The London Borough of Sutton is advancing the limits of
e-government compliance, writes Ross Bentley.
The London Borough of Sutton is blazing a trail towards
e-government compliance on a scale that few councils in the country
have contemplated.
While many local authorities are focused exclusively on
front-office solutions to demonstrate improved call-handling
capabilities, Sutton has gone much further. It has employed a
customer service and support system from supplier Remedy, to create
an integrated front-to-back office structure that is setting new
standards in e-government innovation.
"Before we embarked on a programme to implement a comprehensive
solution across Sutton to our 180,000 citizens, we ran a pilot
scheme and it quickly became clear just how powerful these
solutions could be," says John Grice, executive head of customer
services at Sutton council. "Now we have placed Remedy
strategically at the centre of our business planning.
"We have identified three core databases within Sutton - land and
property, our customer database [Remedy] and the financial suite.
We are repositioning all our systems around these, with our website
as the council's central information repository. This will enable
us to identify what information we want to be in the public domain,
what information is going to be accessible internally through the
intranet - and we are starting to consider the extranet as well."
Sutton is leading the way on several fronts, not least in meeting -
and beating - the requirements of the National Land and Property
Gazetteer, the land data repository for all UK authorities.
Originally, Sutton was being asked to feed its updates into the
database on a monthly, then weekly, basis. Now the council is
involved in trialling an online link, so updates can be performed
on a virtually live basis. This information is shared across a
number of providers, perhaps most importantly with the emergency
services where it serves as a vital resource when dealing with
incidents.
Sutton is also expanding on its network of existing citizen
information kiosks, with several mini "one-stop shops" planned for
its libraries, ensuring there is an information site within one
mile of every house in the borough. Here citizens can access
details on everything from transport to job vacancies; from UK
online government channels to other providers such as national
charities or the local police station.
"There are a small number of authorities that are pressing ahead
and trying to do things innovatively," says Grice. "There are
others which have adopted a 'wait and see' approach, looking to
hang on to the shirt-tails of those currently involved in national
Pathfinder projects. Meanwhile, the clock is running down.
"At Sutton, we were determined to forge ahead from the start. When
the e-government initiative was first launched publicly, for our
own business reasons we were already running several pilot projects
involving Remedy's Solutions.e-government, for us, has meant
building on the work already started, such as implementing a call
centre system, linked to the back office, as a crucial part of the
jigsaw."
Sutton's pioneering spirit has won it a merit award from the
Association of Public Service Excellence for "innovation in the use
of IT and customer service".