Open Digital Planning: Month 4

After hearing about various team members’ exciting summer breaks, our multidisciplinary team is back and focused on our Open Digital Planning work plan.

As a technologist, i’m still learning about planning, but this work gave me a new perspective to the cityscapes and planning complexities of Malaysia and Singapore on my summer holiday. The mix of historic, cultural, religious, colonial and contemporary buildings is utterly fascinating.

Malaysia might not be on everyone’s radar but the scale and pace of change here is incredible. Kuala Lumpar now has the world’s second tallest skyscraper and Johor is building a 22-acre “hyperscale” data centre campus!

Building Momentum

While capacity remains slightly stretched in our teams, we are making continuous and meaningful progress towards the goals we set out in our Digital Planning Maturity Assessment (DPMA). It feels slow and steady, a different pace than my holiday, but it is progress nonetheless. We are really excited however to have a new member on the planning team who is helping with the huge workload around our Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs).

Our Wins for September

• Exploring New Technology: We’re super excited that the team behind Extract AI reached out this month. After completing a survey for their research work, we have sent a sample of our TPOs for them to test with their tool. Depending on the results, this could open the door for us to become beta testers, potentially revolutionising how we handle this data.
• A New Team Member: We’ve welcomed a new starter to the planning team! They have been fully onboarded and are already making a huge impact, dedicating their efforts to the monumental task of cleansing our Tree Preservation Order (TPO) datasets.
• Policy Collaboration: As per our action plan, we held our initial session with the Planning Policy team. It was a productive meeting, and we’ve agreed to set up a workshop to review their core internal processes. This is a vital step in capturing their work as part of the project’s wider transformation goals.
• Preparing for Article 4: We are on track to upload our Article 4 dataset by the end of October. The team is currently deep in the preparation phase, collating data, holding discussions with our subject matter experts, and meticulously reviewing all the required data fields.
• Scanning on the Go: We have approved the use of mobile phones and tablets for data scanning. We will soon be testing this mechanism, which promises to significantly increase the efficiency of our work digitising historical TPO records.
• Learning from Others: Slow but steady progress continues in our transformation discovery work. Team members are actively connecting with other local authorities to learn from their experiences and see how they are progressing with change in the planning sector.

Navigating the Challenges

In the spirit of working openly, it’s important to share the challenges we’re navigating. The detailed, preparatory work of data cleansing is proving to be very time-consuming and can slow down our project’s momentum.

We have also experienced a slight delay in starting discovery for our Listed Buildings dataset, as the subject matter expert is currently unavailable. The team continues to balance this vital project work with the high demand of “business-as-usual” roles, which has been particularly challenging with a recent influx of planning applications

• Time-Consuming Data Cleansing: Preparing our datasets for the new system is a detailed and time-consuming process. While it can sometimes feel like it slows project momentum, this meticulous work is critical for ensuring data quality and long-term success.
• Expert Availability: The discovery phase for our Listed Buildings dataset has been temporarily delayed as our subject matter expert is currently unavailable.
• Managing Dependencies: Progress can sometimes be slowed by dependencies on various internal departments and processes. However, the team is actively managing these relationships to keep things moving.
• Balancing Workloads: An influx of planning applications is stretching the core planning team, naturally diverting some resources from this project. We are working to balance these competing priorities effectively.

Looking Ahead

Our focus for the next month is clear. We will be working on:

• Receiving and analysing the feedback from Extract AI on the TPOs we sent for testing.
• Attending the Open Digital Planning camp day in Medway to collaborate with and learn from our peers.
• Uploading our Article 4 datasets by our deadline at the end of October.
• Continuing the data cleansing of our TPO records.
• Preparing to showcase our progress at the ODP show and tell in November.
• Testing the new mobile scanning application to improve our TPO digitisation process.
• Continuing our transformation discovery work.

We are learning and adapting as we go and are excited to share our next update.