What does a good digital strategy look like for a city?

Blick auf dem Borough of Greenwich.

We all know Greenwich because the most memorable meridian passes through the London borough. But public administration nerds are familiar with Greenwich for another reason too: its digital strategy is considered one of the best. We spoke with Kit Collingwood, the driving force behind the strategy, to find out more.

There is probably no city that is not grappling with the question of how it should do “digital”.. Fortunately, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel since many cities have already found good answers that we can take inspiration from.

Kit Collingwood, Assistant Director for Digital and Customer Services in Greenwich, led the development of the borough’s digital strategy. In our conversation she told us about what makes a  useful digital strategy and what other cities can learn from Greenwich's experience.

We wanted to learn from Kit:

  • what a good digital strategy looks like (00:21),
  • what the key elements of the Greenwich strategy are (02:23),
  • how she chose the six workstreams of the strategy (03:53), and
  • what it takes to successfully implement a digital strategy in a city (06:38).

We know from our own experience how useful and actionable Kit's advice is. In at least one Swiss city with which we had the opportunity to work on the development of a digital strategy, her tips fell on very fertile ground.