Hearing that we had achieved 98% overall satisfaction was probably the first time in my professional career where I have had an emotional response.

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the decline of our high streets and town centres.

At a recent roundtable in partnership with Wired, Doug Brown, Head of Data, Cyber and AI Guild and Chief Data Scientist of Capita Consulting, was joined by Lisa Talia Moretti, a digital sociologist at the Ministry of Justice; Reid Darby, innovation lead at Golden Valley Development in Cheltenham; Carly Kind, Director at the Ada Lovelace Institute and Tavi Kotka, an engineer/entrepreneur and former Chief Information Officer for the Estonian government to discuss data, identity and the digital citizen.

Capita and the Local Government Chronicle hosted a webinar to bring together local government experts and discuss how to secure funding to help revitalise our high streets.

Back in the Thatcher years of the 1980s, the explosion of out-of-town shopping centres arguably presented the biggest threat to our traditional town centres.

Town centres and high streets have traditionally been the focus of urban life, whether this is somewhere like London - often described as ‘a collection of villages’ - or a market or regional town.

Local government exists to serve local people, businesses and those who visit, either to work or for recreation.

In a world of non-stop innovation, where it feels like there are apps to serve every purpose and new technologies are emerging onto the market at breakneck speeds, perhaps it’s time to take a step back and ask ourselves: how can we be sure that the technology we’re making is truly benefiting society and, just as importantly, can be accessed by everybody?

Advanced predictive analytics have been successfully integrated across a wide range of sectors in recent years, particularly those with an academic focus such as science, technology, medicine and engineering.

Policing is navigating an age of complexity and continual change. To create clarity, forces are looking to partners to help them tackle their operational and organisational challenges.