Buckinghamshire Digital Innovation Plan
The strategic landscape for digital innovation has been changing rapidly in recent years, accelerated both by the impact of the global pandemic and through a government focus on utilising technology and innovation to support economic growth. Common innovation themes have been the importance of utilising world-class digital infrastructure such as the deployment of 5G; closing the digital skills gap; establishing new strategies (such as the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy) to foster economic growth; and utilising digital technology to work towards net zero by 2050.
Many of these national goals were highlighted within the Buckinghamshire Local Industrial Strategy (July 2019), and as such work is already ongoing in several of these areas. The task now is to build on that work to realise the potential of each project, and to accelerate investment in the local area.
In pursuit of this, the Digital Innovation Plan focuses on the following core themes:
- Strengthening the innovation ecosystem
- How to address digital skills requirements and gaps
- Improving innovation cluster development and collaboration
- Leveraging existing infrastructure programmes
- Promoting Buckinghamshire as an area for testbeds and innovation
- Securing and enabling funding for digital innovation
- Maximising the use of relevant data and Intelligence
The action plan included in this document outlines thematic activity areas to develop our work, along with the key partnerships required for successful delivery.
