--- title: Building an ecosystem of digital services description: Our vision at Placecube is to create an ecosystem based on open standards, where we provide a re-usable set of building blocks called Cubes. image: https://blog.placecube.com/hubfs/Artboard%2010-1.png --- [Skip to content](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/building-an-ecosystem-of-digital-services-based-on-common-service-patterns#main-content) [![PLACECUBE](https://blog.placecube.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Placecube-Horizontal-BLK_4x%20(1).png?width=1480&height=347&name=Placecube-Horizontal-BLK_4x%20(1).png "PLACECUBE")](https://www.placecube.com/) - [Platforms](https://www.placecube.com/platforms/) - [Services](https://www.placecube.com/services/) - [Places](https://www.placecube.com/places/) - [Blog](https://blog.placecube.com/blog) Show submenu for Blog - [News](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/tag/news) - [Open Insights](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/tag/open-insights) - [Resources](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/tag/resources) - [Contact](https://www.placecube.com/contact-placecube/) - [Support](https://servicedesk.placecube.com/logon.asp?) - [Platforms](https://www.placecube.com/platforms/) - [Services](https://www.placecube.com/services/) - [Places](https://www.placecube.com/places/) - [Blog](https://blog.placecube.com/blog) Show submenu for Blog - [News](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/tag/news) - [Open Insights](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/tag/open-insights) - [Resources](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/tag/resources) - [Contact](https://www.placecube.com/contact-placecube/) - [Support](https://servicedesk.placecube.com/logon.asp?) # Building an ecosystem of digital services By Dr Gavin Beckett 2022-01-24 13:40:00 ![Building an eco system](https://blog.placecube.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Building%20an%20eco%20system.png?width=609&height=638&name=Building%20an%20eco%20system.png) In my career to date, leading digital for Bristol City Council, and then working with the MHCLG Local Digital team on the Declaration, several things have become clear to me. - Our services and the whole business model of local government need to be designed afresh, based on an understanding of user need, if we are to adapt successfully to continued austerity and the impacts of Brexit – the new normal. - There has been good work by a small number of leading councils, tackling a small number of the many things councils do. But it’s been limited to those councils and has cost them a lot of money and time. - As a sector we cannot afford for every council to spend the budget and elapsed time to design every one of their services from scratch. It just won’t happen… too many councils will fall off the financial cliff edge before they get very far. - The answer cannot be for the majority of councils to remain trapped in their current forms with their current IT and digital products and services. Nor can it be for one single system to replace the hundreds in use across the UK – there is no political or commercial support for a single Local GDS, GOV.UK or the equivalent of the ill-fated NHS National Programme for IT. ### So, what can we do? Working with the MHCLG Local Digital team last year I was privileged to be part of the collective drafting and publication of [the Local Digital Declaration](https://localdigital.gov.uk/declaration/). I support the intent behind it – when a Service is designed in the internet age, the user research, interaction and content design / service patterns, data structures, API and integration definitions should all be published openly so that they can be implemented by other councils and by suppliers who want to support this good practice. Once there is a recognised pattern and model for implementation of the digitally enabled service that meets user needs, councils should expect their suppliers to offer products built on those patterns – and not to extract a premium for it! **Re-use** will lead to **reduced costs** for a **better outcome**, and if councils across the country can adopt them easily and cost-effectively, it will contribute to a massive reduction in cost across the sector. The great digitally enabled services that were built by suppliers with councils like Bristol, Hackney, Camden, Stockport and Southwark are largely based on open source code which in many cases has been published openly on GitHub. But it’s not easy to pick them up and place them down into another council with different technical infrastructure and back-end systems. We need to pay attention to the standards needed to wrap these systems in a way that makes them interoperable and portable, with clean boundaries and well-defined services and interfaces. If we can define a set of ecosystem standards that enable multiple building blocks to be used together in a way that ensures they will fit – like Lego™ – we will move further towards the vision of [local government as a platform](https://medium.com/perform-green/how-could-uk-local-government-become-platform-organisations-b5ddd19d39ca) that people like me, [Dave Briggs](https://da.vebrig.gs/2015/09/02/what-im-talking-about-when-im-talking-about-government-as-a-platform/) and [Mark Thompson](https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Where-next-for-UK-government-as-a-platform) have been writing about for the last few years. That’s the vision we have at **Placecube** – we want to create that ecosystem based on open standards, where we can provide a re-usable set of building blocks “**Cubes**” based on the work we’ve done with [Bristol](https://www.bristol.gov.uk/) and [Camden](https://www.camden.gov.uk/), for other councils to adopt easily and cost-effectively. But unlike many of the legacy suppliers in the local government market, we don’t want to lock customers in and push you to buy everything from us – we want to be able to easily incorporate the best digital services from other suppliers, who have already understood user needs, worked to design services and then realised them with new code. We invite them to work with us on the common standards needed to ensure services can be composed together by councils who want to re-use the great work that has already been done. And whilst councils are the democratic centre of the local place, we know that people, businesses and visitors to the area interact with hundreds of other organisations, that provide services, advocacy or information advice and guidance. Our vision of an open ecosystem is more than just councils being able to use better digital services, it is to digitally connect the network of organisations in a place, enabling them to provide or access data, services and to collaborate on meeting community, individual and local business needs. [OPEN INSIGHTS](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/tag/open-insights) ### Check out more resources The ultimate guide to using cubes [READ NOW](https://www.placecube.com/what-is-a-cube/) ![CheckOutMoreResourcesImage](https://blog.placecube.com/hs-fs/hubfs/CheckOutMoreResourcesImage.jpg?width=349&height=394&name=CheckOutMoreResourcesImage.jpg) ![Dr Gavin Beckett](https://blog.placecube.com/hubfs/Gavin-Beckett-006-2.jpg) ### About The Author ### Dr Gavin Beckett Dr Gavin Beckett leads Placecube's product management and user experience design teams, working with customers to understand the problems they need to solve, and collaborating with them to develop solutions in Placecube's Digital Place software as a service products, built on Liferay DXP. Digital Place offers a rapid way for organisations across the private sector, local public services, health, housing and communities to adopt open standards and open source based digital services, co-designed with customers, for re-use.  Prior to joining Placecube, Gavin spent 20 years in UK local government, where in his roles as Chief Enterprise Architect and Chief Digital Officer he led the design and delivery of digital services to improve residents and businesses experiences. [![BlogPostAdd-1](https://blog.placecube.com/hs-fs/hubfs/BlogPostAdd-1.jpg?quality=high&width=675&height=678&name=BlogPostAdd-1.jpg)](https://www.placecube.com) ### Categories - [NEWS (22)](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/tag/news) - [OPEN INSIGHTS (18)](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/tag/open-insights) - [RESOURCES (16)](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/tag/resources) ### Recent News Placecube makes it easy to build open, integrated services. [Talk to a specialist](https://www.placecube.com/contact-placecube/) ## You might also enjoy reading these [![](https://blog.placecube.com/hs-fs/hubfs/What%20is%20a%20Cube%3F-1.png?width=352&name=What%20is%20a%20Cube%3F-1.png)](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/what-is-a-cube) ### [What is a Cube?](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/what-is-a-cube) ## It’s fair to say that “what is a cube anyway?” is one of the first questions people ask us when we... [READ MORE \>\>](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/what-is-a-cube) Dr Gavin Beckett Feb 23, 2022, 10:11:00 AM [![](https://blog.placecube.com/hs-fs/hubfs/DigitalPlace_Communities_ProductGuide22-1.jpeg?width=352&name=DigitalPlace_Communities_ProductGuide22-1.jpeg)](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/local-public-services-product-guide-0-0) ### [Product Guide – Digital Place for Local Public Services Dec 2022](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/local-public-services-product-guide-0-0) Discover our product guide for, 'Digital Place for Local Public Services'. We continually update... [READ MORE \>\>](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/local-public-services-product-guide-0-0) Dr Gavin Beckett Dec 9, 2022, 2:51:52 PM [![Image of Dr Gavin Beckett](https://blog.placecube.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Placecube_Faces%20Behind%20-%20Gavin%20-%20Thumb-100.jpg?width=352&name=Placecube_Faces%20Behind%20-%20Gavin%20-%20Thumb-100.jpg)](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/drgavinbeckett) ### [Faces Behind Placecube - Dr Gavin Beckett](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/drgavinbeckett) At Placecube our people are our power, we are committed to doing the right thing and this... [READ MORE \>\>](https://blog.placecube.com/blog/drgavinbeckett) Dr Gavin Beckett Sep 11, 2023, 2:49:52 PM ### Say hello! Want to discuss your digital journey and how our team can help. Fill in the form and our team will be in touch.  [Follow us on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/placecube) [Follow us on Twitter](https://twitter.com/placecube) © 2026 All rights reserved. ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Dr Gavin Beckett", "url" : "https://blog.placecube.com/blog/author/dr-gavin-beckett" }, "dateModified" : "2023-01-05T11:15:01.228Z", "datePublished" : "2022-01-24T13:40:00.000Z", "headline" : "Building an ecosystem of digital services", "image" : [ "https://blog.placecube.com/hubfs/Artboard%2010-1.png" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://blog.placecube.com/blog/building-an-ecosystem-of-digital-services-based-on-common-service-patterns", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://blog.placecube.com/hubfs/Placecube-Horizontal-BLK_4x%20(1).png" }, "name" : "Placecube Limited" } } ```