Council begins to make business case for series of digital projects including automated information and greater use of web forms
Argyll & Bute Council has begun to look into business cases for a number of technology projects as part of its digital transformation effort.
Its cabinet has cleared the appointment of two short term posts to develop the business cases following a report by the strategic management team.
A document outlining the possibilities shows the council is considering 11 options, including the automation of proactive information and reminders to cut down on cases of ‘did not attend’ and avoidable contacts. It has already invested in customer engagement systems and could use them to proactively notify customers by email and SMS.
It also included an emphasis on smart web forms and voiceforms integrated with back office systems, with the scope to at least the double the 30 that are currently in use.
Other proposals include: integrating the council’s Oracle CRM with key back office systems; improving supplier APIs to enable specialist back office systems to speak to each other; consolidating the council’s caseloads systems; linking its MyAccount service to the Tell Me Scotland service for customer information; real time performance broadcasting; and extending the Lync/Skype communications system to the local NHS.
Prioritisation
A spokesperson for the council said: “Within eight months of the appointments we should have 11 business cases. The idea is not trying to do all the projects at the end of that period, but we will prioritise and send them to the relevant internal teams.”
The document shows that over the past four financial years the council increased its savings from channel shift transactions to reach more than £310,000 in 2015-16.
It now has a Digital First policy, encouraging customers to carry out self-service online.
Image by dun_deagh, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
