Joining up service delivery

Plymouth City Council has realised significant savings, increased service efficiencies and improvements in customer care with their ‘create once, use many times’ approach to address data. An early adopter and ‘flag carrier’ for the NLPG; the council identified at an early stage the need to transform their LLPG from a standalone product to a corporate resource that could be accessed by all staff to provide improved services to the citizens of Plymouth.

Outcomes

Plymouth’s first steps on the road to a centralised address resource involved the consolidation of departmental data silos, including 10 disparate address databases and 40 datasets associated with the council’s geographic information systems (GIS). Rigorous cleansing and ongoing management has resulted in a centrally held and maintained address resource and a reduced data administration burden. Plymouth’s NLPG Team continue to work with individual departments increasing the accuracy and integrity of the dataset from a starting point of just 55% to an objectively measured and regularly maintained 95%.

The NLPG, through a series of dynamic links and update procedures, feeds departmental back office systems and corporate IT applications, including the council’s corporate feedback mechanism ‘Have your Say’, the authority’s CRM and Plymouth’s corporate GIS and Intranet based mapping portal. Other departments benefiting from the resource include Environmental Health, Land Charges, Education, Council Tax and Business Rates.

In addition to specific departmental applications front facing staff can access the NLPG to assist in their dayto-day dealing with residents of Plymouth. Staff in the council’s central contact centre and First Point Contact Team locations can access the data, via the Intranet based mapping service, helping with the resolution of customer queries at the initial point of contact, reducing the need for specialised departmental staff resources and improving service delivery and customer satisfaction levels.

As a result of the tangible improvements in service efficiencies achieved through the integration of the NLPG in every day applications and procedures, confidence in the data within the council is very high. As a result staff productivity is boosted, morale is high and the NLPG Team has won internal acclaim and recognition for its contribution.

Key benefits

• The LLPG has become a central component of more and more services, with the LLPG continuing to underpin significant financial, customer service and operational benefits.
• Consolidation of address datasets is saving an estimated £150,000 per annum by eliminating the duplication of work. Additional savings are being realised through a reduction in staff resources and the related infrastructure required for frontline query resolution.
• The NLPG is recognised internally as one of the central platforms for delivering improved services to residents and underpins corporate IT applications, such as the centralised contact centre, public information facilities and online services.
• Confidence in the data is high and individual departments are specifying that back office systems dynamically link to the NLPG. The data is also being used outside the council’s own service delivery area with the authority’s Civil Protection Unit using the NLPG when interacting with the numerous agencies, both public and private who are involved in public safety.
• Through the use of the NLPG, Plymouth is achieving measurable improvements in efficiency and service delivery, contributing to an improvement in the Corporate Performance Assessment (CPA) rating from poor/weak to two star/improving well.