Smart Technology and Connectivity: Driving Efficiency in Local Government to Supporting Vulnerable Communities

Local government services are currently experiencing unprecedented demand in areas such as Hospitals, GP surgeries, Schools and Social Care. An aging population, evolving societal needs alongside declining local government investment means that Local authorities are needing to find innovative ways in which to streamline costs whilst delivering high quality services.

As the UK is home to the world’s third-largest tech sector, Local Authorities alongside government agencies have ample opportunity to access leading edge technology; however whilst innovation is all around them, they face the ever present challenge related to accessing capital and suitable infrastructure to support it.

One critical part of this puzzle is connectivity take-up. While the 2024 techUK Local Digital Index report showing that 90% of major cities are covered by full fibre, actual take-up falls far behind this. [1] As such, local authorities are facing a need to adopt digitally transformative technologies but aren’t always able to access the tools needed to achieve their goals.

Examples of where smart technology can enable Local Government to improve efficiency and so make a more resilient public sector include:

Smart Technology provides the opportunity to address one of the most pertinent issues across Health and Social Care: delayed patient discharge. In December 2024, approximately 11,969 hospital beds were occupied by patients ready to be discharged into adult social care – representing one in eight of all adult general and acute beds. This, coupled with a 350% increase in flu cases, amounted to several NHS Trusts declaring critical incidents due to lack of resources.[2]

This is an unsustainable model, with insufficient primary and social care capacity proliferating the issue; however this is where smart technology presents a clear solution that can support the discharge into social care and supported living. We’re already seeing this in action in several local authorities, including the SCDIA Digital Discharge to Assess project across Southend-on-Sea, Birmingham City Council, Sutton London Borough Council and North Lincolnshire.

Working closely with technical partner Maldaba to develop the ‘Hospital to Home’ programme, several councils developed a unified system that provides instant communication, data sharing and virtual touchpoints between carers and patients in a home or care setting. Per area, the solution is estimated to have saved £50,000 across transport, domiciliary care, care homes and community centres, but more importantly the quality of care provided to the individual in their local community is greatly enhanced. This small example of how smart technology combined with adaptive working practices drive efficiencies, from installing fall detectors, personal alarms, home monitoring, window/door observation technology, as well as damp sensors to improve personal safety - all of which provides a proactive environment. This ensures that vulnerable groups can be prioritise, thus maximising resources and budgets

By leveraging smart technology combined with new ways, this addresses the immediate issue of freeing up NHS beds but provides a long-term solution for better supported assisted living to expand Social Care capacity. [3]

Due to budget restrictions, local government need to find ways to optimise basic community services, such as Traffic Management, Incident Management and Waste Recycling Services. Digital Tools such as Artificial Intelligence and Smart Devices deliver the data-based intelligence councils need to proactively divert resources to deliver the maximum impact.

Local authorities are actively utilising these technologies with Thanet District Council, Cambridgeshire County Council, and Peterborough City Council - gathering intelligence from smart waste receptacles to assess demand for community services in real-time. This enables councils to automatically delegate resources and optimise spending budget to the benefit of their citizens.

This approach not only supports financial planning but actively contributes to the decrease in carbon emissions by eliminating unnecessary use of combustion-based waste vehicles, as well as predicting recycling patterns to minimise landfill contribution. However, once again without ultra-low-latency full fibre infrastructure to support these initiatives the desired outcomes are often compromised.

Digital technologies supported by ultrafast infrastructure doesn’t just offer local government tangible community benefits, it also provides a foundation to meet national agendas. Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), one of the UK Government’s fastest growing security problems, is rapidly evolving policy in Parliament and at a local government level.

Digital devices, however, provide authorities with the tools to effectively respond and mitigate gender-based violence, either through CCTV-supplied evidence, or predictive mapping.

Smart technology can amalgamate data from the cloud to identify and map high-risk behaviour online against locations. Once shared, this allows local law enforcement, schools and councils to respond with prevention methods.

However, to scale this potentially life-saving technology, central government must provide the funding for further full fibre take-up, ensuring that authorities can transfer critical evidence via safe, secure and resilient networks by allowing data to be shared across the associated agencies, in near real time so as to ensure that critical interventions can be made. [4]

Concluding sentiments

In summary, smart technology, when aligned to new working practices is a key tool in enabling truly transformative change through local and national government; however without incentivising full fibre take-up, local governments will struggle to have the infrastructure to support widespread rollout.[5] To drive a truly efficient, future-ready digital programme, local and central government must consider full fibre as a core building block when developing and then delivering their strategies.

Local Public Services Programme activities

Our Local Public Services Programme helps techUK members to navigate local government. We champion innovation that can create truly digital local public services helping to create thriving, productive and safer places for all. Visit the programme page here