Channel Shift in the Public SectorAnalysing metrics, tracking trends and measuring the benefits of channel shift

David Wilde, Chief Information Officer

Essex County Council

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Essex: delivering the best quality of life

Essex County

• 1.4 million residents• 368,000 hectares• 596,500 homes• 60,000 businesses• 4,642 miles of road• £20 billion local economy

Essex County Council:

• £2.13 billion gross budget – but shrinking rapidly• 48,000 employees (34,000 in schools)• 210,000 pupils across 571 state and 52 private

schools• Partners include 5 PCTs, 12 district and borough

councils, two unitary authorities, 270 parish councils

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Our future direction

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Customer Service definition – start point

• There have been several iterations of this for all across public services and one of our challenges is customer centric vs organisation centric

• That said, understanding place, population and business is key

• The other challenge is service vs customer, silos vs total service delivery

• So, do we know what we deliver, to whom, is it right, how much, where and how and who else?

• We have been very good at setting targets for channel shift for services already in place but are they the right services or delivered in the right way?

• Also, right channels for right experience?

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What do we know? Big Data, Analytics, Trends

• These aren’t new in public services, much of our business has always been about big data

• Analytics has been used extensively for demographic and geographic definitions and targeting of public service delivery, but reducing resources demands more

• Previous examples in action: Neighbourhood Renewal (and Neighbourhood Statistics), Supporting People, Housing, Mosaic

• We don’t own all the data now and never have. Public sector bodies are custodians. We have to get used to mash-ups multi-sourced data. Transparency is set to grow

• Intelligent analytics are the future – answer the difficult questions, don’t just describe the landscape

• So, key enablers, game changers and demand…..

Key enablers

• Big data is only as useful as the data is good quality, garbage in, garbage out

• Dull but absolutely crucial is data quality, not just from now on but historical too

• Open data, accessible and interoperable from all sectors

• Good enough data, doesn’t always have to be 100% correct

• Transparency, let people know what you have and what’s possible and ask your customers!

• Over-ambitious targets don’t help, be realistic but there can be nice surprises, 20% shift may be good for some but not others – what works?

• Right channels, not necessarily all the channels (mobile especially)

Game Changers for Customer and channels

• The IT basics:Search, indexing and processing have caught up with our aspirationsAccess, real time and always on are getting there (except for rural)data management and sharing – still hard work to get protocols agreednetworks and applications convergence – only just beginning but will really transform customer service in public sector

• The more advanced:Strategic direction – moving to people, place and customer and not organisation Migration from legacy data – long and difficult journeyDemand – it’s about give me options, not what info is out there

• But out in the real world people are just getting on with it, through social media and adoption of other disruptive technologies

• Corporately technology and customer can’t drive this, the business can’t transform without it – partnership, and then there is……

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Demand

• Transparency – we are turning the corner on this and it’s making our population more demanding about what we have and what we do with it

• Difficult decisions needs well informed and researched choices, the I in IT needs to service those and not just lay out the landscape

• What are my options for reducing deprivation? What impact does it have for other services? How do bridge the gap between education and employment? Is there a gap? Addressing these questions informs good customer service

• Staff need to operate across the old boundaries, it’s absolutely about people and place, not government agencies. Key to channel shift and holistic service provision

• Services need to work with your customer channels and give up their own routes to become truly customer centric

Our experience, hard lessons

• Blue badge, replicated elements of the service based on what was there instead of challenging the process, now revamped and working – hybrid on-line, face and call centre

• Family Information Service, great success on channel shift (80% from phone and face to face to on-line self serve)

• Events, summer parks parking for 40 days for £10, 60% on-line from zero and hundredfold increase in take-up

• Special Education Needs service, dumped the channel shift plan

• Pot-holes, great improvement in access to data and transparency, caused all sorts of trouble on the data quality and customer satisfactions fronts for the service

Public services 2015, virtual and not just public sector?

Libraries, culture and Leisure

Social and healthcare managed services

Virtual education

Virtual planning economic growth

Environmental managed services

Virtual desktop and data storage

Local benefits and jobs services

Internet,PSN services

VDI,CRM, MDMBI

Shared services as standard

ICT integrated into outsourced service provision

Total service providers of the future:BUPA, Nuffield, Veolia, Planning Exchange, Telcos, Google, MS, Oracle?Where will the Systems integrators and applications suppliers be?Virtual services and bid data analytics developed for free?Public services delivered through very different vehicles

Shared service centres, Community hubs