Feature

From Document Manager Magazine Vol 17 No 05 - September/October 2009

DM Editor David Tyler speaks to Paul Symes, Programme Manager, Arun District Council, about the importance to public sector users of a partnership approach when dealing with an EDRMS provider

DM Editor David Tyler speaks to Paul Symes, Programme Manager, Arun District Council, about the importance to public sector users of a partnership approach when dealing with an EDRMS provider

David Tyler: Let's begin with some history: how long has Arun District Council been working with document management technologies, and for what types of application?
Paul Symes: Arun District Council has been using the OITUK Electronic Document Records Management System since 1999, when we implemented the document management and workflow solution in our Revenues and Benefits Section, to manage documents and automate the flow of work across the departments.
Since then, the council has worked with OITUK to roll out wider EDRMS projects. In 2005, Arun DC, in partnership with North Tyneside Metropolitan Council, Wealdon District Council, and OITUK, developed a Benefits Electronic Claim Form, which allows council representatives to complete the form in customers' homes, rather than relying on the old paper based form. Arun customers telephone the office to claim housing benefit and council tax benefit. A council advisor completes the form online, sends it via the OITUK document management system to a visiting officer, who can then transfer the form to a tablet PC in order to visit the customer, verify their circumstances and allow them to sign the form electronically. The form is then uploaded back to the document management system where it is workflowed to assess the claim.

In the same year, the council also identified a need to publish planning related documents online, in order to make the planning process accessible to a wider audience. Initial discussions with the planning department revealed that this project had specific requirements, including being able to digitise large format plans (up to A0); the option of redacting (blanking out) sensitive information, such as phone numbers and signatures; the ability to add annotations to the documents and being able to scale the plans on a web viewer.

We approached OITUK to see if its system could meet these requirements to the timescale we needed - only five weeks. We had not seen any other system that could fulfil the brief, so were doubtful that it could be achieved in this time, but OITUK offered to develop the system and implement it within the deadline, with payment only if we were happy. They managed it and we were happy.

DT: Can you describe the decision making process that has led you to work with OITUK again and again?  Are you able to quantify some of the benefits you've been able to achieve, for instance?
PS: When the council originally decided to source a workflow tool provider back in 1999, we went out to tender. OITUK was chosen because we could see that the company could offer a better solution corporately, i.e. across the whole organisation, whereas the other solution on the table was Revenues and Benefits specific. For subsequent projects we asked OITUK to complete a full functional and technical requirements specification. This ensured that both parties knew what would be involved in each project and that we knew OITUK was capable of fulfilling our requirements.
The Benefits Electronic Claims form has seen claim processing times decrease from 70 days to 20. Gathering evidence for the claim at the home of the claimant has improved our accuracy rate to 99 per cent and reduced cases of benefits fraud. Another positive aspect of the home visit is that the council is able to identify where there may be an entitlement to extra social security benefits. Planning documents are now available to the public on our website, which is linked to our planning back-end system. This has allowed us to automate the consultations process with statutory bodies, who have given us excellent feedback, telling us that the system is one of the easiest they have worked with.

Consultations now have less handling time, the process is easier and quicker for the public and our printing costs have been reduced. We had expected that once plans were available online, we would see a reduction in visitors to the council's planning reception. Interestingly, this did not happen - we get the same number of visitors, but they are better informed and have more complex questions. We feel that the online planning system has opened up the democratic planning process to a wider audience, which is what local government is all about. Having records available electronically has allowed us to equip the Planning Reception with public access PC's and our customers who visit the office can now self-serve using the OITUK system.

DT: Given what appears to be an increasingly commoditised IT marketplace, how important is it for a council such as yours that the technology suppliers it chooses to partner with have specific public sector expertise and vertical market experience?
PS: OITUK's usual approach to a project is to say “Yes, we can do that”. On each occasion, once we have decided internally what functions and features we need from a product, we meet with OITUK and use their expertise to formalise what we need from the new system. We are given a choice of an out of the box product or a customised one, with work scheduled to meet our timescales. The flexibility of having a customised product allows us to have a solution that meets our exact needs. OITUK will add and re-work features at no extra cost, even when requirements change mid-project, it does however sometimes mean we do not always meet our original project timescales.
The company is small enough to care, but big enough to deliver. OITUK constantly delivers cost effective solutions for us and understands the issues faced by local authorities. The company has extensive experience - not only with technology, but in the public sector too. This knowledge is coupled with great flexibility, which allows OITUK to develop and deliver innovative products to meet its customers' needs.

DT: And what are the future challenges for local authorities as far as extending the use of document and content technologies?
PS: Arun District Council is now in the process of moving its EDRMS systems forward. We are extending the footprint of the existing solution to provide a Corporate EDRMS solution, implementing the latest version of the product set from OITUK, C-Cube, we have also made the decision to implement OITUK eForms.

This organisation-wide rollout is a phased programme of change. We are currently half of the way through the first phase, customising the product to our specific requirements and rolling out corporate C-Cube to five services - Planning, Building Control, Environmental Health, Committees and Finance. The aim is to deliver EDRMS and Workflow to all services in Arun District Council that need it and can justify the need. An organisation wide system will give us the ability to search documents across multiple services plus search within documents themselves; instant publishing of documents to our website and generation of metadata where appropriate; implement document access / version controls and an audit trail, physical security of documents in the event of a major disaster; efficiencies through automated processes; single handling of information and distribution; quicker access to documents internally and from any location; common user interface (reducing the training required and making staff more transferable) and reduction in the amount of paper storage.

In OITUK the council has found a provider that, from the early stages of project inception through to planning each project and delivering the required outcomes provides added value in terms of knowledge, cost effective delivery and flexibility of approach.

More info: www.oituk.com

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