The West Midland’s Roadmap to Stronger Local Digital Capital
The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) have published its ‘Digital Roadmap’, a five-year strategy that “aims to realise the ambitions of our Local Industrial Strategy, build on the successes of our 5G testbed, and tackle decisively the issue of digital exclusion”.
The strategy is centred around five main missions:
- Securing access for everyone to digital opportunities, particularly those in poverty
- Sharing and using data to improve people’s lives
- Becoming the UK’s best-connected region
- Realising the potential of digital to transform our economy and build economic resilience
- Using digital public services to build a fairer, greener, healthier region
The strategy references techUK’s ‘Building the Future We Need’ campaign work that analysed the impact that technology can have on the UK’s nations and regions. Building on the West Midlands’ strengths, the strategy aims to deliver improved outcomes across the region, from a reduction in health inequalities to a carbon reduction of 69% by 2027.
Matthew Evans, Director of Markets at techUK said: “It is fantastic to see the West Midlands take up the challenge of boosting their Local Digital Capital through their Digital Roadmap strategy. We look forward to engaging with them on how industry can work with the Combined Authority to deliver the positive outcomes across their five missions. We will continue to develop the concept of Local Digital Capital, including the development of a framework to measure it.”
Matthew Evans
Matthew Evans
Matthew Evans leads techUK’s Market Programme teams and is a member of the senior leadership team.
The Market Programme teams help techUK members apply innovative technology solutions across a range of sectors, including the Public Sector, Telecoms, Climate, Financial Services and Cyber. Matt also leads our Nations and Regions work.
Matt sits on a number of industry bodies, including the UKspace Executive Committee and the Task & Finish Group on Industry Resilience for Critical Minerals. Matt has previously represented techUK on the Steering Board of the Electric Vehicle Energy Taskforce, Digital Framework Task Group and the advisory board for the Prospering from the Energy Revolution industrial challenge fund.
Prior to his appointment in early 2019, Matt led techUK’s Smart Infrastructure and IoT work, as well as being CEO of the Broadband Stakeholder Group (now Digital Connectivity Forum). During this time he led the telecoms industry’s approach to lowering the cost of network deployment, played a key role in coordinating it’s response to Brexit and was closely involved in the development of the Government’s Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review. He also assisted in the development of the UK’s first secure by design Code of Practice aimed at consumer IoT, oversaw the publication of a paper outlining the tech sector’s view of future mobility services and drove engagement around the use of digital twins.
Prior to joining techUK, Matt worked in Arqiva's public policy team, across the broadcast and telecoms markets. Before that he was a researcher for an MP at Westminster.
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