For many councils, bringing services back in-house has increasingly become a practical way to cut costs and improve quality. At Barnsley MBC we've developed our own IMS (Income Management System) and have started to see the benefits of using it, and of talking about it.

With budgets often tight, it's hard to look beyond the immediate commercial benefits of developing your own IT solutions, but the truth is that it pales in comparison to the real difference you can make by sharing it with others, especially as we go through the pandemic. As we make our way to the tail-end of a discovery project at Barnsley to see what is possible with sharing our platform across the country, I want to make the case for true council collaboration with self-created solutions.

Overcoming the boundaries for councils

I have worked at Barnsley for 20 years, and in that time the IT department hasn't collaborated much outside of the council until now. Initiatives like the Local Digital Declaration (which Barnsley co-signed) encourage councils to commit to sharing best practice. However, without solid legislation in place to incentivise that, councils that do take action must break down the boundaries themselves and start talking.

We hold a vision to share our self-created solution with other councils. To us, it's simply the right thing to do.

Embracing this collaborative view has been a game-changer for us. Since the development of our homegrown IMS, other councils have told us that we, as a fellow public sector body, are more trusted to build a fitting solution for them given our first-hand experience of the problem being solved. The alternative, as we all know, is a private sector provider with shareholders and an outsider's view of the situation.

The cornerstone view here is that councils will find it easier to trust other councils when it comes to acquiring new digital solutions. After all, if it's clear that the aim is to collaborate and share rather than boost profit, then a foundation of trust can be formed much more quickly. Signing up to the Local Digital Declaration or acquiring money from the Local Digital Fund is great, but councils need to put those signatures into action and work together.

Since going live two years ago, Barnsley's IMS has meant the support team has received very few support calls - it works. In councils, where battling with outdated systems is a frustrating daily reality for many, this is great news. If we're really committed as we say, a shared platform approach is a no-brainer.

The future of shared solutions

At Barnsley we have already completed the discovery part of the process. We are soon moving onto an alpha then beta, with the hopes that we can begin to share our IMS with other councils. We've been working with dxw to do this, as one team with a common goal, and I know we are putting ourselves in the right hands.

Do I think collaboration will become more frequent between local councils? Yes. While we have GDS pulling central government departments together, there is so much potential for the same thing to happen within local government. Working together, we can aim much higher than operating in the siloes many of us are used to. If we can break down boundaries, talk to each other and share, then we will enable many more future local services to benefit from the solutions that we create.

Richard Kingston is IT manager at Barnsley MBC