Nomad releases hard evidence of mobile efficiencies
Nomad would like to announce the release of a range of case studies where hard evidence of efficiencies has been identified across a number of local authority service areas. Nomad has always considered it important to provide practical examples of what local authorities have achieved through mobile and more recently flexible working. Over the last few years numerous case studies have been disseminated through the Nomad web-site. However, in most cases the evidence of both proven cash savings and increased efficiencies has been limited.
In early 2006 Nomad approached the DCLG with a proposition to do further research across key local authority service areas to capture the hard evidence which was starting to emerge. The results of this work are now available from the Nomad web-site both in full detail and summarised in mini-case study format.
The level of savings varies across the different areas, but what has become clear from this work is that certain services areas such as Housing Repairs and Housing Benefits are a ‘must do’ for mobile in any local authority. Equally important is the growing evidence demonstrated in five of the case studies of both savings and staff efficiencies arising from flexible and home working. Please download and read the case studies to assist you on your local plans for mobile and flexible working – contact details are included for each of the case studies.
If your local authority has a similar story to tell in any of your service areas or at a corporate level please let us know. Email us today and get the ball rolling to promote your achievements and experiences - info@projectnomad.org.uk
SCROLL DOWN TO ACCESS ALL NEW CASE STUDIES (BOTH SUMMARISED AND IN FULL)
Want a quick read? Nomad Mini Case Studies
In order to promote our newly developed case studies, Nomad has produced a document of one-page summaries covering all 15 new case studies, laid out in order of Service Areas - Benefits, Social Care, Flexible Working, Housing Services and Environment / Regulatory Services.
New Mini Case Studies
Introduction
Description
PDF
Office
Proving Efficiencies - a Series of Mini Nomad Case Studies
Nomad was commissioned by the DCLG to seek hard evidence of the efficiency gains arising out of the adoption of mobile and flexible working in specific service areas. These 14 case studies are the result. The full case studies are available on the Nomad website but these one page summaries put together in a single document demonstrate the gains that are being secured.
Alongside presenting our full case studies below, Nomad has sought to combine the results to bring you reports of the hard efficiencies gained across the specific Service Areas of Social Care, Environment and Regulatory Services, Flexible Working, Benefits and Housing Services.
These are accessible directly below.
New Case Studies summarised by Service Area
Introduction
Description
PDF
Office
Service Area Efficiencies - Benefits
This document contains analysis results taken from the all new Nomad case studies that focus on delivering improvements in the Service Area of Benefits, primarily Housing Benefits.
This document contains analysis results taken from the all new Nomad case studies that focus on delivering improvements by introducing Flexible Working.
This document contains analysis results taken from the all new Nomad case studies that focus on delivering improvements in the Service Area of Social Care.
This document contains analysis results taken from the all new Nomad case studies that focus on delivering improvements in the Service Area of Housing.
Service Area Efficiencies - Environmental and Regulatory Services
This document contains analysis results taken from the all new Nomad case studies that focus on delivering improvements in the Service Area of Environmental and Regulatory Services.
The London Borough of Havering and London Borough of Barking & Dagenham have worked with Nomad to bring you 2 new case studies focussed on achieving efficiencies in Social Care.
Full Case Studies - Social Care
Introduction
Description
PDF
Office
London Borough of Barking and Dagenham - Social Care for Older People
The London Borough of Barking & Dagenham successfully implemented a mobile working solution for undertaking the Single Assessment Process (SAP) for older people. The solution was introduced as a ‘by-product’ of a bigger SAP project. LB Barking & Dagenham, along with its northeast London partners, decided to use the Cambridgeshire Assessment Tool (CAT). However, it was quickly realised, by the council’s officers leading on SAP, that the complexity and length of the CAT assessment tool would be problematic for practitioners if completed in paper form.
London Borough of Havering - Social Care for Older People
The London Borough of Havering has successfully implemented a mobile technology solution for undertaking assessments for elderly people. The mobile solution was first introduced in May 2004 and the catalyst for this approach was the advent of the Single Assessment Process (SAP). Havering, along with its various Health and Voluntary Sector partners, had selected the CAT 4 SAP toolset. Whilst recognising that the introduction of SAP presented a considerable challenge to the established method of assessing care requirements, Havering also recognised that it presented an opportunity to replace an inefficient and wasteful paper based process with an IT solution that could yield immediate service improvements but also evolve to reap other benefits for Havering and its partners.
Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Coucnil, Newcastle City Council and Rushcliffe Borough Council have worked with Nomad to bring you 3 new case studies focussed on achieving efficiencies in Environment and Regulatory Services.
Full Case Studies - Environment and Regs
Introduction
Description
PDF
Office
Doncaster MBC - Regulatory Services and Street Scene
Doncaster had undertaken a mobile project using Psion style hand held devices approximately 10 years ago. The devices used a DOS based program from MVM (subsequently acquired by Northgate Solutions) to assist data collection around environmental services. The system worked well and was recently updated to new devices and associated operating system by Northgate.
Rushcliffe Borough Council - Regulatory Services and Street Scene
Rushcliffe first considered mobile in 2004 with a small pilot in Environmental Health. The pilot was driven by a service review that considered the potential for mobile to deliver service improvement and cost reductions. The concept that mobile working could deliver on these two fronts was accepted at senior management level within the authority, a support philosophy that has (in the most part) continued unabated to the current time. The authority implemented a Citrix (thin client) application to purpose their back-office database to mobile devices (laptops). The application delivered data and information from the Environment Service CAPS-Solutions Uni-form system through GPRS/3G data cards when out in the field and subsidised home Broadband connections to staff in the pro-active team responsible for programmed inspections, and the reactive team responding to service requests.
East Ridng of Yorkshire Council, Hertfordshire County Council, North Hertfordshire District Council and Salford Ctiy Council have worked with Nomad to bring you 4 new case studies focussed on achieving efficiencies in Flexible Working.
Full Case Studies - Flexible Working
Introduction
Description
PDF
Office
East Riding of Yorkshire Council - Flexible Working in Revenues and Collections
East Riding of Yorkshire was created in April 1996 and became the largest unitary authority in the country. It is an area of contrasts that includes market towns, but is mainly rural, so there is a massive problem reaching the people in the community, the customers. The links to customers are via twelve award-winning centres, one-stop shops that are the front office, along with citizen link kiosks. This authority was brought together from five different councils, with the intention of saving millions of pounds, which it did. The back office was centralised in Beverley, moving people from Goole or Bridlington, both 25 miles from Beverley. In the north, many people do not usually commute and these employees had been used to walking to work.
Hertfordshire County Council - Flexible Working Council Wide
Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) has been operating a policy called 'LifeWise' for several years. This supports staff who wish to work in new ways by changing either when, where and/or how much they work. Lessons learned from the ‘LifeWise’ programme have been built on in the TWWW project. TWWW is about creating a customer–centred organisation, which maximises the potential of its staff, is efficient in the use of resources and optimises its use of new technology. The accommodation has been designed to be ergonomically more conducive to staff and more economic to run. It has fewer desks than the number of staff based in the building.
North Hertfordshire District Council - Flexible Working Council Wide
As a rural authority with a population of 120,000 North Hertfordshire District Council (NHDC) has a long term commitment to improving services to the local community. In selecting this authority to complete a case study, Nomad was specifically interested in the delivery of mobile solutions linked to customer services as part of a wider strategic programme. Through this programme the authority’s intent was to introduce mobility across all services with the mobile service provision linked to flexible and home working.
Salford City Council - Flexible Working in Housing and Council Tax Benefits
Following the success of a pilot home working project (that has seen success for both the staff and their managers), and aided by funding from the Department for Work and Pensions, home working was quickly adopted by 50 more benefits staff during FY 2003/2004. This has helped Salford to achieve the DWP Performance Standard.It was also decided to extend home working to other service areas across the Council and during 2004/2005 telephony staff in the Customer Contact Centre also adopted home working.Today, home working is one of a number of flexible working options made available to staff, subject to business case approval.
East Riding of Yorkshire Council and Nuneaton & Bedworth Borough Council have worked with Nomad to bring you 2 new case studies focussed on achieving efficiencies in Benefits.
Full Case Studies - Benefits
Introduction
Description
PDF
Office
Leeds City Council - Leeds Benefits Service
In June 2005 Leeds City Council set up the Benefits Home Working Project to take forward a rollout of 40 staff within Leeds Benefit Service, to work permanently from their homes. The Project was also set up to establish a corporate Home Working policy and Support Model and a home working section for the council’s Intranet IT catalogue.
East Riding of Yorkshire Council - Housing Benefits
The East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC) has successfully implemented a mobile working solution that enables all new housing benefits assessments to be undertaken in the citizen’s home. The purpose of performing the assessment in the citizen’s home is to ultimately be able to deliver the assessment at the conclusion of the visit. By completing the assessment at the citizen’s home, the Visiting Officer was also more likely to obtain the correct supporting evidence in support of the claim.
Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council - Housing Benefits
Nuneaton & Bedworth has recently completed the first phase of a major service change initiative in the Benefits Service, which has resulted in significant performance improvements. The authority has introduced changes in working practices and business processes both in the back office areas and with respect to visiting officers, and is now moving forward with the mobile technology implementation.
Chesterfield Borough Council, Erimus Housing, Peterborough City Council and Wrekin Housing Trust have worked with Nomad to bring you 4 new case studies focussed on achieving efficiencies in Housing Services.
Full Case Studies - Housing Services
Introduction
Description
PDF
Office
Chesterfield Borough Council - Housing Repairs
Chesterfield Borough Council’s Operational Services Division (OSD) carries out over 50,000 response repairs a year to the Council’s 10,300 dwellings. Over the last three years OSD has changed from a traditional council workforce, with largely paper-based working practices, to a flexible and more productive organisation with modern back-office systems, using mobile technology to deliver improved services more efficiently. The project to deliver this change was known as Project CHRIS (Chesterfield Housing Repairs Information System).
Erimus has recently introduced mobile working to their gas servicing engineers, where the Blackbay system manages the whole service process.Following the success of mobile working in these areas, Erimus are extending the approach to deliver a full mobile solution across the repairs service in 2007.
Peterborough City Council’s Contract Services Division maintains 10,200 dwellings in the city on behalf of Cross Keys Homes, a Housing Association formed by the transfer of Peterborough City Council’s housing stock in October 2004, for whom they undertake some 30,000 repairs annually.Before the transfer, Peterborough’s housing maintenance service relied upon processes that were largely paper based, with inadequate IT systems providing poor management information. The way work was categorised, allocated and resourced was inefficient, with a lack of control over costs and service delivery performance. The Contract Services Division had traditionally tendered for Peterborough’s housing maintenance work through a Schedule of Rates based contract. Cross Keys Homes wanted a different approach – standards were to be raised and they were looking for a partnership contract, benchmarking the repairs service against the Housing Corporation KPIs.Peterborough realised that performance and service quality needed to improve before the stock transfer took place, and recognised that working practices, systems and management methods needed to change radically in order for this to happen.
All the trade operatives working on repairs and voids were receiving their work through a PDA by early 2005. Wrekin’s mobile system, called ‘Hand–e–Work’ is now marketed to other Housing Associations and Local Authorities.In 2005, after significant capital investment in the Trust’s homes, Housing Corporation benchmarks were indicating that Wrekin needed to reduce its expenditure on response repairs. Although they had adopted the mobile working approach, the Trust felt that there was some slack in the repairs activity but they couldn’t identify where it was. It was at this stage that they decided to introduce an automated work scheduling system into the repairs process.
