On 27 August Prof Mark Thompson delivered the opening keynote to around 450 people at Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)’s first ‘unconference’: MHCLG 2025: agile, innovative, connected. In an innovative move, MHCLG’s unconference sought to bring together fresh, even provocative perspectives on local government reform from across the Department in an informal, collaborative event. Mark’s talk centred on the need for MHCLG to consider centring their strategy on becoming an enabling platform for data sharing across the local services space.
“The modern and socially ambitious choice is to become a data-driven, ‘inside-out’ enabling platform for the collectively intelligent, yet furiously local”
Prof Mark Thompson
Mark commented: “The modern and socially ambitious choice is to become a data-driven, ‘inside-out’ enabling platform for the collectively intelligent, yet furiously local; this sets you down the path of central data and technology standards, common service patterns, and central governance of a vibrant, place-based ecosystem of data-driven policy, and resulting user-centred service design”.
