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02/10/2007

Local Government IT Excellence Awards 2007 - Finalists Announced

Derbyshire County Council, London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and North Lanarkshire Council have been named as the 2007 finalists for the prestigious Local Government IT Excellence Awards.

Organised by Intellect, SOCITM and SOLACE, and now in their 12th year, the 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. The awards are sponsored by Ericom Software Ltd.

This year’s awards received over 30 entries from a wide selection of local government projects. From these entries six local authorities were short-listed and presented their projects to the judging panel which has selected three finalists. The announcement of the winner and presentation of awards will take place at the Socitm Annual Conference in Belfast on 16 October.

Commenting, Ian Platt, Managing Director of Ericom Software, said: "These awards are very important as they encourage and reward innovation in a sector that receives few plaudits for the excellent work it does. Ericom works very closely with a large number of local authorities helping them to deliver their remote application access and flexible working initiatives. I congratulate all the finalists and look forward to meeting them again at the awards ceremony.”

The finalists are (in alphabetical order):

Derbyshire County Council: Picture the Past
This unique partnership between libraries and museums in four local authorities, Derbyshire, Derby, Nottinghamshire and Nottingham, creates access to historic images reflecting the development of local communities. To date, over 65,000 images have been digitised and made available through libraries, and to everyone via the Internet. Indexing and searching tools have been created, enabling students and researchers to find relevant material and for local people to access images of their locality. Users can order and pay online for photographic quality copies. The project encourages co-operation and resource-sharing between partners and delivers economies of scale in the implementation of new technology.

London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham: Customer Access Strategy
The customer access strategy is innovative and unique; Hammersmith & Fulham are truly putting the customer first. We believe that if you want to put the customer first, then you’ve got to know them better. We can’t improve their satisfaction without first understanding what matters to them. By prioritising our work on the basis of customer value and impact, we are transforming our organisation, improving service quality, cutting costs and systematically tackling the root cause of dissatisfaction with the council. Hammersmith & Fulham are using the data we gathered about our customers to drive real and lasting change. It’s not about quick wins it’s about a long-term vision and delivering real results.

North Lanarkshire Council: MySWIS - Mobile Single Shared Assessment
“mySWIS Mobile Assessment” is a tool that allows full Single Shared Assessments (including IORN) to be undertaken by staff from North Lanarkshire Council and partner agencies (including NHS) whilst in a client’s home or hospital ward using mobile technology. The solution operates real-time (or offline when necessary) allowing information gathered during the assessment to be validated against the back office mySWIS application then, once successfully validated, it is updated. The tool allows the provision of homecare services to be initiated at an earlier stage for the client, and for information to be shared, where applicable, with partner agencies.

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