Swansea City Council has given
staff mobile access to its core benefits and document management
systems as part of a project to meet government targets on reducing
benefit fraud.
Council officers decided that a mobile deployment was needed
after visiting other local authorities that had failed to check
enough benefits claimants to meet the Department for Work and
Pensions' target.
The Department for Work and Pensions is providing funding for
council benefits inspectors to visit the homes of people claiming
housing and council tax benefits. However, each inspector has to
visit 5,100 claimants a year or the council will lose the money
provided under the department's Verification Framework.
A spokesman for Swansea City Council said, "There was strong
evidence from other local authorities showing that 20% of officers'
time was spent preparing for visits and entering the details at the
office on their return.
"There was a large volume of paper being printed for the
officers to take to clients' homes to verify their claims, and if
there were any debates on the information, no real-time information
could be used to settle them quickly."
By giving its benefits inspectors access to centrally held
information on their tablet PCs, Swansea City Council removed the
need for staff to return to the office for data entry.
Following the deployment, the average number of claimants
visited by each officer rose to 7,783, comfortably exceeding the
target set by the Department for Work and Pensions.
Council officers used their mobile devices to access the i-world
benefits application from software supplier SX3. Systems integrator
Kirona worked with SX3 to enable wireless access to its application
suite, including the retrieval and viewing of scanned documents and
images.
Swansea City Council selected Hewlett-Packard tablet PCs with
Bluetooth connectivity. Data was sent to and from the devices over
Bluetooth connections with council officers' Nokia 6310i mobile
phones.
The total cost for equipping the council's seven benefits
inspectors with the technology was £40,583.
Mobile access to the document management system and the i-world
application has been available since October 2006. In the next
phase of the project, benefits inspectors will use digital cameras
to record evidence of entitlement to benefits in peoples' homes,
said the council.
More information
www.dwp.gov.uk/publications/dwp/2001/verframework/index.asp
http://www.swansea.gov.uk/media/pdf/f/p/16.pdf
http://www.sutton.gov.uk/housing/housingbenefits/verification+framework.htm
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