Easing the squeeze on Europe’s municipalities
There are 100,000 local authorities across the 48 countries of the European Council. They range from tiny local operations serving as few as 2,000 people to massive rural and metropolitan municipalities with as many as a million citizens. Some focus on the underlying infrastructure – from rubbish collection and street lighting to sports grounds and schools. Others are also
responsible for general healthcare and, in some countries, many central government functions have been transferred to them. In the Netherlands, local councils are also set to become the citizen’s point of contact for the entire public sector.
Key issues include:
- Duplication of functions, both within individual authorities and across a nation’s authorities
- Outdated processes, many of which are repetitive, paper-based and not cost-effective
- Siloed departments and functions
- A lack of information-sharing between departments or functions
- An ageing workforce, who will take expertise with them when they retire, and younger people who don’t think working for the council is sufficiently cool
- A preponderance of stand-alone, in-house systems, depending on the country
- Reducing staff numbers
- The need to balance political and financial priorities.
Breaking Down Silos
The silo-busting principle – enabled by technology but made possible by redesigning processes and introducing new, more efficient ways of working – can bring further benefits to many other aspects of council work, such as social services or building regulations. In the Netherlands, we’ve used the approach, along with shared services, to create the Case Connected Community (CCC). This integrates web, counter, postal, e-mail and telephone service channels for multiple Dutch local authorities, which have come together as GovUnited. Communications within councils have dramatically improved, as CCC is a case management system which is designed to route requests automatically to the relevant departments. As the system evolves, there will be further efficiencies, without the need for internal system changes. Meanwhile, CCC’s scale has substantially reduced administrative costs and demonstrates the value of cross-departmental working.
Sharing Information
Systems integration brings councils back to their primary purpose of helping people. A person needing one form of help from social services is likely to need more. By aggregating and automating processes, the person gets the correct type of help faster, at lower cost. This approach is particularly important in areas such as safeguarding vulnerable people. Every country has cases when children or vulnerable adults are harmed because different parts of social services departments or medical authorities did not pass each other information. Shared databases can prevent that and eradicate errors caused by re-keying information.
Making the most of an ageing workforce
As a first step, the problem of knowledge disappearing along with retirees needs to be addressed. Denmark’s recently established Working Processes Bank shows the way. It is a database of current and best practices for local government processes, linking them into workflows.
Reducing Staff members
GIS can be built up over time as a modular system, making more information available for customer self-service as individual business cases become clear and council staff and customers press for change. Local businesses can contribute information and, potentially, help to fund the system.
Getting together in the cloud
Role-based security can make Cloud systems safe by restricting access depending on your job, as the Kainuu region of Finland has found. Its social care department has been redesigned around users, focusing processes on roles, rather than make people fit into processes. As the system is in the Cloud, it can be modified without affecting users’ work and scaled up if demand increases.
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