FINANCE

Let's get digital

Dean Wanless examines how local government can take a big step forward on 'digital' by simply defining what it means to them

I heard a great joke the other day: 01001101 01001010 00100000 01110010 01110101 01101100 01100101 01110011 00100001 00001010!! Get it?! No? Oh... The problem with binary jokes is that you either get them, or you don't.

The same can be said for digital. Every few years the definition of digital changes. For a long time, digital meant transactional websites. For a while social media had its time in the sun. Digital has been used to enable remote working, the humble iPad being spoken of as a silver bullet that will transform the way we work forever. It's clear that, in the past, even though we've all been using the word ‘digital', we've never achieved consensus as to what it actually means. As the devolution agenda moves us towards a more integrated public sector, the need to define digital, to embrace the positive change, and enormous savings, that it offers, has become essential.

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