21/10/2008
2008 Local Government IT Excellence Awards – winners announced The winners and runners up of the 13th Local Government IT Excellence Awards were announced at this year’s Socitm Annual Conference, held at the Celtic Manor Resort, Newport. The awards, the result of collaboration between Intellect, Socitm and SOLACE and supported by Datapoint, seek to highlight and reward local authorities that have used IT systems or processes to improve the efficiency and delivery of services within local communities.
This year’s awards were separated into three categories - service transformation, shared services and mobile and flexible working – and Intellect received a large number of projects of an extremely high standard.
The awards were presented at the conference by Charles Ward, Chief Operating Officer of Intellect and Chair of the awards judging panel, and Martin Hill-Wilson, Head of Strategy at Datapoint, the global communications experts for enterprise and call centre communications.
Commenting on this year’s awards Charles said: “The entries to this year’s awards have continued the trend of improving the standards in public service delivery. The winners have once again demonstrated local authorities’ ability to implement projects, through the innovative and effective use of technology, that deliver excellence in public services.”
Martin Hill-Wilson, Head of Strategy at Datapoint, commented: “Datapoint was delighted to support this year’s Local Government IT Excellence Awards, and congratulates the winners on illustrating how technology can transform services.”
The winners and runners up in each category:
1) Shared Services Category
Winner – Hampshire Local Government Partnership The Hampshire Regional Recruitment Portal is a project where 12 of the 15 local authorities in Hampshire joined in a true partnership to deliver a single technology solution for attracting candidates and managing the recruitment process across the authorities
Jos Creese, Head of IT for Hampshire County Council said: "The portal is an excellent example of shard services enabled by technology. By working together across local public services we have significantly improved recruitment opportunities and practices in the region."
Runner up – Northern Ireland Civil Service The Northern Ireland Civil Service set up IT Assist, its ICT Shared Service Centre, in May 2007. IT Assist provides “common” ICT services to some 11,000 users across seven Northern Ireland departments and will cover 18,300 users across all eleven departments and their agencies by April 2009.
2) Service Transformation Category Winner – Kooth.com The Early Intervention and Rapid Referral Service solves a significant problem for vulnerable young people and local authorities. The web-based counselling service provides young people with a free, confidential, safe, always accessible and, above all, anonymous and non-threatening way of asking for help when they first need it. It enables local authorities to intervene early with regard to difficult emotional and mental health problems being encountered by vulnerable young people. Kooth.com is a public-private partnership between Xenzone and Stockport Council and is live in seven LA areas.
Councillor Mark Weldon, Executive Member for Children and Young People, at Stockport Council said: "Kooth.com continues to go from strength to strength. This innovative public/private partnership rightly receives the national accolades for the difference it makes to young people when they need advice and support."
Runner up – City of York Council The easy@york programme was conceived to ensure all the council’s services are easily accessible by whatever channel the customer chooses and are also available on-line for 24 hour access. In the first financial year, the programme resulted in costs savings of £247,000 while 96.9% of calls answered within 20 seconds and 99% of our customers are ‘satisfied’ with the service they receive.
3) Mobile and Flexible Working Category Winner – City of Wakefield Metropolitan District Council Wakefield’s organisational change programme ‘WorkSmart’ is delivering real benefits for citizens, employees and the council. The integrated programme is rationalising the property portfolio, improving productivity and providing a modern, fit-for-purpose workspace. This is underpinned by a flexible technology infrastructure that is enabling staff to deliver high quality services to our citizens in the most appropriate way from office, home or mobile. Keith Watson, Business and Project Manager at City of Wakefield Metropolitan District Council said: “We are delighted that the WorkSmart programme, which has achieved significant efficiencies, has been recognised by winning such a prestigious award.”
Runner up – West Sussex Accessible Services Partnership This project involved the deployment of 30 GPS mobile phones to field based staff enabling them to report incidents with no paperwork. The image is recorded on the phone along with some simple textual information and an automatically generated GPS location.
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