Epping Forest District Council

Outcome of Expression of Interest: Not shortlisted

As part of the Essex-Herts Digital Innovation Zone (DIZ) a partnership of five district councils, county council, health, education, voluntary and private sector organisations have come together to explore digital opportunities to boost economic growth and community wellbeing. One project they have commissioned is the creation of a Common Asset Register which is intended to map the entirety of the public sector asset base, large and small, above ground and below, from hospitals to park benches, from highways ducts to industrial estates, from the waste management fleet to the bins they are collecting. The solution has the potential to act as a simple point map describing locations or with additional funding could develop into a 3-d model with added advantages such as for place-making, planning and line-of-sight decisions. At the same time workshops undertaken have identified the potential to also utilise this mapping portal as an open data source making key ‘real-time’ data available to the wider community that could be used to make better informed decisions on service use, or lifestyle choice eg. avoiding poor air quality areas. The solution will be built upon agreements amongst partners to share GIS data and maintain the data’s accuracy, timeliness and relevance.

Discovery evidence

The Essex-Herts Digital Innovation Zone’s work programme encourages infrastructure and network providers to consider building enhanced levels of connectivity into the DIZ geography in order to achieve our aspiration of being the best connected ‘place’ of its type in the UK. The geography of the DIZ, which covers five districts, was put together partly because it is a functional economic area but also to address network providers concerns that investing in a single district did not give them the scale to build a business case. It is a geographically disparate, semi-urban, semi-rural geography that encompasses many of the challenges that the connectivity industry faces when looking to build outside of more compact city or large town areas. The cost of building networks in places like ours is a major factor and the creation of the Common Asset Register is intended to act as a demonstrator of the scale and value of the public sector asset base that could be used to hang future connectivity networks, thereby reducing the cost of installation. It will provide opportunities, through its visibility, for IoT entrepreneurs to identify potential locations for smart sensors, develop data-driven business models and generate data that can improve residents’ lives.

  • Digital leadership training (for council leaders, service managers or senior executives)
  • Digital and agile awareness
  • Agile for teams

Other training requests

Delivery and project management in a cross-sector multiple organisation environment