Council mega-project set to double savings

Birmingham City Council's ambitious business and technology transformation project is on course to save more than double the amount the organisation was aiming for.

The council has revealed it's on course to save around £2.1bn through efficiencies generated by the 10-year project which is due for completion in 2016.

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Speaking at an event in Birmingham, the council's corporate director of business change, Glyn Evans said: "We're currently on target to achieve twice what we aimed for."

The council will spend around £595m on the project which was originally intended to achieve savings of around £1bn.

The council is working closely with a number of tech companies including SAP as well as Capita through the Service Birmingham joint venture.

The project involves nine work areas, the first of which is the corporate services transformation project (CST) which went live in October last year and is set to generate £858m in savings.

But Evans admitted this first project was not without its problems. He said: "Being the first programme was always going to be difficult."

"The new organisational structure was not in place until the technology had been in place for a few months," he explained.

The council is about to commence Customer First, the second work area in the transformation project.

The three-year project will see the creation of a single customer account for Birmingham citizens through which they can manage their dealings with the local authority. The first roll-out is due in May 2009.