Have you used the best technology available to meet the needs of all your users all of the time?

Using the ‘best’ technology doesn’t necessarily mean buying the newest software or building something from scratch. Often, the best approach is to reuse reliable technology that your council, or another local authority, is using.

You should favour solutions built collaboratively with or by other councils, sharing costs and the learning. Whatever you choose, it must work seamlessly for everyone, whether they use the latest smartphone or a library computer. Crucially, it must be dependable, and secure, ensuring access and safety at all times.

What this looks like

Prioritise tools that genuinely solve the problem rather than just buying the newest or trendiest solution.
Save time and money where possible by reusing reliable technology that already exists within your council.
Share costs and knowledge by favouring solutions built together with other local authorities.
Ensure the technology works perfectly for everyone, whether they use a modern smartphone or an older library computer.
Choose robust and secure systems that are reliable and won’t risk confidential information.

The questions

Have you looked to reuse existing tools or collaborate with other councils before buying or building something new from scratch?
Does the chosen technology genuinely solve the problem and work seamlessly for residents on both old and modern devices?
Is the system robust and secure enough to stay online and perform well, and to protect confidential data?

How this links back to the Government Service Standard

This checklist point broadly maps across to:

Full guidance notes

When working in local government, the phrase “best technology” can often be misunderstood. It is easy to assume that “best” means the newest, the flashiest, or the most expensive software on the market. We often hear buzzwords like artificial intelligence, blockchain, or bespoke mobile apps.

However, in the context of providing essential public services, “best” means something entirely different. The best technology is the technology that quietly and dependably gets the job done for every single resident, regardless of their circumstances, while spending public money wisely.

This guide breaks down what it truly means to use the best technology available to meet the needs of all your users, all of the time, focusing on five core, practical principles.

Table of Contents

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1. Focus on Practicality, Not Novelty

The most common trap in digital transformation is “shiny object syndrome”—buying a complex new piece of software and then trying to force your residents’ problems to fit into it.

1.1 Solving the Real Problem

The technology you choose must be driven by the user needs you have identified through research, not by a desire to appear modern. If residents need to report a missed bin collection, they do not necessarily need to download a bespoke council app, create an account, and navigate a complex dashboard. Often, a simple, well-designed web form is the best technological solution because it solves the problem with the least amount of friction for the user.

1.2 In Practice:

Start with the problem, not the product.
Ask your team: “Does this software genuinely make the resident’s life easier, or does it just look impressive?”
Prioritise simple, proven tools that do one thing very well over overly complex systems that promise to do everything but are confusing to navigate.

2. Reuse Before You Buy or Build

Local authorities are stewards of public money. Before spending thousands of pounds procuring new software or hiring developers to build a custom system from scratch, you must look inward.

2.1 The Power of Repurposing

Councils are large organisations, and it is highly likely that a different department has already solved a similar problem. For example, if you need a system to allow residents to book appointments to speak with a housing officer, check if the leisure department already has a robust booking system for tennis courts that could simply be repurposed.

2.2 In Practice:

Audit your existing tools: Before going out to tender, ask around. Does the council already hold a licence for a tool that could do this job?
Avoid duplication: Reusing existing technology not only saves money on software licences, but it also saves the time it takes to train staff, pass security checks, and run procurement processes.
A single experience: Using fewer, shared platforms across the council creates a more consistent, predictable experience for the resident.

3. Collaborate Across Boundaries

There are hundreds of local authorities across the United Kingdom. Almost all of them process planning applications, collect council tax, issue parking permits, and manage social care. It makes no sense for every single council to separately design, procure, or build technology to do exactly the same things.

The best technology often comes from collaboration. By working with other local authorities, you can pool your resources, share the costs, and learn from each other’s mistakes.

3.2 In Practice:

Look outwards: If you are tackling a problem, speak to neighbouring councils or use local government networks to see if someone else has already solved it.
Favour shared solutions: Whether it is open-source software (where the underlying code is free and shared) or simply a joint procurement exercise with another council, collaborative technology is usually more rigorously tested and cost-effective.
Share your work: If your council does build something brilliant, be prepared to share the blueprints, the code, or the lessons learned with the rest of the local government sector.

4. Accessible on Any Device

When you build a service, you cannot control how a resident accesses it. You might have tested your new digital service on a high-speed internet connection using a brand-new monitor in the civic centre, but your residents live in the real world.

4.1 Bridging the Digital Divide

To serve “all of your users,” your technology must work flawlessly for the resident using an older smartphone on a weak 3G connection, just as well as it does for someone with a top-of-the-range laptop on fast broadband. It must also work on older browsers that might be installed on public computers in your local libraries.

4.2 In Practice:

Responsive design: The technology must adapt smoothly to fit any screen size, particularly mobile phones, as this is how the majority of users will interact with you.
Performance matters: Heavy, bloated websites that take too long to load will time out on poor connections, effectively locking those residents out of the service. Keep pages light and fast.
No forced upgrades: Residents should never have to buy a new device or download the latest operating system just to interact with their local council.

5. Dependable Under Pressure

Public services are not luxuries; they are essential. “All of the time” means your technology must be robust enough to handle unexpected spikes in demand without crashing.

5.1 Designing for the Worst-Case Scenario

Consider what happens when it snows heavily. Thousands of parents will suddenly rush to your website at 7:00 AM to check the school closure list. Or consider the day the annual council tax bills land on doormats, leading to a massive spike in online payments. If your system crashes when people need it most, it generates hundreds of phone calls to your contact centre and severely damages public trust.

5.2 In Practice:

Resilience and scalability: Modern cloud-based technology can often automatically ‘scale up’ to handle sudden bursts of traffic and scale down when it is quiet. Ensure your systems have this elasticity.
Fail gracefully: If a system does go down for maintenance, it should not just show a broken error screen. It should display a clear, plain English message explaining what is happening, when it will be fixed, and what the user should do in an emergency.
Security as standard: Dependability also means keeping resident data completely secure from breaches or cyber-attacks.