Blackpool saves £2m with contact management

Blackpool council has consolidated a number of citizen records databases to reduce IT costs by £2m a year. The move means the town's residents only needs to ring one number for information on a number of services.

The unitary authority is responsible for 142,000 citizens and 7,000 local businesses of which the majority are in the tourism sector.

According to the council's assistant director for ICT, Phil Baron, prior to the upgrade the authority was plagued by a haphazardly built infrastructure that duplicated citizen's records in a number of jealously guarded databases.

He said: "We had 50 different services being supported by 50 separate systems."

As a result, there were up to 90 procedural steps from the referral of a case to the provision of service.

There are many business process outsourcing propositions that look fine at the desk but unless you actually study how it works with the people doing their day-to-day jobs, they won't provide the change you require.

-- Phil Baron, assistant director for ICT, Blackpool Council

In 2001, Baron initiated a review of operations to bring the council in line with central government guidelines on service delivery, based around how citizens wanted to be supported rather than the convenience of council workers.

He decided to consolidate citizens' records as a resource that would be shared by a number of departments, based around a contact management system provided by software and services specialist Lagan.

He said: "I was disappointed with the market. The general offer was confusing. There were suppliers with large systems costing millions of pounds but it wasn't clear what they could provide in terms of improving service flow."

The technology did not present any problems at implementation but Baron said the change of mindset was one of the biggest challenges of the project, with some departments unwilling to share their data.

Baron said the solution to this impasse was to design the front end of the system around what workers at the coal-face thought was important. He also acknowledged that a buy-in from the very top of the organisation was critical in pushing change through.

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Once the consolidation was completed, the council was able to save £2m a year on IT procurement and maintenance costs. More importantly, it was able to deliver more joined-up services to constituents including council tax, business rates, planning, street scene services, electoral registration, highways, street lighting, permits for skips and scaffolds, car parking and bus passes.

It was also able to reduce the number of steps it took to receive a service from 90 down to 20.

Case workers are now provided with a holistic view of citizens' data so that they have a consistent, accurate view of their charges.

Baron said: "There are many business process outsourcing propositions that look fine at the desk but unless you actually study how it works with the people doing their day-to-day jobs, they won't provide the change you require."