Briefly describe the initiative/ project/service; please include your aims and objectives

Trafford Digital Makers is Trafford Council’s flagship model for enabling safe, sustainable and scalable digital transformation across the organisation. It was created to address a challenge common to all public bodies: demand for digital improvement far exceeds the capacity of central IT teams. Rather than continuing with a traditional ‘developer bottleneck’ model, the Council designed a new operating model that empowers staff directly—supported by governance, standards and coaching—to make improvements where work happens.

Work led by Digital Innovation team – Trafford’s in house developers, working with the business has seen development of resident facing apps such as Garden Waste Permits, Abandoned Vehicles, and CQC commissioning to name a few, providing solutions which provide internal and external benefits. As most know, the breadth of opportunity for digitally improving processes within public sector is rich, unfortunately capacity is at a premium.

The initiative introduces a tiered citizen?developer framework: colleagues begin as Digital Explorers, progress to Power Buddies and, with experience, can become Community Enablers capable of co-supporting directorate?level service improvements. This progression is underpinned by clearly defined responsibilities, mandatory learning, guardrails, and practical assessments. This is not casual experimentation: it is a formal talent and capability pipeline. The Digital Makers initiative is further supported by a purpose?built environment strategy, ensuring staff can safely explore low?code tools in personal productivity environments before graduating to shared Dev/Test/Prod environments. Governance is strengthened by consistent publishers, naming conventions, asset lifecycle processes and oversight through the Power Platform Centre of Excellence. Every solution is discoverable, traceable and manageable.

A major accelerator for the initiative was the Ecosystem Enablement Programme delivered with ANS, which provided Trafford with a maturity assessment, DLP strategy, environment guardrails, ALM patterns and structured training. This ensured the initiative launched not as an experiment but as a resilient and compliant operating model aligned with industry’s best practice. Overall, Trafford Digital Makers is a cultural shift: from digital being ‘something IT does’ to digital being a shared organisational capability, enabling our teams to modernise their own team/individual processes, improve service quality and reduce operational friction. It is a bold and forward?looking approach to transforming public services at scale.

What are the key achievements?

The initiative has achieved significant organisational impact in a relatively short period. First, it has built a confident and engaged cross?council community, with strong uptake for training sessions and more than 60 colleagues registering interest within early waves of delivery. These staff members now actively participate in improving their own processes, reducing admin burdens and improving reliability of service workflows. Real examples include frontline staff automating personal task management, turning manual inbox triage into structured workflows, and creating directorate?level solutions that better route information and reduce delays. Although individually small, these automations compound—freeing hundreds of hours of staff time annually.

A major achievement lies in the governance model. Trafford now operates one of the most robust Power Platform governance frameworks in local government: DLP policies aligned to environment purpose, controlled deployment pipelines, structured solution packaging and a Centre of Excellence that provides real?time visibility of all maker activity. Risk is no longer a barrier to innovation.

Partnership with ANS has strengthened organisational readiness, with a completed maturity assessment, formal environment strategy, RPA considerations, and clear alignment with corporate digital strategy. The initiative has also raised digital confidence across the workforce, supporting Trafford’s ambition to cultivate a digitally skilled organisation. One of the most significant achievements is we have built and automated our own Digital processes, developing what is fondly known as ‘Digital Sausage Machine’ (names are still being considered), this tool/app allows us to assess initial opportunities which come in and quick understand the complexity, risk, cost and impact, so that we can ensure this is taken forward in the right way, either by being approved as a level 1 or 2 Digital Maker opportunity or recognised this is more suited to the development team. Whilst this app has not removed the need for discovery sessions and collaborative workshops, it has speeded up the assessment which has previously involved several hours of work to now happen within 1 hour, this has taken pressure from the Digital team and removed backlog risk.

Another is that we have started our ambition at Trafford to transforming digital culture. Services will no longer wait passively for improvements —they co?create them. This will accelerate transformation, increase ownership, and create a more responsive and empowered organisation.

How Innovative is your initiative?

The initiative is innovative in several ways.

First, it brings together formal governance structures with bottom?up empowerment —something rarely achieved at this scale in local government. Many councils explore low?code, but few establish a fully tiered, assessed, governed and capacity?building citizen?developer ecosystem.

Second, the model integrates training, environment strategy, ALM processes, DLP rules and community practice into a single operating model. The innovation lies in the collaboration and join up: governance is not presented as a barrier, but as an enabler that gives Makers confidence to build safely.

Third, Trafford’s partnership with ANS embeds a maturity?first approach. Instead of ‘letting a thousand apps bloom’, or license costs soar, the Council built structural guardrails from day one. This reduces long?term technical debt problem often overlooked in early innovation initiatives.

Furthermore, the use of Maker tiers creates a development pipeline akin to professional progression, enabling staff to build digital literacy in stages. This approach is more systematic and sustainable than ad?hoc training alone. This initiative does not bypass the need for in?house developers, it is about creating the right capacity in spaces which are feeling squeeze and putting our highly skilled developers on the more complex development needs – this approach compliments our goals to ensure we all work on the right things, to maximise adding value and making positive change.

In short, the initiative is innovative because it redefines who can participate in digital transformation—while ensuring risk, compliance and maintainability remain central.

What are the key learning points?

Several key learning points have emerged as we moved through the programme.

First, capability?building requires cultural as well as technical preparation. Early engagement, storytelling and peer support proved essential to encouraging staff to participate confidently. The Digital Innovation team have linked in with Let’s Talk corporate sessions, created a new viva engage community forum, and are running council roadshows which promote Digital Makers and create connections with colleagues.

Second, governance must be practical, not punitive. Makers respond well when guardrails are explained in plain language, tied to real risks, and reinforced through hands?on learning. Heavy?handed restrictions would have stifled creativity; instead, Trafford focused on clarity, transparency and supported experimentation.

Third, the organisational environment matters: having the right environment structure, DLP policies and naming standards in place from the outset prevented common pitfalls such as duplicate apps, inaccessible flows or unmanaged data exposure. Partnership working was another major learning point. The ANS enablement work demonstrated the importance of external expertise in accelerating internal maturity while still ensuring long?term ownership remained with Trafford. We will continue to link to our partners and ensure our knowledge stays current.

Finally, building a community is just as important as delivering tools. Regular sessions, visible champions and accessible resources allowed Makers to learn from one another, reducing isolation and helping the programme scale sustainably. To ensure people stay engaged, we are taking feedback at each step and iterating -keeping things clear and relevant. We have learned and recognised that our Digital Champions network needed to be reinvigorated, and this has just been refreshed to compliment this work and broaden focus on more of the basics of digital tools at Trafford – Digital Makers is just the start of Trafford ensuring our colleagues become Digitally EPIC.

Additional Comments

Trafford Digital Makers represents a model that other councils can adopt—one that balances innovation with accountability. It demonstrates that empowering staff does not have to mean losing control; in fact, with the right governance, it can strengthen organisational resilience. The initiative aligns strongly with Trafford’s Digital Strategy ambitions and provides a pathway for sustainable, people?centred transformation. As the programme grows, the Council expects to see greater levels of service.