are a major barrier to drugs testing schemes Whether legalization is inevitable and will it most likely come from the political left or right?
Transcribe →How can public sector take up of SME innovation be increased?
Jan 21, 201900:20:18Tap to summarizeCLGdotTV will be talking with Beth regularly in 2019, and with some of the SMEs she mentors, to better understand the difficulties innovators face in getting their good ideas taken up by public sector organisations. In this introductory conversation, Beth suggests there is general acceptance in the NHS and elsewhere the public sector that harnessing innovation from SMEs is 'a good thing'. But making this a reality is a different matter. Traditionally, public sector organisations have not been geared up to buy 'innovation' and increasingly formalised procurement processes are pushing them to be over-prescriptive in their specifications. Innovation schemes and associated funding need to foster and enable collaboration and partnerships with SMEs, since sustainable innovation will only come from deep understanding of challenges that need to be overcome. Expecting SMEs to work from outside complex public sector organisations and come up with fully finished, readily procurable products and services is not realistic. Within the NHS, initiatives being developed by Academic Health Science Networks are helping, while in the local authority sector, the Department of Communities' Local Digital Fund is enabling SMEs to work alongside councils on a range of exploratory 'discovery ' projects
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Sharing births, marriages & deaths data to improve services and reduce fraud
Jan 21, 201900:18:13Tap to summarizeProject Manager Laura Folkers of the Worcestershire Office of Data Analytics, and Charlotte Shepard Information Officer for Redditch & Bromsgrove Councils, one of the partners, discuss the project approach and anticipated outcomes. WODA has been awarded £57,500 from the Local Digital Fund for a discovery project to look at how registration data for births, deaths and marriages can be securely and ethically shared to improve services and reduce fraud. The Digital Economy Act 2017 enables more sharing off data among local public sector partners. The 'Tell Us Once' service – an existing initiative for sharing this data - does not have a 100% take-up, is not used in all authorities, applies only to data volunteered by the public, does not cover marriage data and does not extend to eg NHS organisations. Laura and Charlotte describe some of the anticipated benefits of sharing births, marriages & deaths data more widely, how the project is unfolding, and where they anticipate having got to by March, when the project will end, with the possibility of its progressing to a further 'alpha' phase of work.
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