Surrey Camp was a fantastic gathering of thinkers, doers and innovators across the public and voluntary and private sector in Surrey.

The day was opened by Chief Executive David McNulty and  Dr Andrew Povey, then Leader of Surrey County Council. They emphasised the importance of technology and innovation for the future of public services in Surrey.  Technology will underpin and drive economic and civic development in everything from the way we engage with the public to the benefits of Superfast Broadband.

But innovation requires much more than technology it also requires creativity, productivity, purpose and perhaps most importantly trust. David McNulty underlined how important trust is in making substantial changes to the organisation. Trusting staff. Trusting citizens.

Ignite

As part of the innovation process, we brought together eight speakers whose work to date could ignite and inspire others. These were:

Each session demonstrated how technology and innovation could bring services and citizens closer together in delivering a better Surrey.

Creativity

During a series of creativity sessions, delegates were invited to try new ways of doing and thinking.  These sessions were designed to help people approach problems from a slightly different perspective and use different ways of analysing and thinking about problems and solutions. And to show that problem solving can be immensely satisfying and fun.

Your ideas:

The rest of the day focused on your ideas and developing them. We asked all the delegates for problems that needed fixing in new ways. Services that needed re-design and areas of citizen need that required innovation.  Out of several hundred ideas, we came up with 21 headline topics that delegates developed and reported back on.  Over the next two weeks we’ll be sharing those reports here and inviting further ideas, collaboration and more.

• Emergency reporting and civic action- using the power of social media to promote better information and helping people to help out their neighbours.
• Helping citizens of Surrey find information about public services - improving signposting, information integration and search across different public sector agencies.
• Road and transport - using apps to report highways defects and other environmental issues. Sharing information about traffic, CO2 emissions and journey costs to help people make smarter travel choices.
• Localism - a central noticeboard to help people share information and opinions about local matters and community events.
• Social isolation - Use technology to help to deal with the isolation felt by many vulnerable groups including Older People and People with Disabilities
• Rural and countryside - using social media to encourage people to visit the beautiful Surrey countryside and share their experiences about how lovely it is.
• Parenting - radically improving web based information services to parents and carers.
• OurSurrey, online engagement - a social media platform to help citizens and agencies in Surrey exchange information and ideas.
• Connection and collaboration inside organisations and with partners to ensure better ways of working
• i-Vote: -  An app with polling, campaigning and election information to raise awareness about the candidates and issues and to promote voting.
• Connecting with businesses:signposting, enagagement and information exchange with businesses in Surrey
• E-learning: better information sharing and portal to online resources for e-learning and adult education. To support training and skill building inside the council and public sector agencies and across the county with residents.

Putting ideas into action:

We want you to start sharing your development of these ideas in the FutureSurrey network. Join us in the Surrey Camp group to come together, collaborate and innovate.

You can also join us fortnightly for Muffins and Mingles – starting Wednesday 21 Sept  - to discuss how to take forward these ideas and more.

Telling us what YOU think:

Thanks very much to participants who shared their feedback. It was incredibly valuable and we’ve summarised it here.