News story: Improving local services with data: apply for contracts

Durham County Council and Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council are seeking projects that investigate innovative ways of capturing data to improve their services.

The councils are looking for projects that investigate 2 techniques:

• ‘boots on the ground’, where residents collect and report data about issues such as potholes and street lighting
• ‘eyes on the street’, where council vehicles collect and report data as they travel around the streets

Funding for the competition is provided by the GovTech Catalyst, a £20 million fund to help the public sector to make use of innovative technologies and improve public services.

It is being run under the SBRI (Small Business Research Initiative) programme.

Projects must use advanced data techniques

Projects must look at intelligent data capture and advanced data analysis. They must:

• record and report local information accurately and regularly
• significantly reduce service inefficiencies
• integrate with other datasets in the councils
• provide a robust evidence base for policy, service or budget development
• work with the general public
• enable councils to share data appropriately with the public
• be practical and economically viable

The competition has £250,000 to fund a series of short feasibility studies in a first phase. The best ideas could then share £1 million in a second phase to prototype their system.

Competition information

• the competition opens on 24 September 2018, and the deadline for registration is at midday on 31 October 2018
• any organisation that can demonstrate a route to market for its idea can apply
• we expect phase 1 contracts to be worth up to £50,000 and to last up to 3 months, and phase 2 contracts to be worth up to £500,000 and last up to 12 months
• successful projects will attract 100% funded development contracts
• you can register for briefing events on 8 October 2018 in Durham and on 15 October 2018 in Blaenau Gwent to find out more about the competition and how to make a quality application