Sunderland was named the UK’s smartest city in 2024. In the latest episode of the It’s Personal podcast – a joint venture between Civil Service World and KPMG exploring citizen experience – we heard the story behind that accolade.
In her interview with Liz St Louis, Director for Smart Cities and Enabling Services at Sunderland City Council, CSW’s editor-in-chief Jess Bowie heard the details behind Sunderland's remarkable journey, along with numerous practical insights for leaders at every level of digital transformation.
Running through everything St Louis described is a question that public service leaders across the country are asking: what do citizens actually want? KPMG's Citizen Experience Excellence Research, now in its fifth year and drawing on the views of 132,000 citizens across the UK, found that they want to be remembered, recognised and respected.
These three Rs, it turns out, can be found throughout Sunderland's success story. Highlighted below are some of the key lessons, but to listen to the full episode – which also explores themes such as civil liberties and public trust – click here.
Remember me: Get your data in order before you go near artificial intelligence
There is a great deal of noise at the moment about generative AI and what it might do for public services. Some of it is well founded, but most of it skips over the less glamorous conditions that Sunderland spent years dealing with before it could begin to experiment with AI at all: getting its data structured, matched and cross-checked, and with proper governance in place.
Sunderland built its own smart city data platform on Microsoft technologies, using an Azure stack, aggregating information from dozens of different sources, matching records across systems and automating pipelines that had previously required laborious manual input into spreadsheets. Only once that architecture was in place could the council begin to reap the benefits of digital tools, from reading handwritten social worker notes to analysing resident survey sentiment and predicting the patterns that precede a vulnerable person's admission to hospital.
Data engineering might not be the most exciting part of a transformation story, but without it even the most sophisticated AI tools will struggle to deliver anything meaningful. For public service leaders, the message is to resist the temptation to chase the headline applications before the foundational work is done.
Getting that foundation right is ultimately what it means to remember the citizen in the truest sense: knowing who they are, what they have already told you and what they need, without ever asking them to start from scratch.
Recognise me: Prevention by tuning into citizens' needs
One of the most striking details St Louis described was the range of sensors Sunderland has deployed across the city, not for surveillance but as a watchful network of support for its most vulnerable residents.
Sensors on doors alert family members if a person with early onset dementia leaves their property unexpectedly. Sensors on kettles and fridges flag when an elderly person living alone has not eaten or drunk anything in 24 hours. Temperature and humidity sensors in social housing identify the early conditions for mould and damp, prompting action before a health problem takes hold. Each of these applications is a small, practical act of recognition: tuning into the specific needs of individual citizens, personalising support to their circumstances and directing help before a situation deteriorates. In KPMG's research, this is precisely what citizens mean when they ask to be recognised.
Sunderland's preventative ambition has gone even further. Generative AI is now allowing the council to spot trends and patterns across thousands of case records, predicting what caseloads might look like in one, three and five years' time and resourcing accordingly.
The example St Louis gave shows that if you can map the journey a person takes before reaching a nursing home or hospital, you can begin to identify the moments where timely intervention might have changed the outcome entirely.
St Louis said the data exists, the systems are in place and the culture change within the organisation has happened, producing a working model built on years of patient investment in data, technology and people.
Respect me: Digital inclusion is a strategy, not a sentiment
As well as the sensors and the data platforms, there is another powerful component to Sunderland's story: a network of 37 digital hubs hosted in church halls and community centres across its neighbourhoods.
Supported by “tech mates” volunteers who travel across the city working one-to-one with residents and complemented by a network of databanks where people on low incomes can collect a SIM card and get back online, these hubs are a direct expression of the council's commitment to leaving no one and nowhere behind.
Jo Thompson, who leads customer transformation in the public sector for KPMG, reflected that respect, the third of the three Rs, means combining the efficiency of digital with the humanity of people. Sunderland, with its hubs and its databanks and its insistence on maintaining face-to-face and telephone contact for those who need it, understands this instinctively. In a period when digital transformation can easily deepen inequality if deployed without care, that instinct is one that every public service leader would do well to cultivate.
Leadership is the only place to start
Reflecting on what made the biggest difference in Sunderland's transformation, St Louis pointed not at the technology or the data platform, but at leadership. “You've got to have the digital leadership and commitment from the organisation," she said. "I think you can have really well thought-out plans and missions, but if you don't have that leadership, you're going to really struggle taking a bottom-up approach.”
That commitment manifested in a decision that few councils have been willing, or able, to make: entering into a 20-year strategic partnership with Boldyn Networks, a private sector partner underpinned by the Canada Pension Plan, whose model is built around long-term investment rather than short-term returns.
Since September 2021, the partnership, a contractual joint venture with equal funds, shared risks and shared rewards, has given Sunderland the expertise, the capacity and the capability to deliver at pace, generating revenue from selling services beyond the city and reinvesting that income for the good of its residents.
“We always say you can't build a smart city overnight,” St Louis noted, adding that it takes a lot of investment – and a lot of years – to leverage the true benefit of the investment. For public service leaders considering a similar journey, her advice is to think carefully about what you are trying to achieve and why, making sure it genuinely matters for the people you serve, and then securing that leadership commitment before you take a single step forward.
Listen to the full episode of It's Personal, available now wherever you get your podcasts.
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