Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council: e-Government and information and communications technology - February 2004 Trafford is a metropolitan district in Greater Manchester, with a population of 210,000. The Best Value Review (BVR) of ICT covered ICT throughout the council and e-government. The function is estimated to cost £4.3 million for 2003/2004; 52 staff work in the corporate IT department. The capital spend of £6.2 million this year includes exceptional expenditures on a major integrated business system and a replacement telephone system. ICT and e-government are cross-cutting functions – involving all departments. Accordingly, the Audit Commission has inspected, by sampling, the use of ICT and the development of e-government in all parts of the council, not just the e-Government Service.
The service has been judged 'fair' because there are some strengths, including the following.
- A good range of ICT provision for the community:
- computers with free access by members of the public offering ‘office’ software, email and access to the internet in all libraries;
- Learn Direct centres for computer-based learning in four libraries; and
- free training for beginners in IT, provided in community settings.
- A website that provides a wide range of information, opportunities to pay bills, including for council tax and housing rent, and the chance to apply for some services.
- Better than average electronic service delivery – a greater percentage of transactions are ‘e-enabled’ than in other similar-sized authorities.
- High productivity of the IT staff who support internal users.
- Low cost, when the number of internal users or workstations is taken into account.
- Successful implementation of the customer relations management component of the new integrated business system.
- A very large proportion of phone calls to the call centre, Trafford Direct, are not getting through and customer satisfaction with that service has fallen.
- Support for internal users is mixed, but there
are serious weaknesses in:
- the helpdesk, which has insufficient capacity to handle the number of calls being received;
- training of users – resulting in lower efficiency and under-use of the available IT, and greater demands on the helpdesk; and
- speed of procurement of equipment and sufficiency of advice to service departments engaging in more complex procurements of ICT.
- There is no business continuity plan, so that in the event of a fire or other serious incident there could be major disruption to some services.
- Project success (measured by timeliness, costs compared to budget and benefits realised) has been lower than elsewhere. In part, this is due to weaknesses in project management.
- There is no customer contact strategy or customer care charter and the ICT strategy needs review and revision. Furthermore, the service lacks clear aims and there are no challenging outcome-oriented targets.
- Although much better than it used to be, there is weakness in the communication at the strategic level between users and the E-government Service. This is impeding the advance of electronic service delivery.
A prime recommendation is to for Trafford to enhance the contribution of its e-Government service to the achievement of corporate objectives, with specific recommendations including:
-
establish a forum for discussion of
ICT/e-government strategies and priorities, involving senior managers of
corporate and frontline service departments;
- clarify the what role, if any, the Integrated Business Units will have in e-government;
- in consultation with other departments, establish a programme for development of electronic service delivery, expansion of the scope of Trafford Direct and application of document image processing and workflow;
- develop, in consultation with users and staff within the service, a set of clear aims for the service;
- develop challenging but realistic targets for a range of performance indicators that measure a diversity of aspects of the function;
- negotiate a Service Level Agreement with departments, with clear service standards and a transparent mechanism for charging; and
- review and revise the ICT Strategy.
