Chorley Borough Council has saved £800,000 through IT as
part of athree-year council transformation.
The council has split into three departments, based on three
groups of customers: business, neighbourhoods and individuals. The
restructure started two years ago and will finish this year.
Murphy said the council has saved the £800,000 as a result of
new or extended technologies. He said, "IT has been central to
facilitating the structural change. Information management is
obviously critical during a restructure. When people are moving
around they need information to be available."
The council has moved management of council committees online,
as well as expenses, council procurement, flexi-time, and planning
documents. This has improved accessibility, and reduced
administrative overheads and postage and paper costs.
The IT department has overseen the implementation of a new
contact centre and
CRM system, into which frontline services such as revenue and
benefits and environmental services are being integrated. Murphy
said the council is using a variety of integration methods, such as
adaptors and an NDL integration product, carrying out business
cases to see which method is most appropriate for each system.
Chorley is also about to roll out
thin client desktop technology, to about 350 of the council's
400 users. Next year, it will also reduce its 37 servers with a
virtualisation project.
Murphy said the council is looking to extend its use of
geographical information systems (GIS) - switching to maps instead
of character based systems. Residents can currently change their
address using GIS online, and the council want to extend this
service to, for example, enabling people to report an abandoned
vehicle by pinpointing its whereabouts on a map.