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05-06-2007
Leicestershire County Council creates new central data repository to enable staff to provide better service to constituents
Wisdom provides eDRM functionality for Electronic Social Care Records System and Intranet
London, 5th June 2007 – Morse has today announced that Leicestershire County Council has implemented a new electronic documents and records management solution (eDRM) based on its Wisdom Product Suite. By utilising web services to integrate the Council’s Oracle based Client Index System (SSIS) with the Wisdom eDRM solution, the Council has created an information platform that meets all the Department of Health’s electronic Social Care Records (eSCR) guidelines. The new system gives social workers fast and easy electronic access to 16,000 stored case files while providing a single central digital repository for both structured and unstructured information, including photographs, videos and court notes. It also gives social workers immediate access to client’s social care records ensuring that the best possible level of care is given, even as they pass through the system from child to adult or if the person moves. Since the beginning of 2007 the system has been available to 1,200 social workers across 100 locations throughout Leicestershire and will be rolled out to another 300 social workers over the next few months.
“We have been very pleased with the benefits Wisdom has brought Leicestershire County Council. It has formed the electronic backbone of our eSCR, allowing social workers to not only quickly find out what social care records are held on a certain person but also to access them online,” said Mick Harris, IT & Information Manager, Leicestershire County Council. “Being able to bring together and provide electronic access to records that were previously held in manilla folders and boxes in different offices allows social workers to focus on providing a better service to our constituents rather than spending time searching for documents.”
The need to comply with government guidelines on the management of information and to build a central repository of shared information was the driving force behind why the Council adopted Wisdom as its eDRMS platform. The eSCR programme has dramatically improved how social workers are able to find and file information quickly and efficiently, improving the overall delivery of services to users. Besides the benefit of being able to search and see the whole history of a person, the new system means that social workers don’t even need to be in the same office as the information in order to access it. Being able to quickly and easily electronically access video, pictures and other information rather than having to dig through boxes is also highly valuable when putting together comprehensive case histories on clients. Prior to the new system, social workers had to wait for the information to be faxed or sent to them by mail. However, now they can access information as soon as it is placed on the system. As a result, they can access the information they need when working from home, out of the office or after hours which has been extremely useful for the Council’s Emergency Duty Team. In fact, research conducted by the Council following the roll out found that nearly three quarters of staff (73%) were spending less time finding information after the roll out of Wisdom and that virtually everyone (92%) agreed that the eSCR system has improved communication and visibility of case file information between teams.
A significant part of what has made the system so successful is the way the integration has been implemented. As Wisdom sits unobtrusively behind SSIS, social workers can continue using a familiar interface, with all the document and record management taking place in the background. This approach minimises the training and change management required. An additional advantage of this approach is that it allows social workers to have secure remote access to electronic case files from any Council location.
Wisdom has been so successful at underpinning the eSCR system that the Council began to explore how else Wisdom could be used to help it centrally store and manage its data. The first tangible example of using Wisdom to form a central data repository, or Electronic Document and Record Management System (eDRMS), has been the Council’s new Intranet which was launched at the beginning of May. This project allows documents to be linked to the Intranet site directly from the eDRMS, making it easier for the Council to manage content more effectively. The Intranet also allows employees to search and find documents more easily. The Councils Customer First Programme is also intending to use Wisdom as part of its “Knowledge Base”, a repository of information and advice for use by customers and staff alike
As well as forming the central repository for all the information published on the Intranet, including HR, management and business documents such as staff benefits and rewards, pay scales and whitepapers on disability discrimination and money laundering, Wisdom also provides version control on new documents that are created. This ensures that amendments are made to only one centrally held version of the document, helping to eliminate duplicated information. Once the document is completed, workflow processes guide the user through to the Council’s new content management system (CMS) where the document is published to the Intranet. Wisdom has also been integrated with Cintra’s Searchlight software which automatically indexes the data so that once it is stored, it is easy to search for and retrieve. The Council plans to give up to 100 employees the ability to publish new information to the Intranet. Eventually all employees will be able to create and save information to the eDRMS.
As a further part of the Customer First initiative, eventually the Council aims to integrate all of its documents and have them accessed from the central eDRMS. This will mean that regardless of whether the information is being sought from a CRM system in a call centre, from the Intranet, or from the public website, the information is taken from the eDRMS, eliminating duplicated information and ensuring consistency. Thus, a customer who phones the call centre will receive the same information as someone that looked the information up themselves on the Council’s website. This project is expected to go live towards the end of the year.
“Leicestershire County Council is pioneering the integration of an eDRMS, auto-classification and Intranet in order to provide a superior service to its constituents,” said Paul Dodgson, Compliance and Records Manager, Leicestershire County Council. “As the first Council in the UK to take such a fully integrated approach to electronic and paper records management, we have been very impressed with Wisdom’s range of capabilities which have enabled us to embark on projects that place us at the forefront of using technology to improve Council services.”
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