Birmingham: blueprint for a digital city
Source: Smart Cities World, by Luke Antoniou
Raj Mack, head of Digital Birmingham at Birmingham City Council, explains how the West Midlands city is building an international digital brand and reputation.
SmartCitiesWorld (SCW): What have been your main areas for focus around digital innovation over the last 18 months and did the pandemic influence some of that direction?
Raj Mack (RM): Birmingham City Council recognised early – even as broadband first started up – the impact that digital technologies would have on people and businesses. In 2006, we created the Birmingham Digital Partnership to take that further forward. It was very much around supporting businesses and citizens to recognise the value of being connected. That journey has continued as we’ve seen how important digital has become – it is transforming the economy and how people live, learn and work. We knew it had to be something that we embedded in the local authority and through our partnerships across the city.
During Covid, we recognised that digital technologies were playing a significant role but that there were structural weaknesses within the fabric of our society that stopped people maximising their use of the internet so we revisited how we support our communities.
We recognised that this could not be done by the city council itself and brought in a consultancy to help us and work with stakeholders and city partners to identify the key foundational things the city should be doing to support inclusive, economic growth.
And the word inclusive is really important as this is not just about gross profits or SMEs but about how we uplift the capabilities of the city, both citizens and businesses, to be able to exploit digital technologies and improve their capabilities and economic opportunities for the city.
SCW: What else has shaped your direction?
RM: We also noted that Birmingham and the West Midlands were seeing growth in digital technology companies with tech expected to bring something like £2.7bn of investment into the local economy by 2025. We wanted to make sure that we’re capitalising on this and supporting those businesses and organisations out there.
The city council also recognised that we were in a golden decade of opportunity. The pandemic had opened up new opportunities that we didn’t have before. As part of our work in the Place, Prosperity and Sustainability team, we set up a number of programmes and digital was seen as one of those cross-cutting, enabling technologies that would support both city council and…
Photocredit: Patrick Owen-Meehan, @patrickom