(Towards a) West Midlands Digital Strategy

Recommendations

This report is intended to act as a catalyst for further discussion about the development of the region’s digital economy and the ways in which key stakeholders can have a say in its strategic development. The author has attempted to outline one particular area, public services, in which the region can capitalise in the short to medium term. There are other opportunities no doubt although in an economic downturn it’s not clear whether appropriate private sector investment will be available to commercialise new services.

The region can instead focus on creating the right conditions for innovation to flourish in order to prepare the digital sector to make the best of any future upturn in the economy.

Based on the reflections in this report those conditions include:

• Support further demonstrator projects in the use of digital technologies but with a focus on supporting the digital transformation of public services.
• Promoting Birmingham and the West Midlands as a centre of excellence in partnership working to support the digital transformation of public services.
• Supporting the development of a co-working spaces or ‘hack labs’ where new services can be developed and users can interact with technologists.
• Supporting developments to the digital infrastructure, including bringing high-speed fibre networks to specific ‘digital districts’
• Examine the strategic organisation of the cluster programme at Advantage West Midlands to better reflect the meshing of creativity and technology that happens in industry.
• Investing in research into user interaction with digital technologies and promoting the dissemination of this knowledge to technology businesses.