Jason Hendy has been working in IT for 13 years, mostly in web development. For the last eight years he has been exclusively involved in the public sector and now works as a consultant for a number of local authorities, developing solutions to improve service delivery. This hands-on experience has given him an interesting insight into what councils are doing against a background of budget cuts.

What are you involved in at the moment?
I’m primarily implementing CRM systems and integrating them with existing applications, to drive maximum ROI. One of these is at Oxford City Council, where we’ve been using NDL integration technology to link the Revenues and Benefits application with Lagan’s CRM system: this is being used across a range of communication channels to give residents access to services via the channel of their choice.

At both Oxford and East Devon District Council, where I’ve also been working, there is a strong drive to ‘e-enable’ services. They’ve recognised that, in today’s world, a 9-to-5 provision is no longer sufficient: people demand 24-hour access to services. But I believe this is even more important against the current background of cuts, and the figures completely support this. It’s commonly accepted that a face-to-face interaction costs £7 and phone £4, but this plummets to 23p if carried out via the web with direct integration to back-office systems. So offering easy online access doesn’t just provide the level of service demanded: it will contribute enormously to achieving the reductions in spending on the horizon.

Of course online self-service is nothing new: it’s been talked about for a long time. There were moves towards e-enablement after the Gershon report, but at the time there was just a lot of box-ticking. Now that budgets are being slashed, the penny is finally beginning to drop: many are starting to recognise that it’s actually in their interests to implement e-services.

But it’s going to take a while. There are very few councils who have sufficient integration to support this approach, and it’s inevitable that people will still have to contact their council to do most things. So there’s still a lot of work to be done, but I can see a greater will to do it.

Are you seeing any other trends as a result of the economy?
I’m seeing more enthusiasm for a move towards joint working between authorities, sharing systems and data across the board. This covers not just being able to discuss any council service in a one-stop shop but also being able to interact with a number of different authorities through a single contact.

I think there is a growing trend to regard this demarcation between different authorities as crazy. Anyone who has ever had to report an abandoned vehicle will understand the problem: the exact piece of land on which the car is parked will determine which agency has responsibility and therefore who needs to receive your call. I don’t want to have to keep calling different agencies to find out: I just want to make one call.

Another example of this madness was in the news recently with the story of a dead badger on a road in Hampshire, right in the middle of a line-painting project. The County Council is responsible for the line painting, but the District Council has responsibility for removing animal carcasses. So the contractors stopped where the badger lay, left a gap, and carried on the other side. The District Council then had to come and remove the badger and then the contractors then came back and filled in the one-metre gap. Crazy.

How have you found the atmosphere in the public sector over the last few months?
There is a definite air of concern, but some people are more worried than others. Many IT people in public sector stay for a long time, and they don’t tend to receive the same modern training as they would in the private sector, nor do they have the need to keep abreast of the latest technologies. So now, with the prospect of redundancies, there are some very nervous people who question their employability in the private sector. And they recognise that the more gentle public sector is a world away from the cut and thrust of private enterprise. So – especially for those approaching retirement – there is tremendous unease.

We’ve talked about web-enablement. But what else is on the horizon?
I think mobile working is going to be huge. This isn’t new in terms of the technology to support it, but what’s different is that the devices are so much better than a few years ago. The private sector has widely accepted the use of mobile devices for anything from email to calendars to maps and more, and there is no reason why the public sector can’t now do the same thing. And with so many geographically-based services, you can see the logic.

The barrier is at a senior level, with a reluctance to move to mobile working because of the significant initial investment: they see it a luxury they can’t afford. But this is short-term thinking. If they really understood what they’re getting from a business case perspective, then they’d see that the ROI will be substantial: it will save them money and at the same time improve the quality of services delivered to the public.

One key thing is hearing about the experiences of the more visionary authorities who have adopted mobile working. However much technology companies shout about their solutions, it’s knowing about other authorities’ successful implementations that will make the difference. That’s how the public sector works.
 
So, in my view, mobile working and web-enablement are the two key growth areas – but they both involve significant investment. The big question mark is whether authorities are prepared to risk this investment in the current climate. It takes visionary leadership to do so.