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31/08/2006
Now in their 11th year, the prestigious Intellect, Socitm and SOLACE Local Government IT Excellence Awards seek to highlight the use of best practice in local government and how IT has been used both effectively and innovatively to deliver Best Value public services. This year’s awards are being supported by Dell and Ericom. Seven short-listed Local Authorities have been invited to present their projects to the Awards judging panel. The final shortlist will be announced in September, with the Awards ceremony taking place at the Socitm Annual Conference on 03 October 2006, where the winner will be announced. The short-listed entries, in alphabetical order are: East Riding of Yorkshire Council – BEARS In a drive to improve customer access, usability and increase efficiency for the management of all events, facilities and activities, East Riding of Yorkshire Council embarked on an ambitious programme to adopt a standard delivery vehicle, named BEARS (Booking Events And Resource Systems). The programme also needed to address access by community based partners and facilitate the ‘exercise referral programme’ that will deliver a groundbreaking partnership between the primary care trust (PCT) and the East Riding of Yorkshire Council. Hampshire County Council - Hantsnet Hampshire County Council was looking for a fast and cost-effective way to create a single, easily administered desktop environment. The existing environment was complex, difficult to manage and time-consuming to support. Because individual departments ran their own PCs, the council as a whole was running a proliferation of different applications and software versions. Hampshire County Council rolled out Citrix Presentation Server with Microsoft® Windows® 2003 servers to provide the core desktop service to 11,000 users at 8,000 desktops across 400 sites. The five-year project, costing around £40m has: - Created a flexible platform supporting flexible working and providing the widest possible availability - Successfully completed project in time, on budget - Realised cost savings of £4million Hertfordshire County Council – eAdmissions eAdmissions, a National Project led by Hertfordshire County Council is succeeding in delivering a new e-service. From September 2006, citizens in England will be able to apply for their child’s school place online. In 2005, 58% of Hertfordshire parents applied online proving this a popular service channel. eAdmissions is delivering a supportive and collaborative programme framework to assist each of the 150 local authority project teams, including coordinating issue and risk management, conducting research, providing recommendations for best practice, and facilitating experience sharing and supplier management. Most importantly, the Project has maintained excellent two-way communication throughout including the provision of implementation and marketing support help desks. London Borough of Newham – Transforming ICT Services To support the Council’s transformation of its services and to reflect the reality of an age totally reliant on information, Richard Steel, Newham CIO, conceived an ambitious programme to transform ICT services, building on already achieved success. ICT was fragmented with a central core but outposts in different service areas leading to less than optimal provision. To underpin the transformation, Richard first achieved two major policy decisions. First, that all ICT service provision would be centralised under his command, and second, that all types of digital communication including telephony and CCTV would be classed as ICT. This project generated significant improvement in services as a result of those decisions, and developed other achievements, partnerships and potential future opportunities. City & Council of Swansea – Unified Assessment Process in social services using PARIS Information and communications technology has an important part to play to ensure the fast, effective, secure and reliable exchange of information between those concerned to ensure, first and foremost, the well-being of vulnerable people. Swansea Social Services has implemented Unified Assessment Process (UAP) which is a new electronic care record system through the PARIS system linking together social services and health organisations. This improves services to adults by making information available to plan and develop their future services. All information about service needs and delivery is held on one secure record unique to the individual receiving the service. West Lothian Community Health and Care Partnership – C-Me The C-me application was developed to improve the delivery of services to the children of West Lothian through the development of a shared information system between West Lothian Council Social Services, NHS Lothian, West Lothian Education Schools and Services, Lothian and Borders Police and the Scottish Children’s Reporters Office. C-me enables secure sharing of concerns and information electronically between all professionals providing children's services plus delivery of the components of electronic shared assessment. Within a clear framework of consent, C-me also facilitates integrated assessment by supporting and proving the concept of an electronic shared assessment. Wokingham District Council – Schools Self Evaluation Project “VISION” is an interactive web based tool, which helps you to evaluate your school by looking at different core areas to give clarity on the strength or weakness of a particular area. The assessment can be made by discreet units within the school. Reports can be produced which allow a clear and simple method for transferring your evaluation directly into the OFSTED Self Evaluation Form (SEF). “VISION” illustrates graphically the areas for development and good practice. The evidence that you have recorded will be produced automatically using the headings found in the OFSTED SEF. Barry Evans, Local Government Manager, Dell UK commented, “The standard of entries this year demonstrates the new and innovative ways that local authorities are engaging information and communication technologies to create efficiencies and cost-savings. Dell is delighted to see that technology is supporting local authorities’ objectives in improving and extending the delivery of first-rate community services.” Ian Platt, Managing Director for Ericom UK, Western Europe and South Africa commented, “Ericom UK is delighted to be supporting this award as it demonstrates our commitment to Local Government organisations across the UK”.
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