The London Borough of Hillingdon has beaten
government performance targets after introducing 3G-based
mobile access to its back-office systems for its
benefits inspectors.
Council chiefs needed the inspectors to visit a minimum of 4,850
benefits claimants during the year to meet government performance
targets. By equipping them with mobile devices that could link into
council systems, inspectors were able to visit more people because
they no longer had to return to the office to enter data on the
benefits IT system, said the council.
The inspectors exceeded the government target and met
Hillingdon's internal target of visiting 7,760 people during the
last financial year.
They were also able to cut the turnaround time for benefits
claims to 35 days because claims were no longer delayed by
inspectors returning to the office to enter data.
"Significant non-cashable savings have become apparent as a
result of staff time being used more productively," said the
council.
A decision to replace existing GPRS-based mobile systems with
3G technology was key to the project.
"Extensive testing showed that 3G was superior to GPRS in terms
of performance, user satisfaction and speed of access," said the
council.
IT managers initially set up mobile access to four key systems:
benefits, council tax, rent arrears and repairs. They now plan to
extend mobile access to other council applications, such as the
system used to manage council houses and an application used by
Hillingdon's anti-social behaviour team.
The council received half of the £120,000 cost of the project
from the Department for Communities and Local Government as an
Implementing Electronic Government grant. Hillingdon matched the
government funding using its own resources to get the project
started.
In a separate project, Hillingdon has cut costs by using VMware
virtualisation software to make more efficient use of its
datacentre hardware. The council said it expects to have cut its
power requirements for legacy servers by 82% when it finishes
consolidating 40 servers onto three later this year.
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