What we do
Our community of Local Planning Authorities work together with developers, designers and project managers to build products that meet user needs, ensure security, and promote openness. We are creating flexible software with better access to underlying planning data, allowing information to move seamlessly and helping to automate routine processes.
Future legislation seeks to encourage this move to more modular technology.
“It's so different as a planner to go from being asked 'does this work?' to 'what do you actually want out of this software?'”
Janine, Planning Business Support Officer, Dacorum Borough Council
How we work
The Open Digital Planning community is made up of council officers, content writers, developers and user researchers from over 100 Local Planning Authorities, digital agencies and central government.
We work in small product teams that take part in research, design and testing activities. Using the collective wisdom of council officers, with a deep knowledge of local planning, we can make our products better and meet the needs of council planning teams. Depending on their level of involvement councils may also prioritise the features that are built and help direct the overall strategy for Open Digital Planning.
We work in agile and use two-week sprints, testing when we meet milestones and improving continuously. We also have retrospective meetings during our sprint cycles for reflection to ensure we stay critical
Council officers are also responsible for the day-to-day running of the services in their local authorities.
Design and development support is provided by : Open Systems Lab, Nomensa, TPXimpact, Version1 and Unboxed.
What we mean by 'Open' Digital Planning
Open source
The source code underpinning our work is open by default. The code is freely available to software developers to reuse and edit. Where features in our products are of interest to others, reusing our code can save effort and support the improvement of services across the planning software market.
Working in the open
We make our documents, presentations, and research publicly viewable so that others can benefit from our findings. Our monthly Show-and-Tells are open to all and allow us to share our progress with a wider audience.
Open standards
We want to see a plug-and-play ecosystem of digital planning services that 'just work'. Integrations between different systems should be straightforward, and based on openly published standards and documentation, so that councils have more choice in the software they use.
Working collaboratively
All ODP partners are committed to the five principles of the Local Digital Declaration, an ambition for the future of local government services.
We believe councils should be at the heart of how local services are designed. By collaborating to address common challenges, we support one another and share valuable insights along the way. Our products are designed with more than just our project partners in mind. By bringing in multiple viewpoints we are creating services that work for everyone.