Hull signs Civica Digital for citizen data
Hull City Council has signed Civica Digital to support the automation of its back office with its Digital360 suite of software and services. The company will work with VisionWare to provide a single view of the council’s citizen data by embedding the MultiVue master data management solution.
Civica Digital said its suite will enable people to access their query status and transactions and to raise issues in one place online. They will also have the option of receiving status updates through text messages or other methods. This should free up officers’ time to concentrate on in-depth enquiries.
Councillor Alan Clark, Hull’s portfolio holder for customer services, said: “The new solution will provide us with a state-of-the-art system which will help provide a more personalised citizen service while making significant cost savings. It’s a true digital investment for the future of Hull.”
‘Digital knowledge deficit’ remains in councils’ HR teams
Most local government HR leaders say poor digital literacy among frontline workers is holding back change projects, according to new research by not-for-profit IT service provider eduserv.
Its survey of members of the Public Sector People Management Association showed that 66% of respondents believed they needed to go further in developing plans to improve digital skills in their organisations, despite 61% having seen an improvement over the past year.
Most saw small but not significant improvements in various teams, including corporate management (78%), finance (68%), HR (67%) and IT (81%). 40% said there had been no change for frontline workers, rating digital literacy in the group as inadequate.
Also, 51% of councils are bridging digital skills with the support of external specialists, while 34% have created a dedicated plan to improve digital literacy.
Leicester to use OneCouncil for contracts and projects
Leicester City Council has partnered with enterprise software provider TechnologyOne to modernise its IT and transform operations. Over the next 12 months it will implement the company’s OneCouncil software-as-a-service solution to replace its existing system.
The solution will enable Leicester to manage contracts and projects and the associated budgets intelligently, and integrate other IT systems such as HR and payroll. The company said it will also reduce the IT footprint, requiring fewer servers and dedicated resources.
Essex Uni partners with CloudCherry
The University of Essex has been gathering feedback data on the use of its food courts and sports centres through a customer experience management system from software-as-a-service company CloudCherry. The company said it has enabled the university’s administrators to understand students’ perceptions of levels of service, feeding into changes and higher customer satisfaction levels.
Lola Adebiyi, project and compliance officer at the university, said the system has addressed the main challenge of quick, efficient feedback collection and management.
Image: Hull City Hall by David Wright, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
