Local government’s next digital leap: shared platforms, better plumbing and practical AI

Will Callaghan, co-founder of LocalGov Drupal, believes local government does not need more duplicated effort or more shiny technology. It needs stronger collaboration, better foundations and the confidence to share. In conversation with Paul Zimmerman, he set out a clearer path for digital transformation: one built on common needs, open approaches and technology that earns its place.

Local government does not need to solve everything alone

There is a familiar pattern in local government digital transformation. Councils face pressing delivery demands, limited budgets and legacy systems that are hard to change. Under that pressure, it is easy for each organisation to treat its own challenge as uniquely urgent and solve it in isolation.

Will Callaghan has seen that up close. With experience spanning Government Digital Service, Brighton, Croydon and the co-founding of LocalGov Drupal, he has spent years inside the machinery of public sector transformation. His view is clear: local government is often doing too much of the same work, separately.

As he put it:

“The stuff they were talking about was the same for the most part… there’s sovereignty in local authorities for sure, but the basic needs are very similar.”

That is one of the central lessons in the LocalGov Drupal story. Shared challenges do not require 20 separate reinventions. They require the willingness to work together on the common core, while allowing room for local variation where it genuinely matters.

Callaghan described the model simply:

“It’s not 20 people building 20 different variations of the same thing. It’s actually 20 people grouping, gathering together and building one thing, and allowing slight variations within it.”

That is not only a technology model. It is an operating model. It is a funding model. And, increasingly, it is the mindset local government will need if it is to modernise at pace.

LocalGov Drupal proved that collaboration can scale

LocalGov Drupal has become one of the clearest demonstrations that this approach can work.

What began as a practical question between councils — do we really need to start from scratch again? — became something much bigger. Callaghan recalled the moment that collaboration started to click when Croydon looked at what Brighton had already built and asked whether it could reuse it rather than repeat it.

The governance, at first, was not elaborate:

“The only governance around it was a handshake.”

That simplicity matters. Too often, promising collaborative efforts are suffocated by complexity before they deliver value. In this case, a shared need, practical trust and open source thinking created momentum.

Today, around 50 councils are using LocalGov Drupal. That is a significant result, not simply because of the number, but because of what it signals: open, shared digital infrastructure can succeed in local government when it is grounded in real user needs and sustained by a community that contributes back.

Callaghan offered a useful test for whether open source collaboration has truly become real:

“Open source things become useful when more than one person uses it.”

That sounds obvious, but it gets to the heart of the matter. Shared digital assets become strategically valuable when institutions stop seeing reuse as compromise and start seeing it as progress.

The real opportunity is not channel shift. It is better service design

One of the more striking moments in the interview came when the conversation turned to channel shift. For years, public sector digital strategy has often framed success as moving citizens from phone and face-to-face services to online services.

Callaghan challenged that framing directly:

“The channel shift argument is slightly bogus.”

That is an important provocation. His point was not that digital channels do not matter. They do. But digital transformation becomes shallow when it is driven by channel targets rather than service outcomes.

In his words:

“I’m trying to help a citizen do a thing, and I need to be aware of the channels that they’re all using.”

That means recognising that citizens are not one homogeneous user group. Some want fast, frictionless online transactions. Others are digitally excluded. Others may need different language support or accessible routes through a service. Good public service design cannot simply assume that online equals better.

This is where INV Group’s own perspective strongly aligns. Digital transformation in the public sector should not be about forcing demand into a preferred channel. It should be about designing services that are usable, accessible, resilient and operationally joined up.

That requires capability in content design, service design, accessibility, integration and workflow thinking — not just a new front end.

AI will not fix broken systems

Perhaps the sharpest takeaway from the discussion was Callaghan’s realism on AI.

Asked whether local government can take advantage of AI in the year ahead, he did not rush to optimism. Instead, he gave the answer many public sector leaders need to hear:

“It needs good content to learn from in order to do its job.”

And more bluntly:

“Let’s buy the shiny thing that will fix all the stuff that’s broken — and it won’t.”

That is exactly the right challenge. Across the public sector, the temptation is growing to treat AI as a shortcut around hard, foundational work. But AI does not remove the need for structured content, clear service logic, strong governance, good data practices and usable systems. In many cases, it makes those prerequisites even more important.

Callaghan reached for a phrase many in digital government will recognise:

“We need to fix some of the plumbing.”

That should be one of the governing principles of public sector AI adoption.

Before councils can scale AI well, they need cleaner content, clearer processes, better architecture and stronger standards. Otherwise, AI simply accelerates inconsistency, confusion and operational risk.

At INV Group, we see this as the central issue in public sector AI maturity. The real challenge is not whether a council can experiment with a model. It is whether it has the workflow infrastructure, governance discipline and organisational readiness to deploy AI in a way that is safe, auditable and sustainable.

Automation works best when it solves real, boring problems

The same practical mindset came through in Callaghan’s views on automation and RPA.

He pointed to a simple but powerful question:

“Is there a manual process that’s very clear that doesn’t need to be done by a human being? Actually we could just automate that.”

That is where public sector automation often creates the most immediate value. Not in grand, abstract transformation claims, but in removing repetitive manual effort, bridging gaps between legacy systems and speeding up routine operational work.

He also made another useful observation: many councils are using RPA to compensate for the lack of proper standards and APIs between systems. In other words, automation is often filling an architectural gap.

That is a reminder that automation should be viewed in two ways at once. It is useful in the present, because it helps services work better now. But it also points to where the deeper structural problems still exist.

The practical lesson is straightforward. Public bodies should use automation where it delivers clear value, while also improving the underlying data, standards and interoperability that will reduce the need for workaround solutions over time.

Data access matters more than data hoarding

The interview also touched on one of the most important but often misunderstood issues in public sector transformation: data sharing.

Callaghan referenced Richard Pope’s argument that “data sharing” is often the wrong term, and that what really matters is data access. He explained it this way:

“Here’s my canonical data that I’m a guardian of… and I’ll give you access to this data.”

That distinction matters. Duplicating data across systems and organisations often creates more problems than it solves: inconsistency, duplication, unclear ownership and security risk. By contrast, controlled access to authoritative data supports better services, clearer accountability and more auditable operations.

He also stressed the importance of making data useful in practice, not just elegant in theory. Standards only matter when organisations have the time and space to adopt them, and when the benefits are tangible.

That is a recurring theme in digital government: better standards, stronger stewardship and clearer access models are essential, but they will not spread through policy language alone. They need practical examples, visible value and enough organisational capacity to implement them.

Devolution could help — if it creates the right coordination

The conversation’s other major thread was devolution.

Callaghan is clearly supportive of devolved decision-making:

“I’m definitely a fan of devolution.”

His reasoning is sensible. Local and regional leaders are often better placed to understand the needs of place and to coordinate action around shared problems. He pointed to examples such as Greater Manchester and the London Office of Technology and Innovation as evidence that coordinated structures can help authorities move further and faster together.

But devolution, by itself, is not enough. It needs mechanisms for alignment, agreement and shared execution. Callaghan’s broader point was that transformation works when organisations can identify common needs and act on them together, even if they do not agree on everything.

As he put it:

“We can’t work together on everything, but what can we get consent for? Let’s work on those things.”

That is a very practical rule for devolved digital government. Shared infrastructure does not require uniformity in every detail. It requires enough common purpose to collaborate where it counts.

What local government needs now

Near the close of the interview, Callaghan set out what councils need before they can fully benefit from shared technologies, AI and automation. The answer was not primarily technical.

First, leadership needs to recognise that not every problem has to be solved alone. Second, organisations need time and headspace to engage with shared work, rather than being buried permanently under operational backlog. Third, government itself needs to support the conditions for collaboration without smothering local initiative.

One of his best lines captured the issue neatly:

“You don’t necessarily have to do everything. Probably somebody else has covered the same ground as you.”

That is the mindset shift. And it may be the most important one.

Because the future of local government transformation is unlikely to be defined by a single tool, a single platform or a single AI model. It will be defined by whether institutions can build confidence in shared approaches, modernise the plumbing beneath services, and apply technology where it creates measurable public value.

The INV Group view

Will Callaghan’s interview reinforces something we believe strongly at INV Group: public sector transformation is at its best when it is practical, collaborative and governed.

AI matters. Automation matters. Open source matters. Devolution matters. But none of them work well in isolation.

The next phase of digital progress in local government will depend on stronger workflow infrastructure, better standards, clearer accountability and a greater willingness to share what works. Not every council should have to build every answer from scratch. Nor should every innovation remain trapped inside the boundary of a single organisation.

The prize is not just cheaper technology. It is better services, faster learning, more resilient operations and a public sector that is better able to adapt under pressure.

Or, as Callaghan put it:

“We’re all doing too much work. We could share that out.”

That is not just a line about efficiency. It is a strategy.