iESE launches community enablement health checks

iESE has launched a new service in conjunction with pivot projects which makes use of artificial intelligence (AI) to help local public services create a future where community enablement is the focus.

With budgets ever tighter and community need ever greater it is clear local public services cannot continue to keep meeting every need of its communities. The two new services will help local public services create a picture of what the future will look like and what future needs will be, without assuming the public service is going to be meeting all of those needs.

One key aspect of this work will be involving the local communities and another element will be an AI machine which will conduct in-depth research to allow the organisation to start identifying pivot points that can help start moving it forward to its future goals.

“The starting point is engagement with the community and what the community thinks of its future and its needs and what it aspires to,” explained Dr Andrew Larner, Chief Executive at iESE. “That engagement will identify some wishes, problems, issues that people have and at that point we engage with experts in the local public service but we will also produce a map of how those issues interact supported by an artificial intelligence engine which does six years’ worth of research in about one-and-a-half minutes and gets global best practice, lessons learned about what seems to be working and what to avoid.”

One major benefit of the new service is that it creates an agile plan and action points that the local public service can implement straight away rather than acting as the basis to create a long-term plan.

“We know that those local services that have been the most innovative and delivered the most significant changes in the way they work have done so in an agile way and what we mean by that is rapid. This takes the agile method into the community and attacks some of those really wicked issues,” Dr Larner added.

Dr Jonathan Huish, iESE Associate, has been working with Pivot Projects to trial the AI machine at Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council in Wales. You can read more about it on pages 6 and 7. “What we are doing is bringing the best of breed together from iESE and Pivot Projects supported by an AI engine to deliver a forwardlooking service that helps build resilient vibrant communities and what that means for the role of local public services and what they should do in the future,” Dr Larner concluded.

• To read how one council has used artificial intelligence to work on homelessness and to find out more about how it works, see pages 6 and 7.