Local government is on a journey. In line with the Government's 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR07), local authorities have been set incentive-led targets designed to improve efficiency and control costs. Local authorities are also being encouraged to better align services to meet the changing demands of citizens.
There will be some big changes in the next two years in the way local government provides services to citizens. This year will see the introduction of Local Area Agreements that will replace the existing 1,500 targets with 198 new targets, which will be supplemented by national objectives. There is also the take-up of Multi-Area Agreements, where local authorities work across boundaries to address common local issues. So far, 13 local government authorities are planning to co-operate on certain issues. Personalisation of services will also start to increase. This will be driven by initiatives which aim to place more choice and control in the hands of local people and will reduce the number of contact points.
"Local government is undergoing a push from central government to collaborate more," says Nick Jotischky, Senior Market Intelligence Analyst at public sector market intelligence company, Kable. The idea is that if councils pool their expertise and resources, and eliminate duplication, they will be better able to achieve the CSR07 goals.
Controlling costs
CSR07 calls for local authorities to make combined efficiency savings of £9.6 billion over the period 2008 - 2011, with £4.9 billion of those savings to be made during the last of those three years.
"The government suggests that 58% of these savings can come from improvements made to market procurement, which in essence means better service integration," says Jotischky. "36% is projected to come from process improvements, which means more intelligent use of delivery channels, such as eGovernment initiatives. And 6% is meant to come from asset management, which mainly comes down to estate rationalisation," he adds. For example, Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) is running the Way We Work project, which involves shutting down 50 of its sites and replacing them with three core locations: Hertford, Stevenage and Hemel Hempstead.
HCC hopes this will result in a more cost-effective and flexible working environment than it previously had. One feature of the project is the growing use of video conferencing between the three core locations and is also useful for the growing number of local government workers either spending a significant time travelling between sites or at home.
However, cutting costs should not result in poorer service provision. Indeed, CSR07 warns councils that they will have to better tailor services to cope with "demographic and socio-economic change, globalisation, climate and environmental change, global uncertainty and technological change."
"You can't claim something is an efficiency just by cutting costs," observes Jotischky, who points to the movement towards shared services by councils as one way of raising standards and controlling costs.
Shared services
Shared services is a term which covers everything from customer-facing initiatives like having a single point of contact for all council services to several councils sharing back-office functions like payroll and HR.
There are all kinds of shared services projects already underway, and according to Jotischky some are already showing good results: "Sandwell Council is a single unitary council, which has decided to create a single customer contact centre responsible for a range of front-line services ranging from social services to HR. It claims that by having a centralised customer contact centre more and more of their front-line social workers are able to be out in the field, whereas before they were stuck in their offices dealing with calls," explains Jotischy.
Another shared services project is NYnet, a public/private sector partnership that has enabled some 500 separate websites across the North Yorkshire county to be consolidated to a single portal, offering a range of services and information for citizens and businesses across the North Yorkshire County Council and Humber Region.
Southwest One is a joint venture involving Somerset Council, Taunton Deane Borough Council, and Avon and Somerset Constabulary, designed to offer a single place for citizens to access public services.
Ambitious schemes like these cannot only save money by eliminating duplication of effort, but they also make it easier for the public to access services. Previously, someone in, say Taunton, spotting a tree fallen across the road might have erroneously called 999. The hope is that in cases like these the public will increasingly contact Southwest One where the appropriate services team will be contacted, saving money and speeding up the remedial work.
Meeting citizens' needs
"These kind of projects are a big help in helping local authorities comply with the government's 'Tell Us Once' programme, which aims to ensure that 80% of all service requests should be dealt with at the first point of contact. Citizens should not be transferred from department to department and have to repeat their details numerous times," says Jotischky.
Local authorities are also having to take on board government exhortations that public services be tailored more closely to the individual needs of local citizens, including crime, employment, education, environmental issues and so on. One key area is health, for example, where they are having to cope with the enormous growth in providing residential care for the elderly. This is already the largest single area of spend for many social service departments.
The elderly population is growing and more of them want to live at home for as long as possible. Making this possible will require an enormous spend on creating detailed health plans for each individual pensioner.
"This means that more spend from local authorities is going to go on things like kitting out homes with fall sensors, fire detectors, smoke alarms and medication reminder systems," warns Jotischky.
Here, as in all the scenarios outlined above, success will depend on implementing effective telecommunications and IT platforms. These programmes are all about improving communication and collaboration. Better communication with customers and better communication with other authorities.
Working with communication experts like THUS is one way to create robust networks that support communication through services that include telephony, email, mobile working, video conferencing, and many other emerging platforms.
With its established next-generation network (NGN), technical knowledge, and practical experience of contracts on all scales, THUS is uniquely positioned to help local authorities. It has vast expertise in this sector and is already involved in a large number of public sector contracts, including local government, across the UK. An OGC approved supplier, THUS is familiar with the concerns of local government, and specialises in building solutions tailored to each customer's requirements.
For more information, call 0800 027 5848.