Digital Development Manager – AR

Job Details

Digital Development Manager – Elmbridge Borough Council

About the role

The Digital Development Manager leads the Digital Development Team, driving the Council’s digital transformation agenda. The team is responsible for designing, developing and deploying solutions to deliver efficiencies and improvements for customers and internal teams. They support and maintain the council’s business systems and manage the implementation of new technologies and analytics solutions. The team helps deliver the objectives of the Local Digital Declaration and Elmbridge Digital Strategy by working with business areas to design and develop user focused digital services.

The main purpose of the role:

  • To lead the Digital Development Team’s work to leverage data and technology to enhance resident services.
  • To lead the implementation and upgrade of Council software, providing project management and resource allocation.
  • To lead projects to utilise data analytics to inform decision-making, improve services, and track performance against Council priorities.
  • To analyse internal and external customer needs and recommend and implement appropriate solutions.
  • To manage the Digital Development Team to ensure the council’s business systems are operational, developed and upgraded.
  • Building relationships with stakeholders within the business and with external partners to promote digital innovation.

Specific duties and responsibilities

  • Manage the selection, recruitment and continuous development of staff within the Digital Development team.
  • Provide coaching, mentorship, and opportunities for professional growth to enhance the team’s capabilities and performance.
  • Develop strategic partnerships with senior management and corporate stakeholders to effectively communicate the team’s achievements, advise on emerging technologies, and identify new project opportunities that align with long-term organizational goals.
  • Interpret the needs of both technical and non-technical stakeholders, managing their expectations throughout project lifecycles and ensuring solutions meet the diverse requirements of the organisation.
  • Continuously assess the Council’s technology landscape to identify opportunities for consolidating, automating, and streamlining systems and processes. Drive cost-effective solutions that maximize the return on IT investments.
  • Stay at the forefront of emerging technologies and industry trends, advising senior leadership on opportunities for innovation with new tools and uses of data. Support the team to develop the technical skills needed to apply and support these technologies.
  • Collaborate with stakeholders to identify opportunities for service improvement, creating multi-year digital transformation initiatives. Conduct thorough customer research and design innovative digital solutions to enhance service delivery and optimise operations.
  • Lead service development and implementation of new services and enhancements to existing offerings, leveraging user feedback to drive continuous improvement.
  • Lead the development and implementation of a data-driven culture within the council. This will involve collaborating with departments to identify opportunities for data utilization, extracting and analysing data to inform strategic and operational decisions, and optimizing data management and accessibility to support council priorities.
  • Design and implement complex data architectures that connect operational systems, data warehouses, and analytics platforms to enable data-driven decision making.
  • Work across organisational boundaries to understand relationships between data and business processes, bringing multiple data sources together in cohesive models for analysis and identifying clear insights to support data-driven decision making.
  • Evaluate, test and implement artificial intelligence solutions that enhance service delivery and operational efficiency for the council.
  • Develop and execute strategic work plans that align with the Council’s ICT strategy and business objectives over multiple years. Ensure that IT projects and initiatives directly support service delivery, operational goals, and the Council’s long-term vision.
  • Lead and manage the successful delivery of Council-wide digital projects, including upgrades, new systems, and online services, through effective project management and stakeholder engagement. Assemble and lead multidisciplinary teams across different service areas to deliver projects.
  • Provide technical and financial information to the Head of ICT to assist in the monitoring of projects and the negotiation of service-level agreements and contracts with customers and suppliers.
  • Ensuring systems and databases are designed and configured to achieve corporate GDPR and security compliance, including retention and disposal policies.
  • Lead on the maintenance, support, and integration of cloud-hosted systems that form the Council’s application landscape. Ensure that systems affecting public safety, welfare, or critical financial data are properly functioning, secure, and compliant.
  • Work closely with business area system administrators to deliver effective application support, upgrades, testing, integration, and process improvement initiatives.

What’s missing?

Our job descriptions cover as much of the role as we can possibly get down in writing, but issues will arise, and we hope and expect that you will understand that and take on-board other tasks from time-to-time, in keeping with your role of course.

Your conduct

We expect the highest standards of conduct from our employees and at all time you must carry out your duties with integrity and in accordance with the Code of Conduct for employees.

Equal opportunities

We have a strong commitment to achieving equality of opportunity and expect all employees to implement and promote our policy in their own work.

Health and safety

We are committed to a healthy and safe working environment and expect all employees to implement and promote its policy in all aspects of their work.

Personal and sensitive data

You will have regard for the duty of care owed to personal data and sensitive personal data and any other confidential or sensitive information which you access in the course of your employment ensuring adherence to the Data Protection Act and the Council’s Information Security Policy and related guidance.

Talent development

We have a talent development programme that includes regular one-to-ones, mid-year reviews, end of year performance reviews and a strong and varied learning and development programme.

You will be expected to get involved in this talent programme to ensure you are performing at the highest level.

Confidentiality

We are committed to maintaining privacy of all staff and customers. We expect all staff to handle all individuals’ personal information in a sensitive and professional manner. All staff are under an obligation not to gain access or attempt to gain access to information they are not authorised to have.

Person Specification

Qualifications and Education

  • Educated to GCSE level or equivalent standard –
  • A relevant ICT related qualification – Desirable
  • Certification in Project Management (e.g. Agile)

Experience

  • Proven experience in managing and developing IT teams. – Essential
  • Experience in leading service improvement initiatives and implementing new digital services – Essential
  • Experience in data analysis and utilizing data to inform decision-making – Essential
  • Knowledge and experience of managing the upgrade and support of software applications. – Essential
  • Experience in building and maintaining strong relationships with stakeholders at all levels, through the management of cross-departmental projects – Essential

Knowledge, skills and abilities

  • Excellent people management and leadership skills with an ability to motivate and develop staff – Essential
  • A willingness to learn and develop own skillset to meet the requirements of the job – Essential
  • Proven ability to foster a culture of continuous learning and development within the team, including identifying training needs and implementing development plans. – Essential
  • Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, including the ability to explain complex technical information to non-technical audiences – Essential
  • Knowledge of data architecture, data modelling, and analytics tools and techniques to extract insights and inform decision-making – Essential
  • Ability to develop and implement data engineering solutions to handle complex, varied, and highly complex information – Desirable
  • Ability to translate data into actionable recommendations and business insights, and to influence and engage stakeholders in data-driven initiatives – Desirable
  • Ability to identify emerging technologies and trends relevant to the organization and develop strategies for their adoption. – Essential
  • Ability to lead the analysis of business processes to recommend and deliver improvements through ICT to Council staff and Council services.  – Essential
  • Ability to develop and sustain effective relationships with internal customers and third-party suppliers of Council systems.  – Essential
  • Proven ability to manage and deliver large-scale, complex IT projects, effectively allocating resources to balance competing priorities, and successfully engaging multiple stakeholders.  – Essential
  • Strong commercial awareness and understanding of IT costs and benefits  – Essential
  • Strong strategic thinking and planning, with an understanding of risk management and contingency planning – Essential
  • Focus on user needs and continuous improvement when designing and developing – Essential
  • Knowledge of database administration, analysis and reporting. – Desirable
  • Knowledge of Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, Granicus Forms, Power BI, web services and integration protocols such as REST, SOAP, JSON.  – Desirable
  • Knowledge of any the following: C#, Python, XML, HTML and JavaScript.  – Desirable
  • Knowledge of GDPR and national data protection laws and information governance. – Essential

Special requirements

  • Considers information security in all aspects of work undertaken.  – Essential
  • Must be willing to have the Baseline Personnel Security Standard checks, required for this post. – Essential
  • Knowledge and experience of ITIL – Desirable