Reboot Britain

Through Reboot Britain we have sought to test and understand whether collaborative technologies and the  behaviours that surround them, can change the way public services are delivered to achieve better outcomes, using fewer resources.

To test this the programme has specifically focussed on essential but often challenging, high cost, high anxiety services such as patients with mental health needs; young people not in education, employment or training; individuals who are disabled or have mobility problems; offenders; families in chronic crisis; and vulnerable children and adults.

We wanted Reboot Britain to be grounded in the reality of public services so it was essential that each idea we supported was built and tested within service areas, with involvement from users and frontline staff. Launched in July 2009, 10 practical projects received funding to work in partnership with a public service partner to develop and prototype a new approach to public service delivery that utilised collaborative technologies.

Here is a quick overview of the 10 projects we have supported:

• Buddy - from Sidekick Studios and the London and Maudsley Mental Health Trust (SLaM);
• Future You - from Beat Bullying;
• Patchwork - from FutureGov and Lichfield District Council;
• LIFE - from Participle and Swindon Borough Council;
• Buddi - from Buddi and Hertfordshire Police;
• Person to Person - from Slivers of Time and Herefordshire County Council;
• FLiP - from commonground and Camden Council;
• Go Genie - from Pesky People and Telford District Council;
• Where Do I Feel Unsafe - from Thumb Print City and Greater Manchester Police;
• Ideas for Bristol - from Adaptive Lab and Bristol City Council.

These projects show how collaborative technologies can be used to support and enhance our public services and deliver more for less in a number of ways:

• The tools offer a better understanding of users' needs and reduce costs by helping eliminate aspects of services which are not serving users;
• They can help access and unlock spare capacity that exists within services, local communities and individuals; and
• Collaborative technologies support earlier interventions that are more effective in supporting users and will reduce demand on more critical and expensive services.

Digital innovation in public services is an emerging field and the outputs from Reboot Britain are aimed at helping public service professionals negotiate this space. As we will show, those that are willing to embrace this change and take advantage of the new tools and ways of working they offer, open up the possibility of developing new models of service delivery that can be scaled up to deliver personalised services to ever increasing numbers of service users, achieving potentially transformative change in the process.