Transforming Places Together: digital strategy for planning

Guiding Principles

These Guiding Principles set the tone for the digital transformation of planning, and act as a set of values for how we will work whilst delivering the transformation programme. Given the complexity, breadth and depth of the planning system, spanning multiple public sector organisations, these principles will:

• Provide greater clarity to partners about the spirit by which new (digital) development will take place
• Assist multiple partner organisations and digital teams remain clear on common goals and purpose
• Allow teams and individuals to assess whether deliverables align with our principles, allowing more decision-making to take place within development teams.

We will use these Guiding Principles to guide the delivery of the programme and development of each new digital service set out in the Five Missions.

1. Design and develop together Work with users to shape an accessible easy to use digital planning system.

2. Collaborate and work in partnership Create opportunities for industry, academia and public sector partners to deliver change together.

3. Data driven Put data at the heart of planning to inform decision-making.

4. Build on our success Deliver early benefits and capabilities of transformation by delivering new features and improvements to existing services.

5. Be responsive to change, ready to learn and adapt Start small and grow, discovering new ways of working to build services in an agile way that continually evolve and improve.

6. Be ambitious, embracing innovation Stimulate creativity and harness the innovation taking place in the PlanTech sector, enabled by the right procurement approaches.

7. Develop flexibility Make it easier for planning authorities to integrate new technology within a digital ecosystem where apps and services can be adopted and reused as components of a flexible, cloud-based, modular platform.

8. Think end-to-end Take a holistic approach to designing services, working across organisational boundaries and bringing Development Planning and Development Management together to enable a plan-led system.

9. Value and integrate non-digital interactions Promote greater digital inclusion and recognise that digital should support professional judgements in planning.

“The values for how we will work.”